SPOILERS Pyramids Discussion *Spoilers*

[Tonyblack]

What a pile of tosh!

The written word and TV/movies are different media and I don't see that you can completely draw a comparison. I've watched Monty Python throughout my life and liked some of it and thought some of it fell completely flat. Some of the sketches on the original TV series totally didn't work at all - most of the time it was surreal humour rather than satire.

The video you included - Holy Grail - was made after the TV series had finished and Cleese had left the show due to the fact that he thought the stuff they were making was unoriginal (with a few exceptions). 'Holy Grail' was hardly typical Python. 'Meaning of Life' was more in keeping with that.

Your so-called rule states that "Tony doesn't like Pyramids". Well bang goes your theory, because I do 'like' Pyramids. I like all of Terry's books to different degrees. I certainly think it's more consistently funny than Monty Python. Actually, Spike Milligan was doing far funnier shows before Python. Ironically, Python really took off after it was shown in the US.

So - to sum up. You're talking rubbish Pooh. Literature and TV are not the same thing. You don't have to 'love' Monty Python to 'like' Pyramids. Comparing 'Friends' to 'Monty Python' is like comparing chalk to cheese. They were never trying to emulate each other and probably appeal to different audiences in different decades.

Friends was certainly popular in the UK, as was Python in the US and they were both on TV. That's about all they have in common.

 

[poohcarrot]

What a pile of tosh!

Of course it's a pile of tosh! All my theories are piles of tosh.

You seem to be implying that UK humour and US humor are the same.
Do you really think so?
If not, what are the differences?

 

[Tonyblack]

What a pile of tosh!

Of course it's a pile of tosh! All my theories are piles of tosh.

You seem to be implying that UK humour and US humor are the same.
Do you really think so?
If not, what are the differences?

I'm not implying anything of the sort, but: I grew up on American comedy shows. American TV shows were just about the main thing on TV when I was growing up. Likewise, there are tons on British TV shows that are hugely popular in the US - not just comedy.

I've said before that Monty Python is currently being rerun on PBS (Public Broadcast Service) on US TV and any day of the week over there you can watch British TV shows.

All of which seems to have very little to do with Pyramids.

 

[poohcarrot]

But you twisted MY words by saying I was equating Friends to Monty Python. So I twisted your words.

In fact I'll throw that question open to everyone and would like to hear your opinions.

Is UK humour and US humor the same?

If not, what are the differences?

We may get three different views here;
The Brits, the Americans and the people who are neither.

 

[Doughnut Jimmy]

I think how funny you find Pratchett's jokes (this may apply to all humour) depends on how deeply ingrained ideas or experiences are in you - I find the bit about Xeno's paradox funny every time I read it because it explores the gulf between the logic of the theory and the real world and echoes a very lengthy argument my maths class had with our teacher when he introduced us to it. (With hindsight he'd probably recently read Pyramids.)

If you have to look up what the joke is all about it never resonates with you in the same way even after you have the relevant crumb of knowledge.

I find the difficulty with rereading any humour is that it is rarely as funny the second time round because you already know what's coming, you need to wait until you've forgotten enough that the lead up to the joke is unfamilliar.

 

[swreader]

Pooh, your knowledge of satire is Nil-- and TV COMEDY AND SATIRIC NOVELS OR COMIC NOVELS CANNOT BE EQUATED! It's the old case of Apples and Oranges.

I dutifully watched your Monty Python episode, and found it neither funny nor satiric. On the other hand, I've enjoyed some of Gilbert & Sullivan's satires (H.M.S. Pinafore). And I think that David Frost's comic humor and shows like "That Was the Week that Was" which depended on topical humor and in some cases satire were enjoyable.

You obviously don't understand the difference between comedy and satire. As many of us have said, and I will say one more time, Pyramids is a pastiche. It has a number of humorous references, eg. You Bastard as great mathematician, and punning allusions to other pieces of literature, and a pun in the name of the country - something you've never commented on--but it is not satire, any more than Monty Python is satire. Pyramids , if you know enough about Tom Brown's School Days, Greek writers, etc. is mildly amusing on first reading and three more readings gave me clearer ideas about some of the satires developed in Pratchett's later works. But this is definitely a case where you and I, Pooh will have to disagree--because you are trying to wind up people with a lot of tosh, directed particularly at Americans. And I'm not biting.

 

[Dotsie]

Monty Python - Life of Brian was brilliant, Meaning of life was genius, Holy Grail had maybe two jokes in it at best.

British comedy films are drier than American ones, but I would say they don't make as much money over here as there is a bigger audience for slapstick. This is not to say that Americans prefer slapstick, but that successful films in both countries tend to be less sophisticated (Ben Stiller making nob gags is always popular). And it is all about making money after all. Sitcoms from both countries are pretty unsophisticated.

