‘I, Biggles’ from “A Liar’s Autobiography” by Graham Chapman, 1980
A fantasy blending Biggles and the raunchier parts of Robert Graves’ “I, Claudius” novels.
This parody subverts Biggles in every manner imaginable. Not only is everybody gay, but voraciously so, with few sexual fetishes left unindulged. Chapman parodies the matter-of-fact W.E. Johns style’s worst faults, while the standard celebrations of the glamour of aeronautics repeatedly degenerates into sexual innuendo. As a parody it is fabulous, shamelessly disgracing
------------------------
‘I, Biggles’ from “A Liar’s Autobiography” by Graham Chapman, 1980
The plane banked sharply to the left as we hurtled downwards, but the Fokker Wolf was still on our tail.
'A-a-a-a-a-a-a-zing,' went the twin cowl-mounted Mittelschmertz 25 mm cannons.
'Peng!' it went, in German, as one of the shells bit into the sleek wooden fuselage.
'Peng?' cogitated Biggles. 'That's the German for "Bang!"’
'We've been hit,' volunteered Ginger grimly.
"Nothing,' said Biggles grimlier, as he slipped his leather-gloved hand over the by now moistened joystick. He pulled it back in a series of sharp jerks.
'Level off a mo,' put in Algy drily and through drawn lips stepped purposefully into the body of the aircraft, past the by now shapely nude lady navigator; and back into the rear of the plane. The door of the Gents Only Sauna hung precariously from one hinge. He slammed it shut with a haunting squawk, and fought his way past the two naked WAFs wrestling in perfumed sump-oil. .He erupted into the Aft Leather Room, to find Wingco still chained to a cross, wearing the by now familiar black hood bearing the also familiar Wing Commanderic braid.
‘Have your way with me, you hunk of manhood,' he hinted coyly.
'What ho, old sport!' hazarded Algy gingerly. 'I say, old man, the Group's a bit dashed worried - thinks you might have some kind of, well. . . you know, problem. . . you old bison. . .' He fingered his cigarette nervously.
'Don't worry about me, old tapir, I've pulled through a lot worse than this.'
‘The plane lurched suddenly as Biggles swerved to avoid a hail of bullets that pumped in spurts out of the penis-like nosecone of the pursuing Fokker. Algy rushed for'ard.
'Everything OK, Skipper?' he admitted.
'We haven't made it yet,' inserted Biggles, as he gritted his thighs and plunged his machine into a savage spin.
As they plunged downwards, the mighty engines throbbed and the well-lubricated pistons thrust themselves back and forth in their vice-like steel sheaths.
'You look a bit green around the gills, old eland,' observed Biggles smoothly.
'Never felt better,' puked Algy. 'Sorry about the mess,' he opined.
'Why can't you just say things?' snorted Biggles. 'Tell you what, old man, having a bit of trouble with this one, could you just pop your hand down my Mae West?'
'If it's an order, old guillemot.'
'It is,' grinned Biggles.
'Right-ho, here it comes.' Algy plunged a questing sensitive hand into the Group Captain's flying jacket.
The plane soared upwards.
'Don't stop now, I'm nearly there.'
'So am I.’
'Oooooh!'
‘Aaaaah!’
'Ooo-ooh!' ejaculated Biggles and Algy together. They were through. The white silence of a cloud surrounded them.
'What about me?' rasped Ginger.
'Fuck off a sec. Ooooh,’ oohed Biggles and AIgy. Then suddenly they were through it. Peace. Calm. Ecstasy. They floated, as one, in a post-what can't be described in a children's book sort of feeling.
Showing posts with label graham chapman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label graham chapman. Show all posts
Thursday, 3 December 2009
331: Gay Biggles 1 - Monty Python
30 November 1972
Graham Chapman as Biggles
Michael Palin as Algy
Terry Gilliam as Ginger
Biggles is the archetypal English adventure hero, a proud icon of military glory to inspire the best in our Empire’s youth. In WI and then WII, Captain W.E. Johns’s fighter pilot showed the Boche, Hun and Jerry what for. The English are noble, the English are best, and wouldn’t give tuppence for all of the rest.
Here the Python team are spoofing an icon of their own childhood (and Michael Palin in particular was fond of committing various Biggles parodies). The nonsense about letters and antler hats, pantomime Princess Margaret, and foreign royalty borrowing household tools seems rather Palin/ Jones, though the sudden bursts of abuse seem more Cleese/Chapman territory :” Fairy! Poof's not good enough for Algy, is it. He's got to be a bleedin' fairy. Mincing old RAF queen!”.
