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Original post can be found here: https://benzweibelson.medium.com/explaining-postmodernism-to-security-audiences-using-monty-python-and-the-holy-grail-recommended-fe1585781f11

Aside from the word “design” and also the word “complexity”, I think perhaps the 3rd most misunderstood and mischaracterized word in military lexicon is “postmodernism.” Unlike the first two words, postmodernism gets dragged through the mud and is largely forbidden in all PME, doctrine, training, and decision-making activities. Comments are disabled on this one because inevitably when I write about postmodernism, the military engineers and doctrine writers come out of the woodwork to make ignorant declarations such as “it is rubbish!” which, once you assess they have not studied a single concept within that discipline (if you can bracket postmodernism within such a thing), is as unfair as saying “engineering methods in military applications is entirely flawed” while giving the same field short shrift. I advocate instead to explore everything, and when I encounter ideas that cause me to deeply reflect upon my own assumed values, beliefs, or ‘facts about reality’, I relish the opportunity to think about my thinking. This perhaps is why postmodern ideas have resonated in small design circles inside the military since the late 1990s, and also why military defenders of the dominant institution continue to howl and wail at any instance of considering concepts that are at odds with a Functionalist paradigm of order, stability, and positivistic logic for how reality works. Then there is the problem with the word ‘postmodern’ and how maddening the associations and confusion is for those just trying to define the term!

I have seen postmodernism thrown in with Karl Marx (he was not postmodern- although his ideas would lead to several postmodern developments along with other thinkers), with social activism of modern debates and protests (critical theory is part of the radical humanist paradigm that postmodernism does operate in, but again- not any more similar than the overlap between Jomini and Clausewitz, or Moltke and Douhet), and I have encountered folks that declare “postmodernism is dead”, irrelevant, or entirely in opposition to objective scientific thinking. Again- these are gross (ignorant) statements that miss the nuance and depth of an entire branch of philosophy. There is a reason the best military design schools and communities of practice draw from postmodernism (among other fields, disciplines, theories), and often when I offer up the hundreds of examples of postmodernism in modern society, those that continue to resist the relevance of postmodern philosophy turn into ideological resisters. Sort of like talking to a Flat Earther…

The article is titled “Post-Modernism in Monty Python and the Holy Grail” and is by Alexander Reece Loescher Quinlan. Right away, I was drawn to the article because I am a huge fan of Monty Python, and as a philosopher I find that using pop culture (movies, shows, books, music, entertainment, art) really opens up quicker pathways to deep knowledge and learning. I personally have used several Python skits and scenes for decades teaching military design, including the “She’s a Witch…burn her!” scene for ascientific and scientific logical constuction as well as how groups of humans socially construct a reality with a dialectic between objectivity and subjectivity that flip-flop in how firm or soft we imagine the world actually is. The article is available here, and there is no pay wall for this one either! I aim to deliver as many of those in this series as I can:

https://mackseyjournal.scholasticahq.com/article/21789-postmodernism-in-monty-python-and-the-holy-grail

So, today’s article is a fun one because we all love humor, and while there is a wide degree of diversity on what one person considers humor and another does not, many people might agree that Monty Python and the Holy Grail is one of those special movies that are rather timeless, and if not funny to most, even those that decline to enjoy the British comedic troupe would have a hard time refuting the vast reach of Monty Python’s influence on decades of comedy after their golden age of the 1970s. My intent is not to convert people into Python fans… rather, to offer up a fun article that might assist you in one of the following:

1. You encounter a designer or planner that wants to think creatively and differently, but rejects postmodernism outright.
2. You encounter a designer or planner that accepts postmodernism as an abstract element of design theory, but defers to modern functionalist logics because “theory for theory’s sake does not result in any real action”.
3. You might encounter people that are entirely unaware of how many movies, books, plays, songs, shows, architecture, and other human inventions are directly inspired from postmodern concepts. For example, the Matrix movies are all based on French Existentialist Baudrillard’s main work (Simulation and Simulacra), or that the cartoon show Rick and Morty is founded entirely on nihilism, a postmodern theoretical construct, the absurdism humor of the Simpsons, Family Guy, and South Park (all drawing from postmodern constructs) or that popular books such as the Lemony Snicket series or the book (and movie) Cloud Atlas is entirely build using postmodern constructs. Now, I am with you when it comes to postmodern architecture- lots of it is “take it or leave it”, but the thing about postmodernism is that it cannot fly solo. It needs something (usually modernism) to exercise upon. Yet without it, we would be vastly more convergent and, well, boring and predictable in how and why we go about living life.
4. Or, you yourself are unfamiliar with postmodernism, or you remain a skeptic of its value for design, innovation, creativity, and complex warfare.

This article is short and for those that know the movie well, a wonderfully different way to consider the humor and narrative of the Python’s most successful film. The author goes deep into how the Pythons deconstruct things such as Arthurian Chivalry, the movement of metanarratives to cycle their brand of humor in ways that make the entire movie work differently than if the group had followed other previous comedy formulas.

The article also made me realize how much more clever the Pythons were, and how I had missed some jokes in the movie despite watching it more times than I care to admit. Our town library had the VHS for it and if my teen library records were ever put online, you would see that film getting several late fees on my account. For example, in Feudal Age narratives and the Arthurian tropes that originally stem from ancient Greek philosophical origins (the mythical hero, heroic actions, goal accomplishment through direct action), peasants normally are unnamed. Yet in the movie, Author meets a peasant and the character introduces himself as Dennis. Dennis breaks with the conventions and challenges the King, presents logical arguments, and self-identifies not as some nameless subordinate delegated to the background of the story, but becomes an important and re-occurring character throughout. Dennis then goes about deconstructing virtually all of the logic behind a centralized hierarchical authoritarian system that feudalism was based on in a clever yet very postmodern manner.

The farcical way that Monty Python deconstructs each Knight and key figure (Merlin, Author) into foolish, egotistic, often cowardly or hypocritical “regular” people is clear to anyone watching the movie without even considering this article. Yet as you read through this, the author brilliantly highlights things that otherwise might get lost in the flow of gags and jokes. There is even the breaking of the “fourth wall”, a postmodern concept that Hollywood would turn into a mainstay of modern entertainment, yet when Python had their animator suffer a terrible heart attack, or the narrator go completely off script, or even in the opening credits they fire multiple writers until changing the font and music to a Mexican fiesta theme to complete the credits scroll- all of this in the 1970s was rather new and different… and drawn from postmodern debates offered largely by the French Existentialists but also inspiring others.

That the characters inside the film know they are acting in a film (scene 24 explained on p.6) is also taken for granted when watching the movie- but this again is an example of a Deleuzian folding (see one of the recent Deep Thoughts Thursdays where I sent out an article on that and the Cloud Atlas book if you forgot) where reality is not to be simplified and appreciated in some linear-causal fashion. Pulp Fiction is a superior movie because of how Tarantino edited the story in a postmodern arrangement. The movie would arguably still be really good if played in chronological order, but not as great as how the movie actually was presented. Tarantino, like Python, use the postmodern re-arrangement of narratives to convey something special and new in the entire movie that would be lost if it were arranged in a conventional manner.

Now, if you happen to be unfamiliar with the movie, or you have avoided watching it because your nerdy friend in college would not shut up about it, give this article a glance and consider watching the movie this weekend. If you are in Colorado Springs and decide to watch it, I definitely know a bunch of people that would show up uninvited at your house to join you, so do not advertise that fact. There is something about the movie that makes it a cult classic- and I would offer that it also is a brilliant example of how postmodernism can enable deeper applications of whatever you are seeking to design.