|
|
Monty Python's Flying Circus
Episode 37: Dennis Moore
By: Monty Python
|
|
|
You have green, scaly skin, and a soft yellow underbelly with a series of fin-like ridges running down your spine and tail. Although lizardlike in shape, you can grow anything up to thirty feet in length with huge teeth that can bite off great rocks and trees. You inhabit arid sub-tropical zones and wear spectacles.Stavro Arrgolus
|
Recorded 17 April 1972, first aired 4 January 1973.
This episode deals with home life and socialism in Britain. Rather than the more outlandish things they often presented, this show kept to home-grown lunacies- TV, horoscopes, racism, greedy doctors, buying liquor, etc.
The looney highwayman Dennis Moore is often considered an allegory about the ineffectiveness of government in general and socialism in particular. After spending the whole episode not knowing what to steal from people or who to give the stolen loot to (just like government- hint hint, nudge nudge), he finally remarks, "Wait a tic ... blimey, this redistribution of wealth is trickier than I thought."
Just to keep things in political balance, the Pythons also take shots at the far right, depicting greedy private practice doctors robbing pepperpots and racists trying to come up with slurs for the Belgians- "Let's not call them anything, let's just ignore them".Stavro Arrgolus
|
|
Releases:
| Year | Type | Label | Catalog # | |
| 1973 | TV | BBC | | (Stavro Arrgolus) |
| 2000 | Video | A&E Home Video | | (Stavro Arrgolus) |
|
| Facts: |
| ©Python (Monty) Productions Ltd. (Stavro Arrgolus) |
| 'Dennis Moore' isn't the only time Python went against the counterculture and had a swipe at the socialist ideal. The 'Constitutional Peasant' sketch from Holy Grail took a more direct jab at it, suggesting that no one would live in the castle and we'd all be foraging for filth if it was taken too seriously. Because, after all, 'supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.' (Stavro Arrgolus) |
| Web pages about this album: |
|
|
Socialism, in one form or another, has gone in and out of style a few times in my lifetime. It was a shootable offense when I was a kid, then for a while, it was oh so trendy. Just when we all thought we saw the last of it at the end of the '80s, a backlash against the opposite extreme we've all had to live with more recently has brought it back again and a new generation has to learn the looney lesson of Dennis Moore- that the whole 'wealth distribution' business is a tricky one, indeed.
Yes, you'll get my lupins when you pry them from my cold, dead...oh, never mind.
|
|
|
Add a New Message
|
|
Message:
|
|
|
You must be logged-in to add a new message
|
|