But the joke here is about how the fine upstanding Biggles handles his modern concerns about the sexual orientations of his close comrades Algy and Ginger. And also subverting the signifiers of homosexuality at the same time. Algy’s portrayal is just as we remember from the books, but when he comes out of the closet, Biggles immediately does the decent thing and shoots him dead. Ginger (ginger beer rhymes with queer) is possibly one of the most screaming portrayals committed to screen at that date, in the most outrageous costume and the campest queeny denial.
Wednesday, 18 November 2009
323: Monty Python - Carl French
The Album of the Soundtrack of the Trailer of the Film of Monty Python and the Holy Grail
1975
Michael Palin as Interviewer
Graham Chapman as Carl French
0.00 – 2.41
Interviewer: Mr. French, you're one of the film world's most arrogant queens. I mean not just homosexual or Gay or anything, I mean you are a raving queen.
Carl French: Well, yes.
Interviewer: I mean, a real screamer, a real "Whoops! Get her! Don't mind me dear!" limp-wristed caricature.
Carl French: Is that not in order?
Interviewer: No, no, that's fine. And I understand that you married the beautiful black heiress Hueyna Tanoy partly for the publicity but mostly to cover up the fact that you prefer going out with Little Boys.
Carl French: Look, really!
Interviewer: Carl, you're an offending little poof, a mincing gay-bar loiterer, a winnet-covered walking perfume shop and an evil perverter of innocent little boys!
Carl French: What!? Really! Is this part of the interview?
Interviewer: No, no, I just wanted a few contacts.
Carl French: Well, shouldn't we be talking about the film?
Interviewer: We’ve been off the air for ages. Now, where'd you find them?
Carl French: Look, I think we are still on the air.
Interviewer: Oh, sod the fucking air! Can’t you still get locked up for that sort of thing.
Carl French: What about the film?
Interviewer: Just a few addresses, please...
Carl French: Look, we’ve got James Dean in it, in a box!
Interviewer: I-I can turn the microphone off if you...
Carl French: And bits of Jayne Mansfield...
------------------------------
Apparently the first half, the stuff about keeping a dead Marilyn Monroe in a box, originated in a sketch by Douglas Adams.
As per Monty Python, one bizarre concept leaps into another, switching from the weird film into the strange abuse. And abuse it intentionally is, not what one usually expects in the course of some film PR. Chapman’s performanceplays it as un-gay as possible, a perfectly stolid character, even as the interviewer moves beyond abuse, into baroque invective, and then realms of scandalous sexual criminality. Yet there’s also a freedom, since this sketch would probably not have passed on television or on cinema. As a LP sketch it can ascend to new heights of bad taste, and just let the abuse flow, matched by Palin’s escalating shrieking hysteria, as he skips in and out of mocking faggy voices. And then the final twist, which isn’t a million miles away from “Nudge Nudge”’s “What’s it like?”
If you were wondering, a “winnet” is the ball of unremoved specks of shit that dry onto the hairs around your sphincter. Share this information with your colleagues at work.
1975
Michael Palin as Interviewer
Graham Chapman as Carl French
0.00 – 2.41
Interviewer: Mr. French, you're one of the film world's most arrogant queens. I mean not just homosexual or Gay or anything, I mean you are a raving queen.
Carl French: Well, yes.
Interviewer: I mean, a real screamer, a real "Whoops! Get her! Don't mind me dear!" limp-wristed caricature.
Carl French: Is that not in order?
Interviewer: No, no, that's fine. And I understand that you married the beautiful black heiress Hueyna Tanoy partly for the publicity but mostly to cover up the fact that you prefer going out with Little Boys.
Carl French: Look, really!
Interviewer: Carl, you're an offending little poof, a mincing gay-bar loiterer, a winnet-covered walking perfume shop and an evil perverter of innocent little boys!
Carl French: What!? Really! Is this part of the interview?
Interviewer: No, no, I just wanted a few contacts.
Carl French: Well, shouldn't we be talking about the film?
Interviewer: We’ve been off the air for ages. Now, where'd you find them?
Carl French: Look, I think we are still on the air.
Interviewer: Oh, sod the fucking air! Can’t you still get locked up for that sort of thing.
Carl French: What about the film?
Interviewer: Just a few addresses, please...
Carl French: Look, we’ve got James Dean in it, in a box!
Interviewer: I-I can turn the microphone off if you...
Carl French: And bits of Jayne Mansfield...
------------------------------
Apparently the first half, the stuff about keeping a dead Marilyn Monroe in a box, originated in a sketch by Douglas Adams.
