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conventions. However, it still contains important characteristics of the form which reappear in later mock-documentary texts. The Rutles (1978) The Rutles follows the parodic model of the Monty Python’s Flying Circus television series, 1 and it features both Python regulars and Saturday Night Live comics. The film uses the mock-documentary form to present the story of the Rutles, a detailed parody
/listeners. In this sense, the audience reception of the Welles broadcast leads directly to mock-documentary texts such as Forgotten Silver (1995) and Alien Abduction (1998), 4 which are both examples of media hoaxes (with Forgotten Silver being another interesting example of an apparently unintentional hoax which overestimated the sophistication of its audience). Television precursors Monty Python’s Flying
laugh on radio, on television, in film and through digital technologies such as the internet and mobile devices. US radio comedy has experienced a resurgence through channels such as XM Satellite Radio and programmes such as The Comedy-O-Rama Show (featuring the Monty-Python-like Crunchy Frog Comedy), Armstrong & Getty and The Bob and Tom Show, the latter two combining topical talk and comedy. US
language is always presented soberly, drawing especially upon scientific rhetoric, but at the same time the connections which are made between characters and the nature of their VUE suffering is very much within the Monty Python tradition. There is here the same delight in the rhythms of nonsense language presented as coherent rationality (using the BBC model of factual presentation). The difference is that, unlike Monty
treasured perceptions, with rules, conventions and taboos, but there are occasions when the engagement causes offence, even if no offence was intended. Sometimes the response can be extreme in nature. Considerable controversy surrounded Monty Python’s film Life of Brian (1979) in which a young Jewish man is mistaken for the Messiah. Accused of blasphemy by numerous religious groups, Life of Brian was banned
make a problem disappear by relabelling it. (All of the cast use their real names, a transparency of characterisation which is also typical of Clarke.) The style of the series is related to that of the Monty Python tradition – the treating of an absurd notion in a logical way – although this series is considerably more subtle. Each episode begins with an improbable premise (for example, the administrators discover that the
169-82), Monty Python’s Flying Circus 1970-74), Morecambe and Wise (1961-76), The Two Ronnies (1971- 86), Little and Large (1978-91), Three of a Kind (1981-83), A Bit of Fry and Laurie (1989-95), Not the Nine O’Clock News (1979-82), Who Dares Wins (1983-88), Alas Smith and Jones (1984-88), French and Saunders (1987-96 and subsequent specials), The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer
might be Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Till Death Us Do Part via All in the Family and The Office). While we recognise debates that argue for distinctive comic sensibilities across cultures and even within sub-cultures, and which discuss important determinants such as ethnicity, national identity and regionalism, we believe that there is sufficient Anglo-American interaction in our chosen media, whether it is direct or
the face and fingers. Dazed-looking and cross-eyed, with a gurning facial expression and jutting, prognathous jaw, they present as at once both baffled and mischievous. Their vocal style is comedic and aphasic, part Monty Python, part Goon Show – their singing often resembles the oddities of voice and content in the Goons’ garbled, nonsensical Ying Tong Song (1956), for example. Harry Kipper speaks in a peculiar, self-invented idiolect, which is at times incomprehensible or otherwise consists of one-liners and inane chatter, interrupted by guffaws, squeaks, fart
the absurdist tradition in British comedy evident later in the Goons and Monty Python. In America the central figure in the development of slapstick ‘comedian comedies’ was the British-born Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977). Though not usually regarded as an innovator, Sennett had produced a feature-length comedy, Tillie’s Punctured Romance, as early as 1914. Starring Marie Dressler in the title role