Some of this has been recapitulated in the so-called “iron law of institutions”:
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I recently revisited Idle’s Hello Sailor and found myself engladdened he and Neil formed the Rutles instead of funny novelling. An interesting snapshot/cringefest of the late 70s.
I think that was said by the often inebriated “Major” (pemanant resident at Fawlty Towers). He also said “wog” at least once.
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IMO Cleese and Gilliam, but I don’t know who is the third.
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Yes he did. In the same bit.
And that’s what makes the joke- the Major is telling a story about a woman he took to a cricket match, and he complains that she uses the N-word to describe some of the players. This sets the audience up to expect that the Major is annoyed at the racism, but no, he’s actually annoyed at the woman for getting her racist terms wrong.
This is important in the context of the episode, because it points out that the titular Germans are just about the only nice people there, and that Basil’s own prejudices are the cause of all the conflict in the episode.
Of course, the larger message in the episode is directed at the British public and their resentment and dislike of the prosperous post-war Germany. It holds a mirror up to their own prejudices and practically shouts-“Look, just because you happened to be on the winning side in WW2, it doesn’t mean that you’re free of prejudice yourselves.” Which was all incredibly relevant at the time this show was released, because if you look back at attitude to race in the UK in the 70s, wow- things were not good. At all.
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I’d argue some moderation is needed to maintain a stable society, and that stability is required for a society to have some semblance of justness. The problem I see is not moderation, but apathy and lack of principle disguised as moderation.
Having strong principles shouldn’t make me automatically extremist. It should make sense for someone to call themselves a moderate, and in the same breath say they’ll march against police brutality and racism because those things are wrong.
But that’s an awfully big “should”, and I am sympathetic to anyone who feels fed up with the reality of people who call themselves moderates.
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I was a little kid at the time, but I recall a heated TV discussion between one of the producers of All in the Family (Norman Lear or Bud Yorkin) and the producer of Til Death Do Us Part (the Brit show which AITF was based on). The former’s argument was that AITF was written to have socially-redeeming, educational values while TDDUP made its protagonist out as being in the right. The TDDUP producer seemed to be having none of that (in regards to his own show), which implied disingenuous on his part; there was a short clip shown then from one of the TDDUP episodes, and the racists comments (and the resulting howling laughter from the live audience) shocked me.
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I followed his twitter at one point, he doesn’t seem close to being a centrist. Or perhaps he still considers himself that, but recognizes the RW has Overton windowed themselves to crazy pants land.
Yeah, cheers from the wrong section of the audience/for the wrong reasons… a known phenomenon for the German version as well.
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One time Terry Jones got confused and sexually harassed a lamp. Lol j/k. I actually was thinking of Eric Idle, but in a very vague way, as in, I remember seeing some hot take by him and thinking “ew gross”. But it may have been something minor or me-specific.
The attitude Cleese displays in the OP feels familiar to me. I went to the same school he did, and I know a lot of people with the same stance. It’s how you feel when you’re cosmopolitan enough to appreciate what’s wrong with the world, but have a sturdy foundation of privilege that means you’re never forced to care. It’s pernicious because, yes, it is better to be calm and not freak out about things, but not everyone has that luxury all the time. Sometimes people need to boil over in order to move an issue from “yes yes, it’s terrible, something should be done” to “we’re dealing with this right now, even if it disrupts other priorities”. If you’re too focused on keeping things civil, you end up strangling every spontaneous political initiative at birth, and becoming a handmaiden of the establishment by default. (Not naming any specific donkey-themed political parties).
Not that it’s good when people get whipped up into a frenzy about total bullshit, either. I guess the moral is we need moderation, but, like, in moderation.
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Looked up TDDUP creator Johnny Speight on wiki. Apparently, he followed that up with an even more controversial sitcom called Curry and Chips. Lasted a few episodes; quite obvious why. Speight was not exactly sophisticated in his intents:
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I saw bits of that once and was left, shall we say bewildered?
Okay, so it was the 1960ies, and we all make mistakes, but I wouldn’t want that on my CV.
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Considering how many Brits voted in favor of Brexit because they think it will let them end immigration and keep out what one woman whom I saw interviewed on BBC called the “darkies”, I think we can safely say their attitude about race today is nothing to inspire pride.
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If we as a society demand art that is designed not to offend the most sensitive and least informed among us lest they get offended, we dont deserve art.
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Are you kidding? They would be spectacular dinner party guests. Add Menken and Wilde to the table and the glorious snark would never end!
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Yes, that’s a recurring problem.
Alf Garnet was depicted as a horrible person, but a lot of people really grabbed onto his character as a sort of reactionary antihero. This really upset the actor who had tried to actor who played the character, who had tried to portray Alf as a terrible man, but found himself adored by people who would have hated this Jewish, Socialist actor, had they met him in real life.
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If people can’t call product crap and the product producers assholes we’ll never be able to produce any product.
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My problem with moderates/centrists at this point is how much they lean towards supporting or enabling the worst right wing impulses. Too many “both sides are bad” but really they come off is right wingers that are too embarrassed to outright say the shitty things they believe.
I love John but man this is way too much of the “I’m above” the rabble bullshit I’m kinda sick of. It’s full of the privilege the comes with being white/male/cis/straight and not have to be as concerned about his rights being fucked with because he exists.
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I’m not saying you’re wrong, but the way I see it is exactly backwards from the way you see it.
If a sporting event, chess competition, or flower show were blatently biased towards last year’s winner, there would be little interest in competing for next year’s show. So stability is in part an outcome of fairness, or justice.
On reflection, I have a lot of sympathy for moderate tactics: nonviolent activism, letters to the editor, voting, etc. But that quickly gets lumped together with moderate goals: to offend as few people as possible.
It seems like “politics” is what the 99% play at, wheras the 1% simply invest in whatever politicians they want. The moderates I scorn, are the ones who are OK with that.
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And why the smart 1% don’t get involved in the day-to-day muck of actual politics. I’m sure the view is it’s better to own a stable than to be a horse’s arse.
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