Is "carcrash" comedy, the sort that makes you uncomfortable to watch it, actually funny? I prefer the American version of the Office to the British one for this reason. I just couldn't bear to watch David Brent (and I can't stand Ricky "integrity" Gervais)

 

[poohcarrot]

So what's the difference between a CD of Life of Brian and a CD of a TP audiobook?
(I've never listened to an audiobook but I assume it's one person reading the book and doing different voices.)

 

[Trish]

I think most of Terry's early works rel[y] too heavily on his audience being 'in' on the joke. If someone has no knowledge of Shakespeare's plays, H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos, Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion series, Robert E. Howards Conan stories, to name a few, then it is little wonder that they picked up the book, 'didn't get it,' and never tried his later works.

Yes, well, Pratchett depends upon an educated and enlightened audience.

Howard?
No, I think Cohen stems more from the movie, but then, I've never read anything of Robert Howard's.

 

[Jan Van Quirm]

British comedy films are drier than American ones, but I would say they don't make as much money over here as there is a bigger audience for slapstick. This is not to say that Americans prefer slapstick, but that successful films in both countries tend to be less sophisticated (Ben Stiller making nob gags is always popular). And it is all about making money after all. Sitcoms from both countries are pretty unsophisticated.

Is "carcrash" comedy, the sort that makes you uncomfortable to watch it, actually funny? I prefer the American version of the Office to the British one for this reason. I just couldn't bear to watch David Brent (and I can't stand Ricky "integrity" Gervais)

OK this is my screen satirical comedy post to get it out of the way as I've predictably got far more to say on the religious/literary satire front. I adore Monty Python BUT... it's completely outdated and of it's time these days. What Python is famed for is that it was in the vanguard in the time when, largely in the UK, 'traditional' humourous TV entertainment was beginning to be battered down. As Sharlene points out, MP really only carried on from where TW3 left off and went 'cerebral/academic' to some extent with the Oxbridge 'Footlights' effect starting to kick in during the height of the Python era.

Spike Milligan and the Goons, Peter Sellers and even Michael Bentine were all there doing something new, original and considered with comedy in the same way that Morecambe and Wise were still at the top of their game and made me laugh just as much with their trad comedy (with had really clever twists too) - comedy is mostly about comfort levels and yes that does take into account intelligence and social niches. It's easiest to laugh at things you're familiar especially when it sends them up...

Is Mel Brooks as creative as John Cleese? - yes he is but maybe both of them appeal more to their native audiences because they know them and their material and how they pitch it best. So I also agree with pooh that UK and US and French and Australian and Japanese etc etc comedy is different. It's interesting in one of Sharlene's posts that she mentioned Chaplin as a great comic satirist amongst other US greats - I'm sure she knows he was raised in the UK and never gained US citizenship. He also based most of his early work on his family's music hall act which are hugely 'slapstick' but he was possibly the greatest 'physical' comedian ever and he did that superbly - but it's still only at level 1 in pooh's scale for his early work because it was pitched at a naive and largely uneducated audience, both on the London theatre and in the early cinemas...

Taking The Office as one of the few Brit comedies that translated well for US audiences (and vice versa - the Golden Girls Brit makeover was utterly dire ) I didn't watch either version and the reason for that was because the British version was too sodding real and therefore too painful for me to watch as I've worked with too many d*ckheads like David Brent and so I had no interest in finding out how an American worked - I'd probably have liked it in fact, but I just couldn't. Turn it the other way and I lapped up Yes Minister and Prime Minister even though I've also worked with lots of Sir Humphreys but with that it was so well scripted and interpreted you couldn't help but love it - even Thatcher loved it for gods sake - how hard was that to achieve!

As for Friends - I never got into it as I just found it really twee and too calculatingly 'goofy but cool'. :x The 2 great US sitcoms that stand out for me are Cheers and Frasier and though they're connected (and I think had some of the same writers?) the humour's different and somehow very appropriate and well-observed about 2 very different social and cultural settings.

Which sort of leads into what I'm going to say about Pyramids and religion and power. But it's late and I'm still brain-burned with all the catching up I have to do so that's it from me for now except to sum up that this isn't UK v US comedy and satire, it's about good writing and fitting the set pieces and jokes to the storys environment and whether or not Pyramids floats your boat. Terry's as usual done a good job, but that's still subject to your own personal comfort zone and what you like to laugh at It's all just a matter of taste in the end :twisted:

 

[Dotsie]

Frasier??? It was certainly popular, and I watched most of it, but every episode was the same! Frasier's behaviour never changed (neither did Niles', but at least he wasn't annoying). With Friends, at least you got a different episode every week.

 

[poohcarrot]

As many of us have said, and I will say one more time, Pyramids is a pastiche. It has a number of humorous references, eg. You Bastard as great mathematician, and punning allusions to other pieces of literature, and a pun in the name of the country - something you've never commented on--but it is not satire, any more than Monty Python is satire.

