re John Cleese and imperialist humour

[Dave Carroll <dccarrol@xxxxxxxx>]

A few days ago I watched the movie _Fierce Creatures_, which shares the
same cast as A Fish Called Wanda, including Cleese and Michael Palin.
Cleese plays the newly assigned Director of a British Zoo that has been
bought up by the transnational corporation Octopus.  Kevin Kline plays
the tycoon who is a ruthless capitalist that seizes businesses and
breaks them up for profit.  Kline is very funny in this role, and he
also plays the tycoon's son who is equally a jackass, only more
pathetic.  There are some very funny scenes in the film that satirize
commodification and advertising, such as the celebrity sponsoring of zoo
animals ("this isn't just some boring turtle now, it's Bruce
Springsteen's turtle!) and a tiger sporting a billboard reading "Absolut
Fierce".  Cleese plays a management type that is supposed to represent
the more sober, sophisticated Brit boss defending the zoo from the
excessive and crude American-headed transnational.  There is one
interesting scene where Cleese is railing against profit-minded
corporatism, in a conscious effort in front of his workers to
distinguish himself from Kline and his lackeys.

The concluding scene of the movie has Palin (who plays a speed-talking
reptile and spider caretaker in contrast to his stuttering hitman in A
Fish Called Wanda) accidentally offing the older Kline and the workers
aiding the tycoon son in faking a will deeding the zoo as a trust, safe
from the profit-driven logic of the market.  The essential significance
of the end is that a truce can be made in capitalism between public and
private works.

Yesterday, I saw Cleese hocking it for a Best Buy commercial, playing a
dim-witted lower-level employee who confuses video games and other Best
Buy products for espionage activities.

I thought it was funny that Cleese, who I now hear has been an apologist
for Brit imperialism, has been playing characters frantic at protecting
English business from American transnationalism and also playing adman
for a major U.S. consumer electronics chain.

Dave

>
> Date: Wed, 28 May 2003 09:28:30 -0400
> From: Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: Re: John Cleese (and imperialist humour)
>
> Although I completely agree that there is racist humor in Fawlty Towers
> directed against the Spanish and the Irish, there is little in the show
> to suggest the kind of fawning before imperialism that you find in the
> novels of Evelyn Waugh or V.S. Naipul.
>
> Basil Fawlty himself is portrayed as one of the biggest fools on the
> planet. His own groveling before royalty and power of any sort serves as
> a plot in one episode when a "Lord" Somebody comes to the hotel and gets
> not only the red carpet but unsecured loans from the credulous Fawlty.
> He turns out to be a con man, who takes advantage of Fawlty's belief in
> aristocracy. The twist is that the con man is caught by a cop with a
> cockney accent, who is regarded by Fawlty as working-class trash.
>
> In an another episode, when Fawlty is complaining to the resident
> Colonel Blimp about how all the auto strikes are ruining the country,
> the audience guffaws at the obvious joke: Fawlty himself is utterly
> incompetent as is the doddering Colonel.
>
> - --
>
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