The middle ages were the period of time after the Roman Empire fell when people lacked organization and many were fending for themselves. The middle ages earned the term the “Dark Ages” due to the lack of advancement of technology, arts, and education that took place. Many trivial aspects of the dark ages can be satirized; a satire is the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to criticise trivial and lacking aspects of an entity. The movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail satirizes aspects of the middle ages including the lacking scientific knowledge of people, the loyalty and chivalry of knights, and the divine rights of kings.
One aspect of the middle ages that the writers of Monty Python and the Holy Grail chose to criticize was …show more content…
Kings in the middle ages often expected people everywhere to bow down to them and do as instructed; kings of the middle ages had the most money and the most lavish of things. In the opening scene of the movie, King Arthur skipped into the frame of the camera with one of his servants clapping two coconut shells together, imitating the sound of a horse’s hooves. The coconut shells were both an anachronism and a parody. Coconuts were not a product europeans were familiar with during the middle ages, and all the kings in the movie ridiculously galloped, horseless, to the sound of coconut shells clapping together. This was included in the movie to satirize the idea that kings were held at such a high standard and with so much respect even though they thought less of everyone but themselves. This idea was also criticised by other anachronisms. In the scene where King Arthur asks two peasants for directions, one of the peasants is enraged with the idea of having a king and denies the existence of one. The peasant man exclaims, “I’m being oppressed,” which is an anachronism of the time being that that was not how people of the middle ages spoke. The king becomes extremely upset with the peasant man and almost gets into an altercation with him before storming off. The irony of the fact that the peasant did not know he had a king combined with the anger that filled King Arthur further satirizes the divine right of
One aspect of the middle ages that the writers of Monty Python and the Holy Grail chose to criticize was …show more content…
Kings in the middle ages often expected people everywhere to bow down to them and do as instructed; kings of the middle ages had the most money and the most lavish of things. In the opening scene of the movie, King Arthur skipped into the frame of the camera with one of his servants clapping two coconut shells together, imitating the sound of a horse’s hooves. The coconut shells were both an anachronism and a parody. Coconuts were not a product europeans were familiar with during the middle ages, and all the kings in the movie ridiculously galloped, horseless, to the sound of coconut shells clapping together. This was included in the movie to satirize the idea that kings were held at such a high standard and with so much respect even though they thought less of everyone but themselves. This idea was also criticised by other anachronisms. In the scene where King Arthur asks two peasants for directions, one of the peasants is enraged with the idea of having a king and denies the existence of one. The peasant man exclaims, “I’m being oppressed,” which is an anachronism of the time being that that was not how people of the middle ages spoke. The king becomes extremely upset with the peasant man and almost gets into an altercation with him before storming off. The irony of the fact that the peasant did not know he had a king combined with the anger that filled King Arthur further satirizes the divine right of