As per Monty Python, one bizarre concept leaps into another, switching from the weird film into the strange abuse. And abuse it intentionally is, not what one usually expects in the course of some film PR. Chapman’s performanceplays it as un-gay as possible, a perfectly stolid character, even as the interviewer moves beyond abuse, into baroque invective, and then realms of scandalous sexual criminality. Yet there’s also a freedom, since this sketch would probably not have passed on television or on cinema. As a LP sketch it can ascend to new heights of bad taste, and just let the abuse flow, matched by Palin’s escalating shrieking hysteria, as he skips in and out of mocking faggy voices. And then the final twist, which isn’t a million miles away from “Nudge Nudge”’s “What’s it like?”
If you were wondering, a “winnet” is the ball of unremoved specks of shit that dry onto the hairs around your sphincter. Share this information with your colleagues at work.
Sunday, 15 November 2009
321: Monty Python - David Unction
“Monty Python’s Flying Circus”
21st December 1969
Graham Chapman as David Unction
3:36 – 4.42
Of itself there’s not much to this early gay cameo in the firsts series of “Monty Python’s Flying Circus”. It is made ever so slightly more complicated by the directions from the original script:
“Cut to effeminate announcer sitting at continuity desk. Any resemblance to Mel Oxley should be accidental. His name is David Unction.”
Mel Oxley was a real in-vision continuity announcer of the period. So this is intended as a parody of a particular person, besides encapsulating a certain sort of oleaginous showbiz, exuding smarmy false sentiment. A particular brand of desperately up-beat and insincerely ingratiating mannerisms – bright, bright, lots of smiles, etc – has gay connotations. Make of the twinkly sign what you will. Although the “Old Queen” is a more explicit attack on the figure being parodied.
6.00 – 6.24
Here the team ramp up their caricature a bit further. The appearance of an actual muscle-mag is deliberately surprising, and possibly a first in a comedy programme. And now David Unction has become a forthright queen. The “You Fairy” attack from the Viking brings forth a wheedling bitchy manner, flaring nostrils and a snide cry of “Hello sailor!” Is anything very advanced or complicated one with all this? Well, no. It not much more advanced than thinking that presenting a homosexual on screen is enough to be funny of itself.
One final complication in all this is that Chapman, an actual gay man, is playing this character. Of course at this time there is a tendency for gay men to play gay stereotypes on film and stage. Only no one actually will admit they’re gay. And Chapman at this point in his career was no different. You can see him play a theatrical queen in 1968’s “How to Irritate People”. He also played a similarly bitchy, quasi-hysterical camp photographer in the 1970 film “Doctor in Trouble”. A year or so later Chapman would donate funds to the establishment of “Gay News”, and would give a lengthy interview in one of the early issues. It’s notable that Chapman pretty much stopped performing these sort of roles after that.
21st December 1969
Graham Chapman as David Unction
3:36 – 4.42
Of itself there’s not much to this early gay cameo in the firsts series of “Monty Python’s Flying Circus”. It is made ever so slightly more complicated by the directions from the original script:
“Cut to effeminate announcer sitting at continuity desk. Any resemblance to Mel Oxley should be accidental. His name is David Unction.”
Mel Oxley was a real in-vision continuity announcer of the period. So this is intended as a parody of a particular person, besides encapsulating a certain sort of oleaginous showbiz, exuding smarmy false sentiment. A particular brand of desperately up-beat and insincerely ingratiating mannerisms – bright, bright, lots of smiles, etc – has gay connotations. Make of the twinkly sign what you will. Although the “Old Queen” is a more explicit attack on the figure being parodied.
6.00 – 6.24
Here the team ramp up their caricature a bit further. The appearance of an actual muscle-mag is deliberately surprising, and possibly a first in a comedy programme. And now David Unction has become a forthright queen. The “You Fairy” attack from the Viking brings forth a wheedling bitchy manner, flaring nostrils and a snide cry of “Hello sailor!” Is anything very advanced or complicated one with all this? Well, no. It not much more advanced than thinking that presenting a homosexual on screen is enough to be funny of itself.
One final complication in all this is that Chapman, an actual gay man, is playing this character. Of course at this time there is a tendency for gay men to play gay stereotypes on film and stage. Only no one actually will admit they’re gay. And Chapman at this point in his career was no different. You can see him play a theatrical queen in 1968’s “How to Irritate People”. He also played a similarly bitchy, quasi-hysterical camp photographer in the 1970 film “Doctor in Trouble”. A year or so later Chapman would donate funds to the establishment of “Gay News”, and would give a lengthy interview in one of the early issues. It’s notable that Chapman pretty much stopped performing these sort of roles after that.
