And Now For Something Completely Contrived…A 'Monty Python’s Flying Circus' Retro Recap: 'Owl Stretching Time'

​Written by Joel T. Lewis

Series 1 Episode 4
‘Owl Stretching Time'
 
Sketch List
Song (And Did Those Feet)
Art Gallery
Art Critic
It’s a Man’s Life in the Modern Army
Undressing in Public
Self-Defense Against Fresh Fruit
Secret Service Dentists
 
The Art Gallery Sketch perhaps best showcases the Python team’s ability to deliver multiple commentaries with one premise. Like the best of Python sketches the premise is simple and silly: what if when we talked about artistic taste, we literally meant we liked how the art tasted? Enter Janet (John Cleese) and Marge (Graham Chapman), two examples of the Python archetype: The Pepperpot. The “Pepperpot” character, as defined by John Cleese in his 1969 TV Special, How to Irritate People, is a middle-aged woman whose “life’s ambition is to be in the audience of a TV Quiz show. She is to be found in shopping areas, blocking the pavement, tormenting babies, spreading rumors, and spending a fortune on bargains. She enjoys worrying and being shocked. Individually, she is intolerable, in a group, horrific.” These are the same genre of women from the Whizzo Butter Ad in the “Whither Canada” episode.

The Pepperpots meet while touring an art gallery and compare their difficulties in getting their children to treat the artwork with respect. They detail the destruction Ralph and Kevin have brought to various exhibitions by smashing, defacing, and eating the artwork, punctuating their accounts by striking those children off screen. These children and the violence done to them in this sketch are both implied, which serves two purposes. First, the implied violence of the disembodied slap off-screen is a joke that banks on audio cues only, which is quite funny when used in a sketch which is primarily about visual art. Second, because the violent discipline takes place off-camera, and it is quite clear that there are no actual children present on set, this audio-gag serves as a bit of a “screw you” to the BBC censors. The violence is all implied which allows the Python’s to make their joke and the leaves the censors with nothing to protest.

As the Pepperpots catalogue the priceless works smashed, vandalized, or ingested by their sons the slaps grow more frequent and unprompted. Towards the end of their discussion Marge disappears off-screen to dole out 5 blows in a row calling Ralph a “naughty, naughty vicious little boy” and Janet, not to be out-done, slaps Kevin without cause.  But it turns out that the Pepperpots have a limit: they will not abide spitting. The humor of this silly line drawn in the sand comes from the assumption that the disrespect inherent in spitting is somehow more egregious than smashing or swallowing the artwork. This is solidified by both Pepperpots chowing down on what remains of a Turner masterpiece. By participating in the physical consumption of the artwork the Pepperpots validate their children’s actions. This portion of the sketch concludes with Janet delivering the punchline, “I don’t know much about art but I know what I like” as both she and Marge eat what’s left of Turner’s “Fighting Temeraire.”

Though the Pepperpots talk about the works their sons have destroyed with relative ease we are meant to dismiss their misguided views on how to enjoy art as a product of their middle class station and limited education. By using the Pepperpot character type the Pythons are focused on the middle class mother and how she’s raised her children. However, as the sketch transitions the Python’s cut to an Art Critic (Michael Palin) who is in the middle of eating Maurice Utrillo’s “Mother Catherine's Restaurant In Montmartre.” This transition and the world it creates make an important point about how society understands art. The audience recoils from the notion of the Pepperpots’ children eating art as that is in direct contrast to our reverence for art, and their mothers reinforce that reverence by harshly disciplining them. Then, as we witness the Pepperpots themselves eating the Turner Painting we dismiss both the sins of the child and parent as fundamentally misunderstanding art as a result of class and education. But then the world of the sketch shifts dramatically as we are shown an intellectual authority, the Art Critic, “appreciating” art by eating it. Our perspective must shift again in order to understand that this “taste” for art is not a child’s mistake, or a misguided belief held by a less-educated household, but a definition of a term backed by the intellectual authority of the society. Seeing Palin’s Art Critic hiccup after eating Utrillo’s painting while commenting on his brush-work almost makes me ask myself “have I been enjoying art the wrong way?” This is how our opinions of art are founded, passed down by the intellectual authorities and taken to varying extremes by the general population.

The premise of the sketch is simple and silly: the humor comes from confusing the two uses of the word taste. But yet again the Pythons craft the world where this confusion takes place with such care and conviction that it opens up a discussion about the enjoyment of art and where our methods for enjoying art come from. Until next time, Geek On!

---