Help! Help! I’m being repressed!

Friday, October 10th, 2003

I overheard a co-worker proclaiming “Help! Help! I’m being repressed!” earlier today — in tell-tale English-peasant voice — and I couldn’t stop myself from looking up Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The aforementioned passage:

ARTHUR: I am your king!
WOMAN: Well, I didn’t vote for you.
ARTHUR: You don’t vote for kings.
WOMAN: Well, ‘ow did you become king then?
ARTHUR: The Lady of the Lake, [angels sing] her arm clad in the
purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of
the water signifying by Divine Providence that I, Arthur, was to
carry Excalibur. [singing stops] That is why I am your king!
DENNIS: Listen — strange women lying in ponds distributing
swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive
power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some
farcical aquatic ceremony.
ARTHUR: Be quiet!
DENNIS: Well you can’t expect to wield supreme executive power
just ’cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!
ARTHUR: Shut up!
DENNIS: I mean, if I went around sayin’ I was an empereror just
because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me they’d
put me away!
ARTHUR: Shut up! Will you shut up!
DENNIS: Ah, now we see the violence inherent in the system.
ARTHUR: Shut up!
DENNIS: Oh! Come and see the violence inherent in the system!
HELP! HELP! I’m being repressed!
ARTHUR: Bloody peasant!
DENNIS: Oh, what a give away. Did you here that, did you here
that, eh? That’s what I’m on about — did you see him repressing
me, you saw it didn’t you?

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