Monday, 14 September 2009
291: The Magic Christian (1969)
“The Magic Christian” (1969)
written by Terry Southern, and John Cleese and Graham Chapman
Adapted from Southern’s short episodic novel of the same name, the film is a series of sketches, in which multi-millionaire Guy Grand (Peter Sellers) employs his money to make people indulge in shocking stunts. So the jokes are two-fold:
1) to demonstrate what indignities people will suffer when offered wads of cash, from minor bribes to a scene of city bankers diving into a vat of ordure sprinkled with pound notes
2) to indulge in stunts which disturb conventional sensibilities - some are intended to be subversive, some are just freak-outs
Vito Russo in his book “The Celluloid Closet” absolutely LOATHED this film: “'fag' jokes fly in a viciously homophobic film".
Somewhere I have a “Spitting Image” parody of late Mel Brooks with the tagline “Totally obsessed with Nazis”. It’s not really stretching a point to say the same about Terry Southern and homosexuals. I mean, really, really, really, really, really obsessed. Well, you understand the emphasis. I suppose he should be given some sort of acknowledgement in managing so many ways for homosexuals to be creepy for comedic gross-out purposes. Maybe, homosexuals really were just that odd and perverse to mainstream audiences at the time, and this film reflects that. (To offset this, there is a very affectionate tribute in Southern’s collection “Now Dig This” to his friend the gay poet Frank O’Hara, capturing his camp, sexually mischievous manner. Although that it SHOULD be the camp, impertinent, sexually mischievous side of O’Hara that Southern fixates on and enjoys...?)
0.00 – 3.22
Laurence Harvey as “Hamlet”
Here’s an instance of satirical humour overtaken by the events of the day. The joke is the unexpected metamorphosis of a performance of Hamlet’s soliloquy into a burlesque strip. Whether it’s actually gay or not is up for debate. When a man performs a woman’s role, it can’t help but look camp. Besides, there’s the fact that he’s offering his body as an object for desire, topped by the chap with the binoculars trying to get a good look at the end.
By the time this was released to the public, cavorting nudity on the stage was very much the thing of the day, with such ultra-hip atrocities of embarrassment as “Hair”, “Oh Calcutta” and “Dionysus 69”. Exploration of homosexuality in Elizabethan/Jacobean theatre also raised its head on the contemporary stage. There had been an all-male 1967 production of “As You Like It”. There had also been an explicitly homosexual 1969 production of Marlowe’s “Edward II”, with Ian McKellen as the lead, and also featuring Peter Bourne (now better known as Betty Bourne of Bloolips). This touring production of “Edward II” aroused a lot of tight-lipped scrutiny from the local moral forces wherever it was staged because of male kissing and unabashed affection. An issue of the early gay lifestyle magazine “Jeremy” had a big feature on the production and interviews with the cast, though no one was questioned or felt up to declaring a personal sexual interest. It also prompted the “Sunday Times” to identify McKellen as one of the actors to watch out for, with a photo-feature of McKellen clad in nothing but some tight leather trousers and sprawling in a chair. Which must have raised a few eyebrows over the breakfast table. (Oh, and I see a BBC recording has been released on DVD earlier this year,) But nothing in this sketch plays off the idea of gay actors, it a subversion of Shakespeare.
So given all this, the overwhelming impression made by this sketch, and indeed by most of the bits and pieces in “The Magic Christian,” is not one of major cultural subversion and criticism, but of a camp, self-congratulatory sense of “How naughty we are!”. As the various outrages are played out, it’s sometime hard to distinguish between the filmmakers portrayal of the onscreen audiences and their attitude to the real one watching the film. There’s a constant sense of being nudged in the ribs, and the impression they want that you should just throw up your hands and cry, “Scandalous! Simply Scandalous!”
0.00 – 1.38
Nosher Powell as the ginger boxer
There’s about 3 previous minutes of verisimilitudinous boxing bout scene-setting before this bit, but I’m sure we’ll all prefer going straight to the real action, shan’t we. In this scene, Southern updates his earlier attempt in the book version of “The Magic Christian”. Then, it was just one boxer pretending to fey and effeminate. Here the ante is upped to actual gay kissing. Nosher Powell has a very fey voice dubbed, and does that limp-wrist gesture. And we don’t get to see the kiss, though the direction is slightly more stylised to point up that fact. As in the book, it all ends in an rioting audience when their taste for violence is subverted. Which is apparently the same conclusion as in “Bruno”.
