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obstacle to group ideals. Because they are constantly having meetings to
draw up resolutions and exercise the democratic process, they are paralyzed
to inactivity, while the conversations they have parody the growing political
correctness of the 1970s and 1980s, with gender-pronoun precision
and the inflated rhetoric of oppression (Solomon, 2001a, 302). Like the
religious schisms between gourd- and sandal-followers, the terrorists separate
into rival splinter groups, with each faction believing in their own
righteousness and condemning the others, as one of the PFJ members
proclaims: “The only people we hate more than the Romans are the fucking
Judaean People’s Front!” The raid on Pilate’s palace is a failure due to the
groups’ petty infighting and consequent lack of cohesion needed to fight
the common enemy, that is, the government of Rome; because of their
mutual antagonism, the rebel groups fail to see the big picture. The film
presents the disarray and confusion among the several anti-Roman factions
as a sharp commentary on the alienation of modern society into
separate self-interested groups, and the loss of power when individuals
commit themselves to group ideologies. When Brian’s followers “swarm”
around his house, Mum scolds and Brian lectures the crowd about their
unthinking conformity and group mentality, and as they agree that they
are separate people, “Yes, we are all individuals,” they reply in ironic
unison. In a post-9/11 world, and in light of more recent definitions of
terrorism, the “terrorist” organizations in the film appear benign and harmless
in their comic impotence.
While Life of Brian mocks the rebels, the authorities are eviscerated with
even greater finesse. The playful attack on “the powers that be” was always
an integral part of Python comedy, as a celebration of individual freedom
of the 1960s and 1970s, but now they were responding to the hardening of
authoritative structures at the dawning of the 1980s. “It gave us a way to
do a film about authority, about the British establishment as much as the
Jewish or Roman establishment of the time. So nearly everything that we
wrote in it seemed to be relevant and to be about something, and that was
consciously important” (Palin, in Cleese et al., 306). Authority is ridiculed
everywhere in the film, shown to be disengaged, out of touch, and ineffectual.
The Roman guards react with boredom and indifference when they
witness scuffles among the Jews and other groups at the Sermon on the
Mount and the stoning of Matthias. Even when they are roused to action,
entire legions are comically incapable of finding Brian in the cramped PFJ
headquarters, and they allow him to escape when they fall on the floor,
crippled with laughter upon hearing Pilate utter the name of a Roman
aristocrat: “Anyone else feel like a little giggle when I mention my friend,
190 MONTY PYTHON’S LIFE OF BRIAN (1979)