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or shocking, hidden by the generic illusions, it is recast into a more culturally
acceptable mode, that is, comedy. That’s why there is such a great deal
of psychological relief in laughter. Brooks’ comedy is all about this outburst
of energy, the release of tension, and the liberation of the individual
human desires.
Some interesting political and social commentaries arise from the comic
antics of the Roman Empire sequence in History of the World, Part I. As
the mock-serious opening narration signals the upcoming parody, the
panning shot through the Roman Forum suggests an analogy to the American
marketplace in all its entrepreneurial enterprise and blatant consumerism.
In a time of widespread political apathy during the Carter years of
the late 1970s, the film’s unrelenting lampoon of the Roman imperial
bureaucracy may suggest the decreasing significance of government institutions
in people’s lives. Americans were growing visibly impatient with
the nurturing role of the government proposed by the Great Society of the
1960s, and just a few years before they had been exposed to the tight-fisted
social policies of the Nixon administration. Several scenes in the Roman
Empire sequence hint at this societal change towards popular intolerance
of the financially less fortunate. While the film asks the audience to identify
with Comicus in his regular-guy attempt to make a living, his failure
to secure monetary support at the “Vnemployment Insurance” window
satirizes the pursuit of such handouts. The Roman Senate is depicted as a
bunch of uncaring old rich men, as they vote unanimously to deny benefits
to the poor, thus anticipating the public awareness of the ever-widening
gap between the haves and have-nots and the stinginess of the newly
dawned Reagan era of the early 1980s. The film also attacks the relevance
and authority of the military, and law enforcement in general, in its presentation
of the haughty, lovesick General Vindictus and his bumbling
legions under the command of Captain Mucus, who inauspiciously
“flunked flank,” similar to the clueless Miles Gloriosus character in A
Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and the hapless centurions
of Monty Python’s Life of Brian.
More than those two earlier comedies, the Roman Empire sequence in
History of the World, Part I contains many rowdy jokes about sex and
drugs, exhibiting its link to the more permissive, early 1980s sensibility.
The aptly named Empress Nympho is the personification of female
sexuality, as the term “nymphomaniac” entered the American popular
vocabulary at about this time. Her lush apartments are a hotbed of erotic
desires, where she displays her sexual empowerment by choosing her
escorts for the evening’s orgy based on a display of their masculine phys-
204 HISTORY OF THE WORLD, PART I (1981)