Monty Python and Philosophy by Gary Hardcastle (best young adult book series .TXT) 📕

starting in the fourteenth century, a few were admitted to hospitals to exist among those who were physically ill.

In the early seventeenth century, European society actually became “strangely hospitable, in all senses, to madness.”67 This is the time when the “fool” played an important role in literature. In Shakespeare’s King Lear, for example, it’s the fool who illuminates what Lear cannot see for himself. Fools are used as literary devices—their madness has a purpose, and authors imbue fools with wisdom that is absent in other characters. During this period, Foucault writes, a dialogue existed between reason and unreason. The mad, being seen as curiously wise or simply comical, interacted with society. In those and other ways, society listened to them. Reason and unreason talked.

Things changed drastically for the mad around 1656, when what Foucault describes as the “Great Confinement” began. The dialogue abruptly ended, and a monologue of reason emerged. Around that time, starting in France, madmen began to be sequestered together in large internment houses. These institutions held not only the mad, but criminals, beggars, the sick, and others who were considered idle. The ability to work became very important in the newly industrial and urban society. As historian Roy Porter puts it, “previously, the mad had exercised a particular force and fascination, be it as the holy fool, witch, or as a man possessed. Half-wits and zanies had enjoyed the license of free speech and the privilege of mocking their betters. Institutionalization . . . robbed madness of all such empowering features and reduced it to mere negation, and absence of humanity.” 68 The mad, who were at the mercy of those with power, were silenced, deprived of autonomy, confined, persecuted, and punished.

In the eighteenth century, the mad began to be confined as a group, by themselves, in asylums. At this point, Foucault writes, madness acquired a new, medical definition. Madness, still subject to the monologue of reason, was now something to be studied. “The science of mental disease, as it would develop in the asylum, would always be only of the order of observation and classification. It would not be a dialogue” (Madness and Civilization, p. 250). In asylums there was an established hierarchy, with the “insane transformed into minors” (p. 252). Like children, the mad had to live under a set of strict rules. Those who deviated from the rules were punished.

In contemporary society, medicalization has persisted. Today, the mad are “mentally ill.” They are to be diagnosed, treated, and managed by doctors—by psychiatrists and “medical professionals.” Foucault refers to psychiatry as “condescending philanthropy” (Foucault Live, pp. 8-9) because society’s dialogue with the mad remains a monologue. Psychiatrists speak to and about their patients, but they do not listen to the unreason articulated by them. Foucault writes, “What is called mental illness is simply alienated madness, alienated in the psychology that it has itself made possible.”69 Today, drugs are commonly used to “treat,” “cure,” or simply silence unreason. The mad, at least in the United States, continue to be excluded. Many are homeless or have been relegated to group homes, mental institutions, or prisons.

Pythonic Madness

Monty Python showcases the contradictions and ironies inherent in common stereotypes. In dramatically amplifying what we believe to be true, the Pythons force us to reconsider it. Or, they depict situations that are completely incongruous with what we believe, to the same effect. Consider the sketch, “Hermits,”70 in which two hermits (Eric Idle and Michael Palin) serendipitously meet on the side of a mountain. Palin says to Idle, “Hello. Are you a hermit by any chance?” Idle responds, “Yes, that’s right. Are you a hermit?” And, the two proceed to talk about what they’re escaping (“the usual—people, chat, gossip”), the hermit lifestyle, the difficulties of properly insulating a cave, and fellow hermits (“Oh, well. Mr. Robinson’s cave’s never been exactly nirvana, has it?”). All the while other hermits pass by, greeting one another by name. At the conclusion of the sketch, Idle complains that he feels “cut off ” because his cave is half way up the mountain. Palin responds, “Still, there’s one thing about being a hermit, at least you meet people.” “Oh, yes!,” Idle agrees, “I wouldn’t go back to public relations.”

The irony is that these hermits engage in behavior contrary to that of “real” hermits, whom we take to be loners or misanthropes. Hermits are not mad, necessarily, but they do represent that aspect of madness, seclusion, or isolation that lies at the core of Foucault’s analysis of madness. The Pythons give us hermits woven into the fabric of modern society.

So it goes with “The Idiot in Society,” a sketch where the Pythons lead viewers to a similar conclusion about the mad. A voiceover tells us, “Arthur Figgis is an idiot. A village idiot. Tonight we look at the idiot in society.” We first see Figgis sitting on a wall in a contemporary rural community. He has rosy cheeks, disheveled red hair, and wears a dirty smock and straw hat. He is the embodiment of madness as it existed, in Foucault’s analysis, before the Great Confinement. This sketch is entirely modern, though. It is a mock documentary in which Figgis is a most serious and rational commentator. He speaks to us directly and rationally, and interrupts his analysis only when various members of the village walk by. Then, he makes funny noises, rolls his eyes, and moves his body in odd ways. When Mr. Jenkins, a fellow idiot, walks by, however, Figgis is his serious self again. He and Figgis are dressed exactly alike, a hint at where this sketch may be going. For the moment, however, Figgis has some work to do. “Oh, excuse me,” he tells his interviewer. “A coach party has just arrived. I shall have to fall off the wall, I’m afraid.”

Figgis is not the type of madman that Foucault traces through most of Western history: this madman has a voice. Not only does he have a