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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
— June – July 2013
culture
T
HIRTY years ago this month on an Air
Canada flight to Toronto, John Cleese
turned to other members of Monty
Python and said “I want out”. He felt
they’d lost their originality. Though ‘Monty
Python’s Flying Circus’ never flew again, it had
made some social downdrafts on a trajectory
towards radical, politically-progressive comedy
since its inaugural takeoff in . At the begin-
ning of the s the circus came to Ireland.
When you wonder how far we’ve come it is use-
ful to go back and see how things worked in the
old days. Just what is permissible in a society. And
who determines it.
In August the Irish media began to carry
reports of ‘The Life of Brian’ made by the Monty
Python comedy team. Especially when Christ
is being crucified for amusement, one person’s
funny bone may be another person’s sore spot.
When the sacred and the profane collide, fault-
lines in society are revealed. Looking back at this
curious case, we can learn a lot about how Irish
society functioned a generation ago.
Brian was creating controversy in that bastion
of liberalism, the United States, where it was first
released. And where you have controversy, you
have moral entrepreneurs. The Irish Times car-
ried an AP wire story which made two important
points: the film outraged religious leaders and it
was thriving at the box office in New York. The
Irish Times as well as the Irish Independent, and
even the Anglo Celt, found space to inform their
readers that the film had opened and closed – on
the same day – at the Mall Cinema in Columbia,
Maryland. This venue was not normally scruti-
nised by Ireland’s cultural commentators.
By January the Irish Independent’s front
page blasted a story concerning not the film, but
the album of the soundtrack, featuring dialogue
from the film as well as the blasphemous if musi-
cally-limited tune ‘Always look on the bright side
of life’. This miserable little ditty later featured
in the closing ceremony of the London Olympic
games, without any walkout, even from the reli-
giously aware.
The Indo based its story on the words of
‘showband priest’ Fr Brian D’Arcy. It included his
caution: “Anybody who buys this record and finds
it funny must have something wrong with their
mentality”. The newspaper sternly reminded its
law-abiding readership that the Irish Constitution
“bans the publication or utterance of blasphemous
or indecent material”.
The Indo kept the story on the front page
the next day; now transformed into a debate
on pornography. Cometh the headline; cometh
the politician. Into the fray entered Fine Gael’s
Michael Keating who was cited calling for “an
urgent examination of the extent to which the
laws we have on censorship are competent”. His
worry was that records and video tapes were not
covered by legislation. By Thursday the story still
had legs: Under the headline GOVT LOOKS AT
DEFECTS IN PORN LAWS, the paper reported how
“a group of concerned housewives from Naas, Co.
Kildare” had popped in to the Minister for Justice
to persuade him “to correct defects in the law, and
establish some censorship agency...”
The paper also reported that an authori-
tative-sounding ‘Christian’ group, “the Legal
Consultative Council” was investigating meth-
ods by which they could make the unreleased ‘Life
of Brian’ the subject of criminal proceedings. John
Cleese flew – without his circus or any price-re-
ducing competition on the route – to Ireland to
defend the film on RTÉ’s Week Out programme.
It is tempting to imagine him, Basil Fawlty-like
thrashing a willow sapling against the desk
screeching “It is not blasphemy, and even if it
was, it’s bloody funny”.
Before the weekend, the Irish Independent
had good news for middle Ireland. The sound-
track album was being withdrawn. Fearing the
potential legal implications of handling an album
that had sold ‘a few hundred copies’ without
remark over a period of months, the compliant
firm simply stopped selling it. Presumably the
‘concerned housewives from Naas’ could return to
being unconcerned, and life would return to nor-
mal. Fr Brian D’Arcy was again quoted: the album
is “a mockery of God’s word and is blasphemous”.
Later Fr D’Arcy would himself brave the wrath of
his church’s congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith with some God-depreciating views of his
own, but that’s a detour. The Indo mentioned
how the record’s distributor Solomon & Peres
had received “complaints and threats” over the
matter. The Irish Press noted Solomon & Peres
had “been inundated with complaints about the
nature of the record” and the Irish Times quoted
a crestfallen spokesman who agreed that “a lot”
of calls had been made, but noted that “only about
three or four” appeared to have heard the record.
