Wow, what a winner! On a few counts.
I'd love to have seen that show. It was performed in Oz in 2007, I think, but only in Brisbane, Sydney and Perth, of all places. Perhaps Melbourne thinks it's too high-brow for the likes of the Pythons. Loserama!
Just to be clear, this was the
film of the performance at the Albert Hall, which was put on to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Monty Python; so, it should be out on DVD before too long. There was a special showing of the film for
one day only in the UK in a number of cinemas, and this is what she won tickets for.
I knowed what you meant.
The perfomances I mentioned in Oz were live though, and in fact, Eric Idle himself sang and narrated for the one in Brissie.
I'll be checking the ABC Shop (BBC Shop in the UK, I guess?) regularly for the DVD.
As to the Mum situation, I can see that happening in my case too. I'm fairly sure my Mum has never even heard of Monty Python, so I'd have to trick her into thinking it was a David Attenborough wildlife spectacular or something to get her to go, but apart from that she'd be fine.
My mum had heard of it, but I don't think she watched it when it was first on; it wasn't really for her generation. The humour of the TV show was probably just a bit too broad for her, though she enjoys similarly absurd humour like the Goons. Of course, she's now familiar with Michael Palin from his travel shows, and she recognised
Always Look on the Bright Side of Life. It was an interesting experience hearing her laugh for the first time at some of the much-quoted lines from
Life of Brian.
This is suggesting an interesting way to learn something about my own mum, I reckon. She's 79, so you'd think I'd know her better, but I can't for the life of me say what her taste in humour is. Next time I head up to Sydney for a visit I'll take
Life of Brian with me so we can watch it together. I'll report back with the results
The Christianity thing would be even less of a problem. She sees herself as a bit of a born-again Christian, but because she wasn't a born-the-first-time Christian she gets most of it wrong. She sees god, jeebus and the spook as some kind of three-headed Santa Claus I think, but I really haven't pressed her for too many details.
A bit different in my mum's case, she's a life-long (at least most of it) Christian, and with my dad at one time ran the Sunday School, so she knows her bible pretty well. On the other hand, they were both pretty rational, and both taught science at school, and were by no means fundamentalists. They were both Nonconformists (Baptists, specifically, though that's somewhat different from the US version), and I'm pretty sure didn't believe in all the miracles (I seem to remember her giving some more prosaic explanations of what actually might have happened, and I suspect that's where some of my doubts may have started). She still believes in God, and Jesus, but not in the dogmatic way of the stereotypical fundie (which we don't have a lot of in the UK), and she's now attending a United Reformed Church. The Nonconformists tend to focus on the teachings of Jesus, and don't go in for much ceremony and dogma; they haven't quite gone as far as Jefferson, though.
That all sounds very familiar. The more I read in this Forum, the more it seems that attitudes toward religion in the UK and Australia are very similar.
The vast majority are 'Hatches, Matches and Despatches' church attendees only. Both of my parents are from this group.
Then there's a large-ish but rapidly diminishing group of Sunday-only Christians, somewhat like the Simpsons. I find this group to be quite amusing, because they're the ones who get their knickers in a twist when they meet a heathen like me. They're slaves to a tradition of which they have only a minimal understanding.
The fastest-growing mob seems to be the one I belong to, which I'd generally describe as the 'nones'. I'd include in this group all the atheists as well as the masses of Chinese and Indian folks who live here (particularly in Melbourne) and don't seem to have any religion about them at all.
Next would be the 'others' group. Muslims mostly, but Sikhs and Hindus as well, plus folks who go to really weird-looking churches that I've never really bothered to identify. They might even be Eastern Christian churches, for that matter, since the alternative Easter seems popular, in Melbourne at least.
There are, presumably, fundies about somewhere. As long as they stay there I'm happy.
She wouldn't be offended by Life of Brian or Not the Messiah, because she doesn't know the 'real' story well enough to recognise the others as parody, which I find rather nice actually, given that her ignorance/confusion about her own nominal religion is what allowed me to grow up as a nice, well-adjusted heathen.
When I first saw the film, I was still nominally a believer, and didn't see anything wrong with it at all. It's more a commentary on human nature and credulity; you could read it as an attack on Christ if you take the view that the film says that he was just as much a false Messiah as Brian. However, the fact that Brian is a false Messiah doesn't preclude the possibility of a true Messiah, and the film doesn't rule this out as far as I can recall.
Well there's an interesting thing.
I've never heard that said before, and until now I would have assumed that believers would be uniformly aghast with the whole thing, just on principle.
I understand what you mean about the commentary on human nature, although I'd previously only thought of it as a commentary on a specific group of humans with a predisposition to not-very-critical thinking. Which is to say, 'them'.
I have, of course, gone out of adjustment since then, but by cleverly hanging out in threads like this, I mostly seem to get away with it.
You don't have to be mad to post in this particular thread, but it's obviously an asset if you are.
