{"id":3464,"date":"2009-11-29T08:38:32","date_gmt":"2009-11-29T16:38:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/wordpress\/?p=3464"},"modified":"2009-11-29T08:40:35","modified_gmt":"2009-11-29T16:40:35","slug":"life-of-brian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/life-of-brian\/","title":{"rendered":"Life of Brian – Thirty Years On"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s a nice article<\/a> by Sanjeev Bhaskar in today\u2019s Sunday Telegraph<\/em> on the Life of Brian<\/em>, perhaps the greatest of British film comedies and thirty years old this year (FWIW I wrote about the film on its twenty-fifth anniversary here<\/a>). As Mr. Bhaskar notes, it is a\u00a0movie that would be unlikely to be made today given \u201ccurrent sensitivities\u201d. Too true, I fear.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s an extract from Mr. Bhaskar\u2019s article:<\/p>\n

The film premiered in America in August 1979 and immediately caused a brouhaha. The Rabbinical Alliance declared the film \u201cfoul, disgusting and blasphemous\u201d. The Lutheran Council described it as \u201cprofane parody\u201d. Not to be outdone, the Catholic Film Monitoring Office made it a sin even to see the film. Audiences, however, loved it, making Brian the most successful British movie in North America that year.<\/p>\n

To counter the mounting protests in Britain, an ingenious advertising campaign was launched featuring the mothers of John Cleese and Terry Gilliam. Muriel Cleese said that if the film didn\u2019t do well, and as her son was on a percentage, she may very well be evicted from her nice retirement home \u2013 and that the move might kill her. She won an award for the ad.<\/p>\n

Mary Whitehouse [a tireless campaigner for her own brand of decency] failed to prove that the film was blasphemous, particularly since Christ and Brian are distinctly shown as different people. Nevertheless, a number of local councils banned it \u2013 including some that didn\u2019t even have a cinema. The result was coach parties being organised in places such as Cornwall (where it was banned) to cinemas in Exeter (where it wasn\u2019t). The Swedish marketed the film as \u201cso funny it was banned in Norway\u201d\u2026.<\/p>\n

\u2026The film\u2019s view of blind faith seems as apposite as ever, and the closing song has come to represent a sort of British resilience \u2013 laughing in the face of adversity. It has been appropriated by football fans, chosen as the final song at funerals, and, movingly, during the Falklands War, the sailors on the damaged HMS Sheffield sang it while awaiting rescue.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s a nice article by Sanjeev Bhaskar in today\u2019s Sunday Telegraph on the Life of Brian, perhaps the greatest of British film comedies and thirty years old this year (FWIW I wrote about the film on its twenty-fifth anniversary here). … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[9],"tags":[419,420],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3464"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3464"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3464\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3469,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3464\/revisions\/3469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}