Pastiche was a word I didn't know the meaning of. According to my dictionary pastiche is "a piece of writing that is created by deliberately copying the style of sb/sth else".
So the Assassins Guild bit could be classed as a pastiche of Tom Brown's Schooldays, but I fail to see how anything else in the book could be classed as a pastiche. Exactly what style was TP copying?

(BTW I made reference to the pun in the name of the country in my intro. )

So you're saying that Monty Python's Life of Brian is in no way satirical? I can't agree with you there at all. Are YOU sure you know what the meaning of satire is? Or maybe like me, your "knowledge of satire is Nil"

 

[Dotsie]

You do know that Sharlene is a retired literature professor don't you? It's nice that you keep on trying though, dear little pooh

 

[CrysaniaMajere]

About the need for a kind of knowledge to understand the jokes, it's true yes but I knew the paradox we talked before, I read the page someone posted to refresh memory but still don't find it funny, it caused a smile but no laughs.

About Monty Python, sometimes I love them, sometimes not, it depends on the gag.
As Tony said before, I liked Pyramids and I reread it in these days, and I still like the book, love the ancestor bit, but during the entire book I never laughed out loud as I did with most of TP's books , so I think at the end we can sum everything with Jan's words : "it's all just a matter of taste in the end"

(Friends was nice, I watched it, but not even close to being funny as TP books, which could be even embarassing if you're reading them out of your house when people can see you and and . With some books I actually had to close it because I couldn't read it due to too much )

Sharlene, you were a literature professor?Didn't know! wow *bowing to the professor*

 

[raisindot]

Oh dear-- I'm afraid Pooh that your "Theory of Humor" is just pooh. The whole thing is based more or less in terms of visual humor which is hardly the way to analyze a novel. Additionally, you reveal a lack of awareness of the breadth and complexity of American humor. We are not known particularly for our "Level 1" humor-- the pratfall. Though using your terms, I suppose that the Three Stooges and the Keystone Kops match that. But you ignore the type of humor or satire illustrated by Chaplain, Will Rogers, Mark Twain, Joseph Heller and Sinclair Lewis, to mention only a few.

SW, you'll notice that I keep in the part of the quote where you say Pooh is wrong , but much as I wish to agree with you, it is pretty much a lamentable fact that the most popular humor in American has always been slapstick oriented.

Other than the humorous sayings of Ben Franklin, a strong American humor "voice" really didn't emerge until people like Artemis Ward starting publishing his 'southern bumpkin' pieces in the mid 19th century. These were satires of poor white trash culture, consisting of lots of insult humor and fighting and eye gouging punctuated by long strings of colorful curses. Mark Twain was heavily influenced by this kind of humor and many of his early 'satires' were written in this style for western and eastern audiences. But Twain rose out of formula to become the first genuine, world-recognizable American humorist, and even though his humor had elements of slapstick to it, he moved it far past that into expressing the 'voice' of the antebellum south, particularly in Huckleberry Finn.

American humor really diverged into separate camps in the early 20th century: sophisticatd wit and satire were owned by the New York-based generation of writers and playrights (Perelman, Parker, Thurber, Benchley, Kaufman.Hart, etc.), while most early American films, stage shows (vaudeville) and early TV shows were totally slapstick or jokey (rather than satire) oriented, which they had to be to accommodate the limitations of the silent era and the predominantly immigrant audiences in the vaudeville audiences.

Yes, there were a few people who incorporated pathos (Chaplin, Keaton, Capra) into the mix, and directors who specialized in more witty comedies (Cukor, Hawks, Lubitsch), but I always have thought the only true pre-1960s American satire that matched anything the British did was the Marx Bros. "Duck Soup," which was both a hilarious and chilling putdown of fascism, and perhaps Chaplin's "Modern Times" and "The Great Dictator."

Still, even with these memorable exceptions, nearly all of the most popular American humor, particularly on film and early TV, was sentimental or slapstick in nature, and rarely took a hard-edged satirical jab at American institutions. Every once in a while you had a noteworthy excepion ("Dr. Strangelove," "The Graduate"), but, in general, most Americans did not embracing satire, or at least they didn't until The Simpsons began, which opened the floodgates for a whole new generation of satirical animated shows, from "South Park" to "Family Guy." And the main reason these shows are popular is because their main characters are throwbacks to the tradition of the American slapstick buffoon and stereotype.

How does this tie back to "Pyramids?" Not sure, because I just can't bring myself to get through it again. I tried, Pooh, I tried, but I couldn't get over the hump.

J-I-B

 

[poohcarrot]

You do know that Sharlene is a retired literature professor don't you? It's nice that you keep on trying though, dear little pooh

Also a retired judge.

