Monty Python parody of Sam Peckinpah’s film violence. One part superficial and the other firmly following the provocative and shocking tradition of Alfred Jarry and his ‘Pataphysics. Surreal, Dadaist and highly eclectic, the Pythons can articulate violence and its graphic depiction while partaking in their own form of cultural revisionism regarding the illusions of Great Britain. Monty Python redefined television violence with the ”comic” in a way that was so inscrutable and absurd it still fascinates, much like the Peckinpah, an armed and dangerous poet out of Koestler’s Darkeness at Noon:
”…remind us that at the end of his career, Peckinpah is among the undisputed poets of alcoholic cinema. Peckinpah in Alfredo Garcia never misses a chance to treat a woman badly, to make sure she shows the camera her breasts, and his joyless men seem to lust after nothing but money and rotgut drunk straight from the bottle. They have come to the end of their luck. As had the director himself. There’s a desperation to Alfredo Garcia, therefore, and yet, for all that, it is hard turn away from it. Train wrecks, after all, offer a visceral satisfaction, if only for their scale.”
Sam Peckinpah
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