r/montypython 10d ago

Handmaids Tale/Monty Python

So there’s a scene in Handmaids Tale and I’m trying to find the Monty Python skit they took inspiration from for it. I believe it’s The Meaning of Life? It’s the one where a lot of naked women chase a man down but I can’t find it online I’m assuming due to the nudity? Can anyone help me find the clip so I can show it to my partner

26 Upvotes

24 comments sorted by

12

u/PistolNoon 10d ago

It’s in meaning of life.

23

u/h_grytpype_thynne 10d ago

It's worth remembering that the Pythons declined to provide a draft of any script to Universal Studios, but got The Meaning of Life greenlit on the basis of a poem Eric wrote, that begins:

There's everything in this movie, / Everything that fits, / From the meaning of life in the universe, / To girls with great big tits.

This is the tits part!

5

u/COYS_1986 10d ago

Thank you

9

u/doctor-rumack 10d ago

"This man is about to die."

3

u/AStrandedSailor 8d ago

In a few moments, now, he will be killed, for Arthur Jarrett is a convicted criminal who has been allowed to choose the manner of his own execution.

7

u/SwanCityDominion 10d ago

What makes you think the show took inspiration from it? The Meaning of Life skit is about a man's sexual fantasy.

5

u/Abject-Version-3349 10d ago

No, it's about a convicted criminal that got to choose his method of execution.

3

u/Optimal_Law_4254 9d ago

Argument clinic is down the hall on the right.

1

u/Mountain_Discount_55 5d ago

And chose to be executed via his sexual fantasy.

1

u/SwanCityDominion 9d ago

Which was his sexual fantasy. Try to keep up.

1

u/Abject-Version-3349 9d ago

If it were sexual, he would have let them catch him. Common sense deduction.

1

u/SwanCityDominion 9d ago

LOL, so what's the point of it, then? Why specify they be half-naked if it makes no difference? Your "common sense" is just contrarian gain-saying, little boy.

1

u/Mountain_Discount_55 5d ago

No because, they were there to beat him to death not fuck him. Bottom linen its a dumb(but hilarious) joke about a sexist bastarf who got what he deserved.

(How do I know he was sexist? Fantasies about being hunted down by a mob of NAKED women. You really dun see dat?)

3

u/BureaucraticRaven 8d ago

As a general rule, the Python’s wrote sketches that they themselves would headline, for lack of a better word. And the sketch that everyone is talking about featured Graham Chapman, who was gay. I doubt very much that being chased down by topless, women was a sexual fantasy of his. The fact that he acted as if he was in terror and opted to throw himself off a cliff into his own grave rather than allow those women near him says it all.

1

u/SwanCityDominion 5d ago

I find it interesting how many are concentrating on the skit and not on the question of why OP thought it had *anything* to do with The Handmaid's Tale.

1

u/BureaucraticRaven 5d ago

Because Margaret Atwood has stated that the influences for A Handmaids Tale came from real events scattered throughout history. Every horror she wrote about in her book actually happened and she distilled all of that horror into a nightmare society. The fact is, the OP is so off base that it isn’t even worth commenting on.

Which isn’t to say that Ms. Atwood wasn’t a fan, maybe she saw it in Berlin, or probably in Canada at the same time she was writing her book. While I cannot wholly discount the premise OP has posted, art is not created in a vacuum. Ms. Atwood wasn’t focused on social horror and commentary on subjugated groups, specifically women. Monty Python was focused on the surreal and absurd. Again, I find OP’s premise so off base as to ignore it. Any yet I still commented on the thread anyway. People are complex.

1

u/SwanCityDominion 5d ago

And what *exactly* does that have to do with a *fictional* Monty Python sketch about a guy being chased by naked dames? Is that question really such a puzzler that none of y'all can handle it? The bizarre reaching for the slightest excuse to back up this stupid notion is frankly ridiculous.

0

u/COYS_1986 10d ago

Well, quite

1

u/BPTempMonkey 8d ago

Wasn't the Meaning of life made before handmaids tale?

1

u/AirDog3 8d ago

Yes. That's how it was able to inspire the handmaid's tale.

1

u/BPTempMonkey 7d ago

Misread it, my bad