The paper-of-record quoted a gnomic Fr D’Arcy on
the resolution of this cultural skirmish: “I’m not
one for censorship. It was entirely their [Solomon
& Peres’] decision, and I would say they acted
responsibly, but in the end the good taste of the
public would have decided the issue”. The Times
michael mary murphy
How church and state kept the Life of Brian from a
god-fearing society
Monty Python in
1980s Ireland
Some things in life are bad/They can really make
you mad/Other things just make you swear and curse
Showband priest Fr Brian
D’Arcy warned: “Anybody
who buys this and nds it
funny must have something
wrong with their mentality”
“
reported Solomon & Peres: “one woman actually
threatened to burn down our premises unless we
withdrew it”. It was later reported that the firm
had received “a dose of threatening phone calls
promising to beat up members of the staff – and
worse”. Good taste, it appeared, was being rein-
forced by the availability of real physical clout.
One of the most incendiary aspects of the case
is the equation of comedy with mental health prob-
lems. D’Arcy was not alone in declaring anyone
enjoying the film or record as having “something
wrong with their mentality”. The brothers of St
John of God, charged with administering men-
tal healthcare around Ireland also equated ‘The
Life of Brian’ with pornography. Their magazine,
Caritas, bemoaned an “endless stream of soft
porn”, “much of it specifically aimed at children
by large British corporations...damaging to the
long-term mental and spiritual health of teenag-
ers.” History does not record precisely what the
magazine was referring to.
Understandably anxious to ground the story
it had manufactured via its headlines in a global
context, the Indo reported how a ‘Life of Brian’
book had been banned elsewhere. The South
African Directorate of Publication had placed it
in a list of prohibited works. Also included was a
recent book by John McGahern.
Less God-fearingly, the London Evening News
reprinted the Indo’s Brian-denouncing front page.
In this era the populist English media didn’t like
to pass up any opportunity to demean the Irish.
Their headline read BEGORRAH, WHAT A LIFE!
We couldn’t even live in a country that banned
records without being represented as thick.
Naturally when the film was scheduled for
release it was banned by censor, Frank Hall.
Another film, Richard Gere’s ‘American Gigolo’
was also forbidden. Appeals were lodged with the
censors, and Gigolo was allowed in. But not Brian.
Although it did go to the places where unsuitable
cultural products end up: pubs and Universities.
Fancy new video cassettes allowed publicans and
College societies to exhibit films, albeit generally
illegally and in contravention of copyright laws.
And some commentators spoke up against the
censorship. Both Ciaran Carty and Des Hickey in
the Sunday Indo stood against the mob and sided
with the film. In the same paper, playwright and
columnist Hugh Leonard, while declaring himself
no fan of the film, described Monty Python as “a
grass snake, not the Biblical serpent”.
Yet one of the most salient opinion pieces
of the time came from the unhysterical Meath
Chronicle which wondered why ‘The Life of
Brian’ was banned in Navan (except in one local
pub) when the Lyric Cinema was projecting ‘The
Blood Splattered Bride’. This Spanish exploitative
bloody-nightdress-fest – with lesbian-vampire-
action – drew an approving nod from the Irish
censor. ‘The Blood Splattered Bride’ was also
exhibited in Donegal’s luxury cinema on the
weekend of March th and th before being
replaced by a documentary on the life of the
Pope.
And where was I, as the cultural battle raged in
the kitchen, the minds of the depraved, the media,
the church, the cinema and even the pub? Which
side did I take? I faced a stark choice. Side with
the Naas concerned housewives or with mental
defectives. I took the cowardly option. I moved
against both. But here’s the ethically-ingenious
bit: I busied myself entrepreneurially providing
home-made cassette copies of the album to eager
schoolmates, so raising a flag for modernity while
depriving heathen music-makers of a portion of
their profits.
I thus advanced my finances in those frugal
times without prejudicing my young soul and sure
enough, within four years Monty Python and his
godless flying spectacle were gone.
