Midnight Meme Of The Day! Yes, Of Course Conservative Crazies Tried To Crucify "The Life Of Brian"
- Noah
- 3 minutes ago
- 5 min read
Sunday Thoughts
by Noah
What else would you expect of your typical conservative nutjob? What they tried to do to "The Life Of Brian" upon its release is not just a great example of the limitations of the conservative mind, it's also a fine example of the fact that trolls existed long before the internet and lived to practice their idiocy long before we ever knew the words 'blog' or 'Facebook'. Whether living under a bridge or sitting at a basement computer all day, trolls are trolls, life fearing cowards who like to tell everyone that they know best and in so doing reveal more about themselves than they are capable of imagining. I found what you see below at the This Day In History site. It's a perfect post for today.
"Eleven councils banned Monty Python's film for blasphemy. Norway and Ireland followed. Then Sweden ran ads saying: "So funny it was banned in Norway."
In 1979, Monty Python released Life of Brian, a satire about a man named Brian Cohen who's born in a stable next door to Jesus and is subsequently mistaken for the Messiah. The comedy group thought they were making sharp commentary on religious fundamentalism and 1950s Hollywood Bible epics.
Religious groups saw something else entirely: blasphemy.
The film opened in the United States in August 1979, and immediately screenings were picketed by rabbis and nuns. Michael Palin later recalled seeing "Nuns with banners!" outside theaters. The Rabbinical Alliance called it "foul, disgusting and blasphemous." The Lutheran Council labeled it a "profane parody." The Catholic Film Monitoring Office declared it a sin even to watch the film.
When Life of Brian reached the United Kingdom, the fury intensified.
The British Board of Film Classification gave it an AA certificate, meaning anyone 14 or older could watch it. But UK law allowed local councils to override that decision. And they did—in droves.
By early 1980, 11 councils had banned the film outright in their jurisdictions. Another 28 councils raised the certificate from AA to X, restricting it to viewers 18 and older. Since the film's distributors refused to show it with an X certificate, this effectively banned it in those areas too.
That meant 39 UK councils total had prevented the film from being shown.
In some cases, councils banned the film before even watching it. One member of Harrogate Council later admitted during a television interview that they'd based their decision entirely on what they'd been told by the Nationwide Festival of Light, an evangelical Christian group. They hadn't seen the film. Some councils had no cinemas within their boundaries at all—they banned a film that could never have been shown there anyway.
Mary Whitehouse, the conservative activist who'd previously campaigned against The Exorcist and Doctor Who, led the charge. She organized petitions, distributed pamphlets, and picketed cinemas screening the film.
The absurdity wasn't lost on local residents. Letters poured into newspapers mocking the bans. One letter to the Harrogate Advertiser, dripping with sarcasm, praised the council's "splendid and timely action" in banning a film the writer admitted he hadn't seen: "Not since the Emperor Nero has such a threat been posed against Christianity... There is no doubt that, were it to be shown in Harrogate, Christian Civilisation as we know it would vanish overnight, old ladies would be sold to white slavers, there would be human sacrifice on the Stray, and blood-crazed mobs of perverted young people would burn our churches to the ground."
But the bans kept spreading.
Ireland's film censor, Frank Hall, didn't even pause—he banned it immediately in 1979. The ban would last eight years, until 1987.
Norway banned it for violating Section 142 of the Norwegian Constitution, which prohibited insults to religious groups. The ban lasted a year.
Singapore banned it. South Africa banned it. Chile banned it.
John Cleese and Michael Palin even appeared on British television to defend the film in a notorious debate with Malcolm Muggeridge and the Bishop of Southwark, Mervyn Stockwood. The two religious figures dismissed the Pythons as offensive provocateurs chasing money. Palin, usually affable and mild-mannered, looked moments away from punching a bishop.
The irony, of course, was that Jesus himself appears in the film—portrayed respectfully during the Sermon on the Mount. The Pythons found nothing in Christ to satirize. Brian is explicitly not Jesus. He's just an unfortunate neighbor whose life gets tangled up with people desperately seeking a messiah.
But the controversy had an unexpected effect.
The bans didn't silence the film. They amplified it.
Every prohibition generated news coverage. Every protest drew more attention. Every council meeting became free publicity. People who might never have heard of Life of Brian suddenly wanted to know what all the fuss was about.
Mary Whitehouse's campaign, meant to shut down the film, instead drove people to cinemas. The Pythons later credited her personally for boosting box office numbers.
And then Sweden made its move.
While other countries were banning the film, Swedish marketers saw an opportunity. They leaned directly into the controversy with promotional materials featuring a tagline that became legendary:
"So funny it was banned in Norway!"
It was perfect. Cheeky. Self-aware. The kind of marketing that turns censorship into an endorsement.
It worked spectacularly.
Life of Brian became the fourth-highest-grossing film in the United Kingdom in 1979. In the United States, it was the highest-grossing British film of the year, earning over $19 million. The controversy that was meant to destroy it instead made it a phenomenon.
The bans continued for decades in some places. Swansea didn't lift its ban until 1997—eighteen years after release. Torbay Council in Devon held out until 2008—twenty-nine years. In a delicious twist, when Aberystwyth, Wales finally lifted its ban in 2009, the mayor presiding over the decision was Sue Jones-Davies—who had played Judith Iscariot, Brian's girlfriend, in the film.
Today, Life of Brian is regularly voted one of the greatest comedy films ever made. The British Board of Film Classification downgraded its rating in 2019 to 12A. What once required you to be 14 to watch (or 18 in many areas) can now be seen by 12-year-olds with a parent.
The story became a textbook example of what's now called the Streisand Effect—when attempts to suppress information make it more widely known. The more authorities tried to protect people from Life of Brian, the more those people wanted to see it.
The lesson for anyone trying to ban, censor, or suppress something controversial: you might just be writing the world's best advertisement.
As the Pythons might say: Always look on the bright side."
So there ya go. Needless to say, The Life Of Brian is a wonderful movie, a stone classic. If you've never seen the movie... well, I'm all but forced to assume that you suffer from some sort of "Ted" Cruz or Lindsey Graham level of detachment not just from pop culture but life itself. For Christ's sake, see the damn movie! Your life will be richer for it.