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Monty Python and The Holy Grail is the...well it's the holy grail of postmodern films. As well as being one of my favorite movies of all time, it's also in my opinion the most post modern film I have ever seen...ever. So much that I have decided to dedicate an ENTIRE webpage solely on the postmodern concepts in this movie, and even with that it won't even be able to remotely represent that true amounts of postmodern concepts. So, if you think you can handle this insane amount of information that I am about to unleash upon you, continue reading, if not...leave. You have been warned.
Black Humour
Pretty much this entire movie is based around black humour, and no, that's not racist, get your mind out of the gutter...wow, ironic. Black humour is basically taking something that's relatively serious, and blindfolding it, turning it on it's head, then putting it in a dryer...what I'm trying to say is, it turns a serious topic into a comedic situation. Now I could go on and on giving you endless amounts of examples, but I'm sure that you'd like to actually be able to load this webpage without it crashing due to so much information. However, that doesn't mean I'm not going to give you some examples!! Imagine, a dark and dirty world filled with plagues and rats, and your job is to go around and collect all of the corpses of the poor souls who have been eaten up and spit back out by said dark world. In M.P.A.T.H.G (wow) there is a scene that represents this, although it has a very postmodern twist to it. The man collecting bodies is going around yelling "Bring out'cher dead!" with a wheelbarrow full of dead people, then another man walks up to him carrying a man who I assume is sick or something (not dead) and he tries to give him to the...dead...people collector. They then begin to negotiate, and before you know it, the old dude is hit on the head and thrown into the cart. It's this kind of black humour that is strewn throughout the movie...literally everywhere making it an amazingly hilarious postmodern film.
Metafiction
Metafiction is used all over the place in this movie, but I think that my favourite example of it is Historiographic Metafiction. At one point during the movie, Sir Bedivere has the brilliant idea of creating a large wooden rabbit, hiding inside of it, and giving it to the knights in the French castle in order to breach their walls...or course they forget to actually go in it and it gets catapulted back at them...but whatever. I'm sure you have heard of the Trojan Horse...if not, go look it up, but according to Homer (a famous poet-historian man) during the Trojan war the Greeks climbed into a large wooden horse, gave it to the Trojans, and caught them by surprise. This sounds pretty similar...probably because it's meant to be, and there ya have it folks, a prime example of Historiographic Metafiction.
Temporal Distortion
Temporal distortion runs ramped throughout this film (figuratively). During the entire movie there is a 'sub-plot' in which a man was murdered (By King Arthur presumably) and detectives are driving around in a car and going through past scenes/settings/places to find King Arthur. If that's not temporal distortion I don't know what is...except like...time travel...but if you think about it, they are kind of doing that. Either that or the movie is just a bunch of crazy guys running around England in the 1970's!!! Woah! Talk about breaking the fourth wall...either way it's very post modern. But of course, I wouldn't be doing this movie justice without bringing up my most beloved anachronism...the holy hand grenade. It's a hand grenade...in medieval times...it's black humour, temporal distortion, metafiction...it's pretty much everything, ESPECIALLY postmodern.
Black Humour
Pretty much this entire movie is based around black humour, and no, that's not racist, get your mind out of the gutter...wow, ironic. Black humour is basically taking something that's relatively serious, and blindfolding it, turning it on it's head, then putting it in a dryer...what I'm trying to say is, it turns a serious topic into a comedic situation. Now I could go on and on giving you endless amounts of examples, but I'm sure that you'd like to actually be able to load this webpage without it crashing due to so much information. However, that doesn't mean I'm not going to give you some examples!! Imagine, a dark and dirty world filled with plagues and rats, and your job is to go around and collect all of the corpses of the poor souls who have been eaten up and spit back out by said dark world. In M.P.A.T.H.G (wow) there is a scene that represents this, although it has a very postmodern twist to it. The man collecting bodies is going around yelling "Bring out'cher dead!" with a wheelbarrow full of dead people, then another man walks up to him carrying a man who I assume is sick or something (not dead) and he tries to give him to the...dead...people collector. They then begin to negotiate, and before you know it, the old dude is hit on the head and thrown into the cart. It's this kind of black humour that is strewn throughout the movie...literally everywhere making it an amazingly hilarious postmodern film.
