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censorship that varied from region to region with no set standard, imposing
most bans in the conservative West Country. Internationally, the film
was banned in Ireland, Italy, and Norway, while France, Spain, and Belgium
exhibited the film more or less without hindrance (Hewison, 79–92). One
inevitable consequence of the outcry was the generation of priceless free
publicity and heightened popular interest in the film, and box-office records
were broken everywhere the film was shown.
While Monty Python’s Life of Brian may fairly be described as aggressive
in striking its comic targets, it is not blasphemous. The film’s humor is
directed towards the human tendency to manipulate spiritual beliefs to
fit personal exigencies, as Cleese says: “What is absurd is not the teachings
of the founders of religion, it’s what followers subsequently make of it.
And I was always astonished that people didn’t get that” (quoted in Cleese
et al., 280). The Pythons carefully added scenes to the film that would
separate Brian and Jesus into two distinct entities, so that it would be clear
that it was the fictional Brian, and not the figure of Christ, who was being
mocked (Hewison, 67). For example, the three wise men who visit the
infant Brian and his Mum at the beginning of the film soon discover the
right nativity a few stables away; at the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus
himself (played by actor Ken Colley) appears and speaks his well-known
words directly, though he is barely audible to the restless crowd; and most
emphatically, Brian’s mother disabuses the followers of their mistaken
notion: “There’s no Messiah in here . . . there’s a mess all right, but no
Messiah!”
Still, several specific scenes caused complaint among religious conservatives
and were cited in legal and political challenges as particularly blasphemous,
as they were judged to be in contradiction to what was considered
biblical truth. For example, Christian groups believed the Gospel account
of Jesus’ healing power was being mocked in the scenes where the cured
leper is upset about losing his income after Jesus heals him, calling him a
“Bloody Do-Gooder!” and when the followers pursue Brian, a blind man
claims his sight is restored, then falls into a pit. Catholics were offended by
the scene where one of the followers questions the virginity of Brian’s
mother (“Is that a personal question?”), taking that to be an attack on the
purity of the Virgin Mary. On the Street of Prophets, Brian’s attempt at
messianic preaching mimics the actual words of Christ in the Gospels,
with references to “lilies,” “birds” cared for by God, and the parable of the
talents (Larsen, 149–50). Also troubling to the pious was Brian’s declaration
to the pesky throng that “There’s no need to follow anyone,” and the
final musical assertion that worrying is silly, since death is “the final word”;
186 MONTY PYTHON’S LIFE OF BRIAN (1979)