ABSTRACT

Monty Python’s send-up of 900 years of British history in Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) has been widely recognized as a masterpiece of parody and pastiche-a film that merrily takes apart everything from Malory and Tennyson to Bergman and Camelot; however, very little of this discussion takes into account the film’s treatment of gender and what does tends to focus on “The Tale of Sir Lancelot” as an isolated instance of gender confusion.1 In many ways this is not surprising; the Pythons’ desire to question conventions of narrative, history, and authority does not seem to extend to the conventions of gender and heteronormativity. Indeed, the troupe’s portrayal of women and homosexuality rarely breaks free of conservative clichés and prurient winks. As Marcia Landy observes: “the Pythons’ caricatures of femininity, heterosexuality and homosexuality are not congenial to supporters of identity politics; they do not present desirable and affirmative gendered images to emulate.” Yet she also argues that “gender reversal in the Flying Circus is parallel to the series’ practice of inverting all roles involving social class and national and generational identities.”2 This seeming contradiction in Landy’s argument identifies a strange

blind spot in the Pythons’ comic project: an investment in traditional gender roles that persists in spite of its own recognition that all other identities are constructed performances. However, both the troupe’s radical social agenda and its characteristic use of cross-dressing, parody and camp-which imbues its gender depictions with the queer potential to deconstruct gender through its excessive enactment-undermine this investment.