Metafiction
Metafiction is used all over the place in this movie, but I think that my favourite example of it is Historiographic Metafiction. At one point during the movie, Sir Bedivere has the brilliant idea of creating a large wooden rabbit, hiding inside of it, and giving it to the knights in the French castle in order to breach their walls...or course they forget to actually go in it and it gets catapulted back at them...but whatever. I'm sure you have heard of the Trojan Horse...if not, go look it up, but according to Homer (a famous poet-historian man) during the Trojan war the Greeks climbed into a large wooden horse, gave it to the Trojans, and caught them by surprise. This sounds pretty similar...probably because it's meant to be, and there ya have it folks, a prime example of Historiographic Metafiction.
Temporal Distortion
Temporal distortion runs ramped throughout this film (figuratively). During the entire movie there is a 'sub-plot' in which a man was murdered (By King Arthur presumably) and detectives are driving around in a car and going through past scenes/settings/places to find King Arthur. If that's not temporal distortion I don't know what is...except like...time travel...but if you think about it, they are kind of doing that. Either that or the movie is just a bunch of crazy guys running around England in the 1970's!!! Woah! Talk about breaking the fourth wall...either way it's very post modern. But of course, I wouldn't be doing this movie justice without bringing up my most beloved anachronism...the holy hand grenade. It's a hand grenade...in medieval times...it's black humour, temporal distortion, metafiction...it's pretty much everything, ESPECIALLY postmodern.
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Faction
This movie is full of faction. It's about King Arthur, and the knights of the round table, looking for a holy grail. Enough said. (Depending whether or not you believe King Arthur was real) As well, the movie also takes place in medieval England, which believe it or not was a real place, it's about knights, also real, who breath oxygen!! It's all very scientific and factual, I'm sure you understand. But the point is, those are all facts, but they make up very...interesting stories with said facts, hence "Faction" (Fact + Fiction = Faction).
Magic Realism
Oh Magic Realism...probably the laziest form of postmodernism, and yet somehow one of the most entertaining. This film has tons of characters that fulfill the requirements of being a magic realism...y...character. From a evil flying death bunny, to Tim the sorcerer, this movie's got it all!!...I'll cover both of the extremes, at one end there is a bunny, it looks just like any other rabbit, in fact its played by a real rabbit (According to the extremely confusing credits at the BEGINNING of the movie) however, it jumps around biting peoples heads off...so there's that...and with Tim, he's just your average bearded goat hermit. He lives in the mountains, doesn't shave, has horns, but wait! There's more! He can also make things explode...and he does...frequently. He has human qualities, but he's not human...hopefully. Very postmodern.
So in conclusion, I've covered a few of the countless examples of postmodernism in this movie...seriously, there are soooooo many. But overall, I don't think the postmodern concepts destroy any sense of meaning within the narrative...I think they completely obliterate any sense of meaning. Like I'm talking about a nuclear warhead being dropped on a square of bubble wrap obliteration. But then again, this movie isn't supposed to make any sense at all anyways, it's just being postmodern; weird for the sake of being weird.
This movie is full of faction. It's about King Arthur, and the knights of the round table, looking for a holy grail. Enough said. (Depending whether or not you believe King Arthur was real) As well, the movie also takes place in medieval England, which believe it or not was a real place, it's about knights, also real, who breath oxygen!! It's all very scientific and factual, I'm sure you understand. But the point is, those are all facts, but they make up very...interesting stories with said facts, hence "Faction" (Fact + Fiction = Faction).
Magic Realism
Oh Magic Realism...probably the laziest form of postmodernism, and yet somehow one of the most entertaining. This film has tons of characters that fulfill the requirements of being a magic realism...y...character. From a evil flying death bunny, to Tim the sorcerer, this movie's got it all!!...I'll cover both of the extremes, at one end there is a bunny, it looks just like any other rabbit, in fact its played by a real rabbit (According to the extremely confusing credits at the BEGINNING of the movie) however, it jumps around biting peoples heads off...so there's that...and with Tim, he's just your average bearded goat hermit. He lives in the mountains, doesn't shave, has horns, but wait! There's more! He can also make things explode...and he does...frequently. He has human qualities, but he's not human...hopefully. Very postmodern.
So in conclusion, I've covered a few of the countless examples of postmodernism in this movie...seriously, there are soooooo many. But overall, I don't think the postmodern concepts destroy any sense of meaning within the narrative...I think they completely obliterate any sense of meaning. Like I'm talking about a nuclear warhead being dropped on a square of bubble wrap obliteration. But then again, this movie isn't supposed to make any sense at all anyways, it's just being postmodern; weird for the sake of being weird.