4.42
The discomfort of a stuffy ex-army type suddenly made the focus of homo-erotic attentions. A formal heightening of the oddness of such devotion to the body beautiful by these muscle men, with a little race-discomfort just to add to the mix. As before with the Hamlet sketch, there’s an obvious homosexual, fluttering his tip at the entertainment, and resting his head in a primping manner, just to highlight the faggotry of it all.
7.45
Leonard Frey as Lawrence Faggot (pronounced Fag-Oh, French-style, so a joke that probably slips past most of the audience. Because simply calling a gay character “faggot” - oh, ho, ho, ho - no we’re much more hip than that) revisits his performance from “The Boys in the Band”. Solicitously and disarmingly oleaginous with a few up-market camp insinuations, in an outrageously over-styled suit. All of which must have been even more of an in-joke, as the film version of “Boys in the Band” wasn’t released until the year after this.
2.00-4..5
Two body-builders dancing together. Which is mostly the boxing gag revisited, but in the context of the elite society of the other dancers.
And the all-out oddness of Yul Brynner in drag, overdubbed with a female voice singing “Mad About the Boy” to Roman Polanski. And then the final reveal and reversion to Brynner’s gravelly voice. Intercutting between the two, these is something of an intense perversity to this.
written by Terry Southern, and John Cleese and Graham Chapman
Adapted from Southern’s short episodic novel of the same name, the film is a series of sketches, in which multi-millionaire Guy Grand (Peter Sellers) employs his money to make people indulge in shocking stunts. So the jokes are two-fold:
1) to demonstrate what indignities people will suffer when offered wads of cash, from minor bribes to a scene of city bankers diving into a vat of ordure sprinkled with pound notes
2) to indulge in stunts which disturb conventional sensibilities - some are intended to be subversive, some are just freak-outs
Vito Russo in his book “The Celluloid Closet” absolutely LOATHED this film: “'fag' jokes fly in a viciously homophobic film".
Somewhere I have a “Spitting Image” parody of late Mel Brooks with the tagline “Totally obsessed with Nazis”. It’s not really stretching a point to say the same about Terry Southern and homosexuals. I mean, really, really, really, really, really obsessed. Well, you understand the emphasis. I suppose he should be given some sort of acknowledgement in managing so many ways for homosexuals to be creepy for comedic gross-out purposes. Maybe, homosexuals really were just that odd and perverse to mainstream audiences at the time, and this film reflects that. (To offset this, there is a very affectionate tribute in Southern’s collection “Now Dig This” to his friend the gay poet Frank O’Hara, capturing his camp, sexually mischievous manner. Although that it SHOULD be the camp, impertinent, sexually mischievous side of O’Hara that Southern fixates on and enjoys...?)
0.00 – 3.22
Laurence Harvey as “Hamlet”
Here’s an instance of satirical humour overtaken by the events of the day. The joke is the unexpected metamorphosis of a performance of Hamlet’s soliloquy into a burlesque strip. Whether it’s actually gay or not is up for debate. When a man performs a woman’s role, it can’t help but look camp. Besides, there’s the fact that he’s offering his body as an object for desire, topped by the chap with the binoculars trying to get a good look at the end.
By the time this was released to the public, cavorting nudity on the stage was very much the thing of the day, with such ultra-hip atrocities of embarrassment as “Hair”, “Oh Calcutta” and “Dionysus 69”. Exploration of homosexuality in Elizabethan/Jacobean theatre also raised its head on the contemporary stage. There had been an all-male 1967 production of “As You Like It”. There had also been an explicitly homosexual 1969 production of Marlowe’s “Edward II”, with Ian McKellen as the lead, and also featuring Peter Bourne (now better known as Betty Bourne of Bloolips). This touring production of “Edward II” aroused a lot of tight-lipped scrutiny from the local moral forces wherever it was staged because of male kissing and unabashed affection. An issue of the early gay lifestyle magazine “Jeremy” had a big feature on the production and interviews with the cast, though no one was questioned or felt up to declaring a personal sexual interest. It also prompted the “Sunday Times” to identify McKellen as one of the actors to watch out for, with a photo-feature of McKellen clad in nothing but some tight leather trousers and sprawling in a chair. Which must have raised a few eyebrows over the breakfast table. (Oh, and I see a BBC recording has been released on DVD earlier this year,) But nothing in this sketch plays off the idea of gay actors, it a subversion of Shakespeare.
