Legendary comedy troupe Monty Python could never be accused of being politically correct, and one of its alums is blasting today’s cancel culture for sucking the fun out of life.
John Cleese is preparing to perform a live-streamed comedy event from London next month, which he says. will also include a Q&A session and “a short selection of Peruvian burial ditties.”
Titled “Why There is No Hope”, Cleese describes the event as equal parts lecture and standup comedy, admitting it’s something of an “experiment” performed in front of a small and socially distanced audience.
Last month, the 80-year-old comedy icon made headlines when he blasted the BBC as “cowardly and gutless” for temporarily taking a 40-year-old episode of “Fawlty Towers” off its streaming platform in order to “review” it because the episode mocked Germans and the Second World War.
This, Cleese explained in a recent interview with Reuters, represents the cancel culture that’s infected society, which “misunderstands the main purposes of life which is to have fun,” he said.
“Everything humorous is critical,” he added. “If you have someone who is perfectly kind and intelligent and flexible and who always behaves appropriately, they’re not funny. Funniness is about people who don’t do that, like Trump.”
Adhering to a particular standard of political correctness, he added, means that comedians “have to set the bar according to what we are told by the most touchy, most emotionally unstable and fragile and least stoic people in the country.”