Satire In Monty Python And The Holy Grail

Monty Python and the Holy Grail opens in foggy Scotland, this serves as a satire to “Legend of King Arthur.” This movie came out in 1975 and was directed by Terry Gilliam, and Terry Jones, on a very low budget of approximately £229,575 which is about $370958.76 US dollars. The low budget created many opportunities to mock the fact that they couldn’t afford to buy a horse, so they used coconuts. They also couldn’t afford special effects, so they used illustrations by Terry Gilliam. These satires proved to be highly appealing to the audience. Monty Python and the Holy Grail makes the social class system a satire in the movie in the “Bring out your dead” scene where there is a man pushing a cart with the dead from the plague on it, and a man

One of these is when the monks are walking around smacking a board to their forehead in rhythm to the chant. This represents the practice of harming oneself as a display of piety used by some orders of medieval monks. This is an insult to the Catholic Church showing its stubbornness. While already full of satire for so many issues, the Monty Python team also includes their parody of the Vietnam War (a popular satirical topic of the time period). The first indication of this comes about in the scene with the Black Knight. He stands by his bridge allowing no one to pass as King Arthur approaches to invite him to join the court at Camelot. After several attempts with no response from the knight, King Arthur requests passage across the bridge. The Black Knight stands tall and replies "none shall pass," and the two men engage in a sword fight to settle the issues. As King Arthur dismembers his worthy opponent, the Black Knight seems unaffected by the injury claiming "tis but a scratch." This disregard for the loss of his limbs ridicules the political stand to remain involved in the war, despite the apparent defeat. Then, as King Arthur crosses the bridge the knight proclaims the King to be a "yellow *******," which was an attitude the government refused to accept from anyone taunting the United States, so we proceeded to remain involved in war. The ridicule of the war is seen again in the