So given all this, the overwhelming impression made by this sketch, and indeed by most of the bits and pieces in “The Magic Christian,” is not one of major cultural subversion and criticism, but of a camp, self-congratulatory sense of “How naughty we are!”. As the various outrages are played out, it’s sometime hard to distinguish between the filmmakers portrayal of the onscreen audiences and their attitude to the real one watching the film. There’s a constant sense of being nudged in the ribs, and the impression they want that you should just throw up your hands and cry, “Scandalous! Simply Scandalous!”
0.00 – 1.38
Nosher Powell as the ginger boxer
There’s about 3 previous minutes of verisimilitudinous boxing bout scene-setting before this bit, but I’m sure we’ll all prefer going straight to the real action, shan’t we. In this scene, Southern updates his earlier attempt in the book version of “The Magic Christian”. Then, it was just one boxer pretending to fey and effeminate. Here the ante is upped to actual gay kissing. Nosher Powell has a very fey voice dubbed, and does that limp-wrist gesture. And we don’t get to see the kiss, though the direction is slightly more stylised to point up that fact. As in the book, it all ends in an rioting audience when their taste for violence is subverted. Which is apparently the same conclusion as in “Bruno”.
4.42
The discomfort of a stuffy ex-army type suddenly made the focus of homo-erotic attentions. A formal heightening of the oddness of such devotion to the body beautiful by these muscle men, with a little race-discomfort just to add to the mix. As before with the Hamlet sketch, there’s an obvious homosexual, fluttering his tip at the entertainment, and resting his head in a primping manner, just to highlight the faggotry of it all.
7.45
Leonard Frey as Lawrence Faggot (pronounced Fag-Oh, French-style, so a joke that probably slips past most of the audience. Because simply calling a gay character “faggot” - oh, ho, ho, ho - no we’re much more hip than that) revisits his performance from “The Boys in the Band”. Solicitously and disarmingly oleaginous with a few up-market camp insinuations, in an outrageously over-styled suit. All of which must have been even more of an in-joke, as the film version of “Boys in the Band” wasn’t released until the year after this.
2.00-4..5
Two body-builders dancing together. Which is mostly the boxing gag revisited, but in the context of the elite society of the other dancers.
And the all-out oddness of Yul Brynner in drag, overdubbed with a female voice singing “Mad About the Boy” to Roman Polanski. And then the final reveal and reversion to Brynner’s gravelly voice. Intercutting between the two, these is something of an intense perversity to this.
Wednesday, 10 June 2009
276: Monty Python - camping it up
1965 was the breakout year for “camping it up” and “camping about”. Camp, as both an aesthetic and a particular word, had existed prior to 1965, but it was not a readily identifiable part of the public’s frame of reference. 1964 had seen the publication of Susan Sontag’s “Notes on Camp” which was gradually disseminated through all the trendier magazines, intellectual journals and upmarket rags. 1965 saw the appearance of several mass-market entertainments which allowed critics the opportunity to throw around their new-found familiarity with camp, at ease that the general public would know what they meant, and which also meant they didn’t have to use words which directly referenced homosexuality. In England, there was the success of “Julian and Sandy”, and, in America, there was the film of “The Loved One”. It’s worth noting that in all three cases, homosexuals are complicit in these products, are already part of the in-crowd offering camp to the heterosexual audience. Sontag was a lesbian. The two actors of Julian and Sandy, Kenneth Williams and Hugh Paddick were gay. “The Loved One”’s director Tony Richardson was bisexual, the co-writer was Christopher Isherwood, and half the cast (Gielgud, Liberace, Tab Hunter, Roddy McDowell) were gay, before you even figure in the main writer, Terry Southern’s fascination with homosexuals as a font of funny.
Anway, the point is that it is soon assumed that camp is gay and gay is camp. And that there is a certain sort of behaviour that sticks out like a sore thumb. Camp men are fashion designers, interior decorators, antique dealers, and vice versa indivisibly.
Monty Python takes a different path. Their use of camp mannerisms is always surprising. Monty Python’s camp men can be and do anything. Surprise is part of the comedy. Unusual variations, such as the camp judges. Eventually camp men in unexpected professions will also become a cliché, as Alan Coren will offer us camp policemen, camp undertakers, camp Biggles. But Monty Python usually does with without the innuendo which others make such a large part of camp comedy.
