Calling Out Insanity

Uvalde, Texas. The worst school shooting since Sandy Hook, and since Columbine before that. The tragedy is so immense that it defies imagination. Counting the bodies is the tip of the iceberg. Imagine the victims’ terror, the survivors’ guilt, the families’ anguish, and the nation’s sorrow. This will be a dull grinding trauma with no end in sight.

We find evidence in Sandy Hook; a comparable tragedy now ten years old, and still rife with bad faith controversy. A nervous laugh from a bereaved parent at a press conference gave pro-gun charlatans all the license they needed, tugging at the human threads these unscripted tragedies naturally produce until they have a conspiracy woven out of whole cloth. That bereaved parent is routinely attacked online and in person to this day, accused of lying about the unassailable fact of his daughter’s death.

It’s crazy. You have to laugh. But how dare you? In these moments, comedy is seen as trivializing tragedy. To make jokes about Uvalde would be insensitive at best, hurtful to the survivors, which includes all of us. It’s too soon. We’re too raw. It would be an affront to decency to make any kind of joke, at any time, about a school shooting.

Only, Monty Python made a sketch about a school shooting.

In Season 2, Episode 6 (“It’s a Living”), Monty Python depicts an awards ceremony at a public school. At first, it’s light-hearted fun– the presenting Bishop is bushwhacked, and then various imposters take the stage, trying to steal the awards. Finally, a shot rings out, and a Soldier erupts from under the table, joined by a platoon covering him. In the midst of a battle against an unseen foe, the Soldier tries to hand out awards, only to have the lucky students get shot as they stand to accept them. “Come on, boy– keep down– oh, bad luck! The next prize…”

Not very funny, is it?

Before we get all up in their social media feeds, keep in mind; school shootings were unthinkable back in 1970s England. This sketch is actually a comedic rip-off of the Lindsay Anderson movie “If…?” which ends with three students shooting up their school with automatic weapons. But the movie was very much meant as a satire, a reaction to the rigidity and sadism of British public schools. The fact that it has evolved into prophecy is our shame, not Lindsay Anderson’s. Not Monty Python’s. They took a satirical work, made it silly, and called it a day. We did the rest.

Still, watching it now in this brave new world of ours can’t help but induce cringes. Where could the humor possibly be in watching students get shot? What were they thinking?

I don’t know, but I can guess. And as it turns out, the Monty Python creators were smarter than we knew. In fact, they were probably more insightful than even they knew. They thought they were just making a joke, and it turns out they were accurately mapping the future of America’s soul.

In order to dig into this, the first thing we have to do is put the laughter aside. Let’s take a look at what the sketch depicts, and why Monty Python thought it would be funny, without feeling obligated to laugh ourselves or feel outrage that laughter was ever expected. Let’s strip all that away for a moment, focus on the content, and see what they were saying.

The scene itself is a British public school, ground zero for the patriarchy. Students in such an environment are required to conform and obey. They are uniformed, stripped of their individuality. They are kept in an orderly line. They are often beaten into shape until they fit the narrow spaces that British society allowed for them. This was the furnace that forged all (but one) of the members of Monty Python, and they emerged from that system with tremendous hostility towards it. They never thought of school as a “safe space”.

The shooting is motivated by a need for control. With all the Bishop of East Anglia Impersonators trying to make off with the apparently priceless tin cups, an armed platoon is deemed necessary to bring “law and order” to the proceedings. This is preminiscent of the evergreen debate around school shootings in this country. Inevitably, the more conservative politicians suggest that armed teachers would solve the problem. Monty Python, (again, thirty years before all this became a “thing”,) puts that theory into practice. Surprise! People get killed.

Once the shooting starts, a battle-scarred soldier calls the names of the deserving boys, urging them to brave the crossfire, step up on stage and accept their reward. Why are the kids still even there in the auditorium? No one told them to leave. They have been programmed to toe the line. Being shot and killed may be bad, but disobeying the Dean would be unthinkable. This obedience is put to the test when one’s name is called. The poor honored lad who tries to take the stage cowers, flinches as the bullets fly around him, aware of the danger but unprepared for any course of action other than doing what he is told.

Finally, how could the school, under the guise of the armed Bishop, have demanded such sacrifice from their students? How could it be so indifferent to their well-being? The fact is, students come and go. What must be maintained is the institution. Python makes the point that the death of one or two students here and there is less important to the school than the tradition being upheld. The show must go on!

Beneath this ironic stance is a deeper truth–the collective experience of the Monty Python team was that the students’ needs always make way for the needs of the school. But they believed on some level that the institutions should serve the people they are supposed to serve. In this instance, schools should care about the children in their care.

There it is– the joke, drained of all humor, unadorned with irony. We should care about kids. But we don’t. Rather, we grind them up to feed our institutions. Monty Python merely called out this behavior for what it is– insanity.

We here in the U.S. like to consider ourselves very individualistic, taking undue pride in our cars and branded t-shirts. But we are no stranger to institutions. And when these institutions, for example, an oddly phrased constitutional amendment, comes up against the well-being of children– well, children come and go, don’t they? The institution remains, despite “thoughts and prayers.” The show must go on!

Monty Python called us out, fifty years ago, as the show continues. They called us out at Columbine. Sandy Hook. Parkland, Uvalde. As we continue to ask students to brave the crossfire, Monty Python calls us out. This is insanity.

You have to laugh. But how dare you?