I bet all her life she's had people agree with her, and I bet none of her students ever said her knowledge of satire was nil. :twisted:

Anyway, I'm sure it does her the world of good.

 

[Jan Van Quirm]

I think I have something we should consider that more or less sums ups satire and why Monty Python is perhaps not necessarily always the best example - have a look (and especially listen) at THIS

In particular give Mel Smith's character (the arch film critic Alexander Walker) your full attention, notably around the 2:29 min point as this quite rightly points out that the Python team very often didn't get it right perhaps because the student humour they modelled some of their genre on simply isn't terribly funny, big or even very clever...

That sketch - Level 3 if not 4 pooh? :twisted:
One argument it does support is that the satirical script is most definitely English and was used in a hugely popular and influential 'new-wave' award-winning comedy show that broadcast on prime-time 'intellectual' BBC2 when the UK only had 3 TV channels (and virtually no cable TV) available to the general population. For it's entire run Not the 9 o'clock News was 'must see' TV for Baby Boomers as well as teenagers.

What I would like to know from our US debaters is whether that type of comedy show would have been shown on a similarly prestigious but mainstream US networked channel in that period (circa 1979-1982) and lapped up by 'Middle America' viewers as well as the more 'sophisticated' coastal communities?

 

[poohcarrot]

Um...er...

Pooh, your knowledge of satire is Nil

...but it (Pyramids) is not satire, any more than Monty Python is satire.

As you quoted wiki to be, here's some right back atcha, hon (as Tina would say).
Let's see what Wikipedia says about Monty Python's Life of Brian. 8)

Religious satire and blasphemy accusations
The film has been seen as a critique of excessive religiosity, depicting organised and popular religion as hypocritical and fanatical. The film's satire on unthinking religious devotion is epitomised by Brian's attempt to persuade an enormous crowd of his followers to think for themselves:

Brian: Look, you've got it all wrong! You don't need to follow me, you don't need to follow anybody! You've got to think for yourselves! You're all individuals!
The Crowd (in unison): Yes! We're all individuals!
Brian: You're all different!
The Crowd (in unison): Yes, we are all different!
Man in Crowd: I'm not.
Another Man: Shhh!
The film also satirises both the tendency to interpret banal incidents as "signs from God" and the factions and infighting that can emerge from this. For example, when Brian loses his shoe, some of his over-zealous followers declare it to be a sign but they can't agree on what it means, while one other instructs them to "Cast off the shoe. Follow the gourd!" (which is viewed by some as being significant owing to Brian's seemingly charitable refusal to accept a price for it - and not even haggle over what it is worth - the truth actually being that it was a cheap, unwanted gift).

Are YOU sure you know what the meaning of satire is? Or maybe like me, your "knowledge of satire is Nil"

8) 8) 8)

 

[Tonyblack]

This from the man who thinks Wiki is less than accurate.

I have to say that although this is all very interesting, it's getting further and further away from the discussion of Pyramids.

Please try and keep your arguements relative to the discussion.

Oh and Sharlene was a lawyer, but served as a 'Judge Tempore' Which is:

A judge pro tem is not a regular judge, but someone (usually a lawyer) who is brought in to serve temporarily as a judge.

 

[CrysaniaMajere]

I'm not at all qualified to debate on American vs English satire, so I won't.

I'd just like to say something here... and it is Pyramids-related, in a way ok don't kill me, I can't go on talking about Monty Python, I might just talk about something I know

talking about "matters of taste" I'm the only one I know of that laughed for this little piece of Star Trek:
start of ST piece (if you don't like ST go straight to the end of ST piece)
when Quark wants to die and asks Garak to kill him, they try a few ways and then after the last one they say:
G-how's that?
Q-awful. Did you hear that sound of bone snapping?I don't want that to be the last thing I hear.
G-it wasn't so loud
Q-you don't have these ears. Snapping vertebrae is out.
G-we're running out of options Quark. You don't want to be vaporised because you need a body, the disruptor ruined your clothing, the knife was too savage, the nerve gas smelled bad, hanging took too long, and poison... what was wrong with poison?
Q-it doesn't work. If I know the food is poisoned I won't eat it.
G-For a man who wants to kill himself you are strangely determined to live
end of ST piece

I laughed because it reminded me of that Dorothy Parker's poem "you might as well live", that I read in a 'literary notebook' in my early teen years and immediately loved it (then I searched for the original version), AND ALSO because I loved Garak.

Now, maybe if that joke of the turtle paradox or any other joke had been made by the ancestors or someone else nice, it would have been funnier than this one with Teppic and those two soulless men who were killing poor-cute-little-turtles, kind of tiny-wee-A'Tuins !
Those bloody murderers!
There was no lead-character who was really nice in here. The ancestors and Chidder were the best, but had little space

Is this ok on a Pyramid-discussion?