7 December 1969
Starts at 0.50
16 November 1972
Here you do get camp hairdressers, but performances as part of the larger comic contrast about Mount Everest. A bathetic drop into effete trivial fashionability after the sketch’s misleading opening pretence of rugged manliness. Admittedly as hairdressers, it’s not much more than saying “bitch” a lot
“Monty Python and the Holy Grail” 1975
Compare this eruption of campness in mediaeval times with Hugh Paddick’s turn in “Up the Chastity Belt”
Anway, the point is that it is soon assumed that camp is gay and gay is camp. And that there is a certain sort of behaviour that sticks out like a sore thumb. Camp men are fashion designers, interior decorators, antique dealers, and vice versa indivisibly.
Monty Python takes a different path. Their use of camp mannerisms is always surprising. Monty Python’s camp men can be and do anything. Surprise is part of the comedy. Unusual variations, such as the camp judges. Eventually camp men in unexpected professions will also become a cliché, as Alan Coren will offer us camp policemen, camp undertakers, camp Biggles. But Monty Python usually does with without the innuendo which others make such a large part of camp comedy.
7 December 1969
Starts at 0.50
16 November 1972
Here you do get camp hairdressers, but performances as part of the larger comic contrast about Mount Everest. A bathetic drop into effete trivial fashionability after the sketch’s misleading opening pretence of rugged manliness. Admittedly as hairdressers, it’s not much more than saying “bitch” a lot
“Monty Python and the Holy Grail” 1975
Compare this eruption of campness in mediaeval times with Hugh Paddick’s turn in “Up the Chastity Belt”
Sunday, 29 March 2009
241: Gay Actors 4: How to Irritate People
How to Irritate People (1968)
Written by John Cleese and Graham Chapman, with Marty Feldman and Tim Brooke-Taylor
starts at 2:00
Graham Chapman
Michael Palin
Here, to greater or lesser degrees, just before the arrival of the behemoth that is “Monty Python’s Flying Circus”, you get Graham Chapman and Michael Palin camping it up. Suits you? Suits me. Palin is blithely boyish, with a grin locked into his features. Chapman, yer actual homosexual, gives a bravura performance, over-the top and chewing the scenery, flouncy hands, with a pop-eyed and strained-face not dissimilar to Kenneth Williams or others of his ilk. Chapman starts off bouncily emphatic, then determinedly coy, with the punchline delivered as a sudden vertical ascent into a shriek of Annapurnan offense. In real life Chapman was fairly butch (pipe-smoking, mountain-climbing) and apparently didn’t have much time for snidey queens.
If only to show what the contemporary popular impression of theatrical homosexuality was that this parodies, here’s a lengthy quotation from Ken Tynan’s 1961 review of Kenneth Williams in “One Over the Eight”. Barely a month or so after this review, “Beyond the Fringe” opened, heralding a new sort of humour. Although “Beyond the Fringe” wasn’t averse to including comedy its homosexuals
http://ukjarry.blogspot.com/2007/11/11-beyond-fringe.html
As long ago as 1929 George Jean Nathan was complaining about the influence on the American theatre of the pixie mannerisms imported by English actors. 'What we need,' he said 'are (sic) more actors like Jack Dempsey, who tried the stage a little while ago. Jack may not be much at am actor, but his worst enemy certainly cannot accuse him of belonging too the court of Titania.'
Nathan took pains to define exactly what he was attacking: 'It isn't that the actors are biologically queer. It's that they possess or have acquired an air of effeminacy that, however hard or adroitly they try to conceal it, shows itself sooner or later during the course of a dramatic performance. . . .'
He was referring, of course, to the phenomenon we know as 'camp', In the province of comedy, with which I am presently concerned, its distinguishing feature is a marked inclination towards the dainty, the coy and the exuberantly fussy. The ability to camp (let us drop those misleadingly inverted commas) is a useful, even a vital, part of comic technique, but it is not the whole of it; and in recent years, I disrespectfully submit, we have had excess of it, our appetite has sickened, and English high comedy has very nearly died.
Consider One Over the Eight, which exemplifies the atrophy of latterday English revue.
The expressions most frequently seen on the faces of the cast are two in number. The men register: 'How naughty I am!'; and the women: 'How naughty you are!' The atmosphere of arrested adolescence is over-powering. The dance routines are at once inventive and dull; boys in tight trousers smile and spin, sometimes accompanied by spinning girls, who might smile more convincingly if their clothes were more attractive. The star, Kenneth Williams, has a matchless repertory of squirms, leers, ogles and severe, reproving glares, and must be accounted the petit-maitre of contemporary camp. As such, I salute him; but I wish there were more to English comedy than this.
