Monty Python vs. Family Guy vs. Geertz
Jun 24th, 2008 by Micah Tillman | Start the Discussion |
The Wife is doing that multi-tasking thing she does, wherein she watches a DVD and works on the more mundane tasks of her internet job(s) at the same time. This morning, the DVD is Monty Python’s Live at the Hollywood Bowl.
To really “get” Monty Python, LHB reminds me, you have to have a least a little familiarity with a wide range of philosophers. If you don’t, you might have what one could call with Clifford Geertz a “thin” experience of the sketches:
You won’t have enough background and experience with the philosophers to find the jokes funny (to experience them in their full context).
Of course, I wouldn’t have thought of the issue in those terms were it not for Dr. Chase’s bringing up Geertz earlier. And my co-opting of Geertz’s “thin vs. thick” language is a little backwards:
Getting Monty Python’s philosophy jokes depends on your having acquired the context by yourself having the necessary knowledge/experience.
In other words, the philosophical context is so universal or abstract (you get it from reading books) that it is just as accurate to say it is the context of your experiencing the jokes as it is to say that it is the context of the jokes themselves.
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In contrast, take their political sketches, which flow out of the political happenings of the time. There’s no way you can share the same context as those sketches because you weren’t there.
So to have a “thick” experience of said sketches is not a question of whether you can experience their context for yourself (as you can with the philosophy sketches). You can only learn about the context by studying the British politics of the 1960’s.
Politics is different from philosophy because you can live through the former, but can only read about the latter. (*cringes* I think that’s a claim I’m going to have to revise later. But yeah.)
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In other words, the experience we have now of Monty Python’s political sketches is like the experience most of us youngsters have of Family Guy’s 80’s TV show jokes. We didn’t see those shows, so we don’t know the context.
The difference, of course, is we can get those shows on DVD and watch them for ourselves, whereas you can’t get the political experience of 60’s England on DVD and go through it for yourself.
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As much as I love Family Guy, compare what it takes to have a thick experience of it compared to what it takes to have a thick experience of Monty Python (e.g., the philosophy sketches), and you see that no matter how low-brow Monty Python is, it’s also much more high-brow than Family Guy will ever be.
And I think the Simpsons are somewhere in the middle.
