John Cleese Would Like To Have An Argument

I read the most fascinating "entertainment" article today on Yahoo! News, one of my very favourite news sites.

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/john-cleese-baffled-jk-rowling-105247414.html

Mr. Cleese, it seems, just doesn't understand why people are upset about what J.K. Rowling has to say about transgender people.  So he has put out a public appeal on the social media site Twitter for people to please let him know what he is missing here.  My reading comprehension is perhaps a bit limited, but I gather that John Cleese would like to have an argument.

The Argument Sketch was and is one of my all-time favorite Monty Python sketches.  The work that stays with me over time is work that operates on multiple levels, and I find that Monty Python's best work was very, very good at that.  On a superficial level, what makes the Argument Sketch funny is the joy of seeing two men get comically upset at each other for essentially no reason at all.

The sketch is also enjoyable on a meta level.  Palin's character constructs an impassioned and cogent argument about what makes for a good argument, and the only response the supposed professional he is paying to argue with makes is to say "No it isn't," without explaining further.  In this sense Cleese's character falls neatly into stock archetype of the "pig-headed twit", Cleese's character specialty.  It further strikes me that the Argument Sketch serves as an uncannily similar prototype for the sort of "debate" that tends to occur on Twitter.

Re-watching it again for this post, I was surprised to find that it struck me in yet another way.  This time around, I focused on Palin's character, who is a bit of a tragic figure.  The question I ask myself this time around is not "Why is Cleese's character such a pig-headed idiot," but "Why is Palin's character paying for an argument?"

Watching the sketch, it's not hard for me to construct an answer.  Palin's character, well, he has certain needs, and for whatever reason he's not getting them met at home.  Maybe he doesn't feel comfortable telling his wife about them.  Maybe he knows she can't meet them.  He doesn't know why he has these feelings, but he's heard about these places.  These "argument clinics".  There are professionals there, people who understand his needs, I mean, he's a normal red-blooded British man.  There's nothing really _wrong_ about it.

He's awkward, nervous, accidentally opens the room next door whereupon Graham Chapman berates him, calling him a "malodorous pervert".  Turns out abuse is literally next door to argument.  Again, this is something that strikes me particularly this time around.

Yes, Cleese's character isn't arguing in good faith.  Today it strikes me that doesn't necessarily mean he's bad at his job.  It strikes me that Cleese's character knows very well what customers come to them for.  It strikes me that Cleese's character has an extremely difficult job, that people who are so desperate for an argument that they will pay someone to argue with them are not necessarily the easiest people to deal with.  It strikes me that in his line of work, _everybody_ wants to fucking argue about the bill.

Chapman and Cleese co-wrote the Argument Sketch.  Chapman was openly homosexual.  I find those facts to be relevant and informative to my viewing of the Argument Sketch this time around - particularly when the sketch ends up with Palin's character being arrested on morals charges!

Chapman died in 1989, and hence is precluded from having any direct commentary on the current fracas Cleese has decided to interject himself in.  A friend of mine did, however, share with me some opinions he expressed in 1982, in a piece called "Opinions":

https://youtu.be/nwOcc-buSsg?t=481

It seems fair enough to let a dead person have the last word on this one.