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Comedic absurdity is best when it is a short walk from reality in the opposite direction. Monty Python took a well known and classic yarn one that was typically and extremely British and dressed it up in parody.

King Arthur in all the elements of Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte D' Arthur' is the mythological hero of the English people. This revered fable was the target of British comedy troupe Monty Python's satire and turned into a madcap classic of the juxtaposition of the familiar into unfamiliar context in the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail'.

The Arthurian Legend had elements of truth which were aggregated and embellished in its tellings and passage through the generations to the point in the early 1970s when the film was produced. The Monty Python members; Cleese, Chapman, Gilliam, Idle, Jones and Palin took these items that were familiar and kept some elements of truth in the story, but added their own dose of comedic distortions.

From the first scene in which King Arthur visits a castle "in search of Knights who will join our court", there are similarities with the actions in eighth century England. Feudal kingdoms where designed to be self sustaining and any unification of the country as the idealistic Arthur intended required cooperation and participation of the inhabitants of the castle scattered across the country.

The troupe's positioning of absurdity by knights "riding" by banging two coconuts together and getting into an analytical discussion about how the very coconuts came to England created the opposition to expectation and thus the hilarious result to the viewer.

Parody and satire work best either in putting elements together that are not expected or extremely unlikely to coexist or to play an element to an extreme such as the next three scenes. The first relating to collection of the dead bodies within the village as one performs the regular garbage pickup and the assistance given to a suddenly "not dead" villager to be made a candidate for collection. The second with the workers of the fields not being aware of the existence of a King of the Britons nor in how it was that he became King. And the third the now classic, and much mimicked battle with the Black Knight

The succeeding illogical tests of witches, catapulting livestock and even historical film narrations by professors where all based on real events and examples. Without the comedic timings these could well be scenes from a historic genre film and representative of the period they depict. While the denigrating argument with French castle dwellers in the heart of England demonstrates the illogical juxtaposition fueling the ridiculous.

Comedy acting is effectively projected through the character representation in the scene and the play of those characters off the satire of the story line. The Nights of Ni, Tim the Enchanter, Brother Maynard and the Knights themselves resemble real characters doing bizarre things.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail would not have become a comedy classic without a relationship and familiarity to a more serious tale to provide that comedic offset. And the ubiquitous search for the Holy Grail continues to surface in tales such as Da Vinci Code, further blurring the line of real and fictionalized when dealing with the course of histories within the context of fables and legend.

Learn more about this author, Chuck Moyer.
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