Satirical Analysis Of Monty Python's Flying Circus

Monty Python’s Flying Circus came onto English television screens in the late 1960s. This comedic sketch show was notorious for its quick wit, suggestiveness, and satirical representations of everyday British life (Duguid, n.d.). Monty Python’s Flying Circus brought about a new type of media text to English culture; the satirical, yet biting type of surreal comedy show that appealed to the English middle class.

The popularity of Monty Python’s Flying Circus (and later installments by the group) relied on the audience’s sophisticated knowledge; they depended on the fact that they knew their audience knew about the dullness of a 9 to 5 job and other aspects of popular culture to understand their jokes. Those without the cultural capital to fully understand the sketches of Monty Python would probably

For example, in “The Upper-Class Twit of the Year,” a comedic sketch featuring several upper-class men, the sketch portrays these elite men in exaggerated, silly, and mainly stupid ways that detracts from their social power. These “powerful" men can barely perform simple tasks, such as running in a straight line, and the humor comes from the fact that these elite groups have influence, but are quite stupid.

However, by making fun of these classes, the audiences that directly belong to the same classes understand and can relate to what Monty Python is trying to get at, therefore they can understand and laugh at the jokes, whereas those who don’t belong to the same classes cannot relate, and therefore may not understand as well as those that are in the same social class.

And, as mentioned before, liking a media text such as Monty Python’s Flying Circus or any of their texts can signify to someone immediately of your tastes, or cultural capital, and thus even your social