Written by John Cleese and Graham Chapman, with Marty Feldman and Tim Brooke-Taylor
starts at 2:00
Graham Chapman
Michael Palin
Here, to greater or lesser degrees, just before the arrival of the behemoth that is “Monty Python’s Flying Circus”, you get Graham Chapman and Michael Palin camping it up. Suits you? Suits me. Palin is blithely boyish, with a grin locked into his features. Chapman, yer actual homosexual, gives a bravura performance, over-the top and chewing the scenery, flouncy hands, with a pop-eyed and strained-face not dissimilar to Kenneth Williams or others of his ilk. Chapman starts off bouncily emphatic, then determinedly coy, with the punchline delivered as a sudden vertical ascent into a shriek of Annapurnan offense. In real life Chapman was fairly butch (pipe-smoking, mountain-climbing) and apparently didn’t have much time for snidey queens.
If only to show what the contemporary popular impression of theatrical homosexuality was that this parodies, here’s a lengthy quotation from Ken Tynan’s 1961 review of Kenneth Williams in “One Over the Eight”. Barely a month or so after this review, “Beyond the Fringe” opened, heralding a new sort of humour. Although “Beyond the Fringe” wasn’t averse to including comedy its homosexuals
http://ukjarry.blogspot.com/2007/11/11-beyond-fringe.html
As long ago as 1929 George Jean Nathan was complaining about the influence on the American theatre of the pixie mannerisms imported by English actors. 'What we need,' he said 'are (sic) more actors like Jack Dempsey, who tried the stage a little while ago. Jack may not be much at am actor, but his worst enemy certainly cannot accuse him of belonging too the court of Titania.'
Nathan took pains to define exactly what he was attacking: 'It isn't that the actors are biologically queer. It's that they possess or have acquired an air of effeminacy that, however hard or adroitly they try to conceal it, shows itself sooner or later during the course of a dramatic performance. . . .'
He was referring, of course, to the phenomenon we know as 'camp', In the province of comedy, with which I am presently concerned, its distinguishing feature is a marked inclination towards the dainty, the coy and the exuberantly fussy. The ability to camp (let us drop those misleadingly inverted commas) is a useful, even a vital, part of comic technique, but it is not the whole of it; and in recent years, I disrespectfully submit, we have had excess of it, our appetite has sickened, and English high comedy has very nearly died.
Consider One Over the Eight, which exemplifies the atrophy of latterday English revue.
The expressions most frequently seen on the faces of the cast are two in number. The men register: 'How naughty I am!'; and the women: 'How naughty you are!' The atmosphere of arrested adolescence is over-powering. The dance routines are at once inventive and dull; boys in tight trousers smile and spin, sometimes accompanied by spinning girls, who might smile more convincingly if their clothes were more attractive. The star, Kenneth Williams, has a matchless repertory of squirms, leers, ogles and severe, reproving glares, and must be accounted the petit-maitre of contemporary camp. As such, I salute him; but I wish there were more to English comedy than this.
Thursday, 21 August 2008
170: Gay Sports - Football 1
Well, since I’m sort of English, we might as well start the ball rolling with football. Not that I like football. Ball goes one way, then it goes another, and at the end of it all you’ve lost some ninety minutes of your life. Big fun, I’m sure.
There was, in the 60s and 70s, a tendency for on-pitch celebrations by footballers to become a little over-intense. Rolling around, hugging and kissing each other borne aloft on the ecstatic wash of victory. Which of course aroused some discomfort among the supporters and fans. Since these are the heroes of the working man and young boys everywhere they couldn’t quite come out and plainly call their country’s top players a load of old poofters. But they almost wished they could - so now there’s that little germ of irritation from which result all the following comedic pearls. Or something.
from “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” 23 November 1972
(play from 4.07 – 4.40)
A little light music, some slo-mo, and the whole farrago becomes an awful lot more romantic, dontchathink.
Bernard Hollowood, in “Punch” 20 November 1968.
There was, in the 60s and 70s, a tendency for on-pitch celebrations by footballers to become a little over-intense. Rolling around, hugging and kissing each other borne aloft on the ecstatic wash of victory. Which of course aroused some discomfort among the supporters and fans. Since these are the heroes of the working man and young boys everywhere they couldn’t quite come out and plainly call their country’s top players a load of old poofters. But they almost wished they could - so now there’s that little germ of irritation from which result all the following comedic pearls. Or something.
from “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” 23 November 1972
(play from 4.07 – 4.40)
A little light music, some slo-mo, and the whole farrago becomes an awful lot more romantic, dontchathink.
Bernard Hollowood, in “Punch” 20 November 1968.
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