Author's Note/Disclaimers: This piece was written to fulfill the midterm take-home exam requirements for my Modern Literary Theory class. By no means does it include all of the major theorists of the period; only the ones who seem to come to the subject of a piece. I do not take responsibility for any offensive expressions used by any of the characters, since they originated either with Monty Python or with the theorists themselves. I also do not undertake to present this script as a teaching tool for literary theory: my professor had several apposite minor criticisms of my grasp of Lacan and Gallop in particular, but I did not revise the piece after it was graded. And now that it's all disclaimed, enjoy!
Meaning: The Holy Grail Of Critics
(A Script in 7 scenes)
Introduction
NARRATOR (author suggests John Cleese): Once upon a time, there was a king called Harold, who received a vision from a Gnostic text buried in a lake of scholarship. This text inspired him to form a new Round Table of Critics devoted to the cause of reinterpreting poetic influence and governing wisely the map of reading—or, shall we say, misreading…
Scene I: The Vision
King Harold, dressed in knightly attire, pantomimes riding through the forest, his attendant behind him. On the path through the forest, he meets the famed Sir Sigmund Bedivere, best known for his Oedipal theories. Sir Sigmund is sitting at the side of the path, reading Hamlet and polishing his glasses.
KING HAROLD: Sir Sigmund Bedivere!
SIR SIGMUND: Ja?
KH: I am Harold, King of the Critics. I am gathering noble critics to join my Round Table at Camelot. Will you join me?
SS (putting down Hamlet): Certainly. What do the Critics of the Round Table do?
KH: Well, uh…uh, I’m not certain, but you certainly can contribute to what we will do. Your theories are well known and much admired.
SS: What part of my theories would you find most useful?
KH: Well, the Oedipal complex theory I find most compelling—
SS: Ah, the Oedipal theory. I have worked a long time on that. The basic idea is that when people are born they all think they are one with the mother. Then they discover that they are not. The next step is believing that they are all male. Real boy babies realize that they cannot be one with the mother in the same way that the father is one with the mother, so they experience hatred against the father for getting in the way…
KH: Yes, yes, that part.
Suddenly the clouds part and the face of the supreme Gnostic of Alexandria appears to King Harold and Sir Sigmund.
GNOSTIC: Harold!
KH: Oh, my God!
G: Not exactly. But I have a task for you.
KH: What is it?
G: You are to collect your critics of the Round Table and search for the Holy Grail of Meaning.
KH: What is Meaning, oh lord?
G: Why should I have to tell you everything? Just look for it! The clouds close.
SS: Did he say Holy Grail of Meaning?
KH (excited): That’s it! That’s what I’ve been waiting for! The vision!
SS: Hein?
KH: Don’t you see? All the poets! They fight with their predecessors!
SS: Hein?
KH: It’s the anxiety of influence! See, look. Meaning is like your idea of the Mother. Okay? And the great poets are upset because all the previous great poets have stated meaning in a wonderful way. We’re used to thinking that poets are happy to receive influence from their fathers. But it’s not really like that. The new poets have to appropriate and misread their fathers if any new great poetry is going to proceed. The relationship is not a matter of exchange; it’s a matter of antagonism. And get this: all the great poets fight against death. Hmm…death has to work in here somewhere. Well, never mind that for now. The point is that the great poets of the new age are great not because they cooperate with their predecessors, but because they fight with them and struggle to encompass meaning—with the fathers’ help, of course—but strongly on their own. Get it?
SS: Hein?
KH (frustrated): Oh!
SS: I was just kidding. You seem to be on the right track, my boy.
KH (hurt): I’m on a totally new track!
SS (rolling his eyes good-naturedly): Very well, King Harold. Let us go on our quest for the Holy Grail of Meaning. He picks up Hamlet and puts it into the pocket of his knightly attire. They pantomime riding on through the forest.
Scene II: The Peasant
King Harold and Sir Sigmund emerge from the forest and pantomime riding across a great field toward a village. On the outskirts of the village they meet a small group of peasant women, one of whom is Helène Cixous, working to move earth from one place to another. Neither Harold nor Sigmund thinks to ask why.
KH: Hail, women. I am Harold, King of the Critics. Can you tell me the name of this village?
Cixous: Did he say King of the Critics?
KH (impatiently): Yes, yes. And this is Sir Sigmund Bedivere.
Cixous: Never heard of him.
KH: But surely you’ve heard of…? Look, I and my knights of the Round Table are on an important quest. We are making a map of misreading and…
Cixous: Oh, go on. Can’t you see we’re busy?
KH: But I’m your king.
Cixous: You’re a logocentrist.
KH: What?
Cixous: White, black, God, man, male, female, active, passive, assault, response. Don’t you see it’s all part of the same system? It’s inherent in our language, in our patterns of culture, in our conceptual fibers, in our enshrinement of dialectic…
KH: What? We’re on a quest for the Holy Grail of Meaning.
Cixous: Well, the only kind of Meaning you’re going to get, the way you’re going, is the kind of meaning that cancels out the Mother.
KH: Cancels out…? Look, I only want to know the name of this village so that…
Cixous: Logocentrism. That’s what you’re all about, you see. It’s a system where the Word goes out and does things to people, especially women, and doesn’t give them a chance to be active too. Don’t you see? Contradictions are ephemeral. Hierarchies have nothing to do with reality. It’s the jouissance—
KH: Is that the name of the village?
Cixous: No! It’s the joy in sex that only women know—and men fear—
KH: Look here, shut up! Grabs Cixous.
Cixous: See the violence inherent in the system! See the violence inherent in the system!
KH: Oh, forget it. Let’s just go to the village.
Scene III: The Madwomen of the Village
King Harold and Sir Sigmund travel into the village, where the peasant denizens are busy schlepping dead people around and arguing with each other about the price of dead cats. As they make their way through the village streets they meet up with a few other knights who agree about the quest, but wish to depart into several directions, so they salute King Harold and Sir Sigmund and veer off to pursue their own adventures, for which there is no time in this particular story. H’m, where was I? Oh, yes—King Harold and Sir Sigmund, along with their attendants, make their way through the village until they come upon a shouting mob of male novelists, politicians, and AM radio talk show hosts. They are crowded around what looks like a misshapen figure, until the knights get closer and discover that the figure is actually a pair of women tied together back to back and dressed in one voluminous gown. The cries of the mob become—um, articulate…
MOB: She’s mad! She’s mad! She’s mad!
G/G: No, we’re not!
King Harold draws closer through the shouts and tumult and gets a look at the women’s faces.
KH: By the great Gnostic of Alexandria!! I know these women! They’re Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar!
MOB: And she’s mad! Mad! MAD!!
SS: Wait—here, you—let me through. I specialize in madness. In fact, I know how to explain it. You see, it all starts with the story… Sir Sigmund is drowned out.
MOB: She’s mad!
SS: HOLD IT. (He climbs a few rungs of a stepladder and glares at them over his glasses. The tumult subsides a little.) Now, let’s see if we can’t solve this without all this abnormal yelling. You: who are you?
Gilbert: I’m Sandra Gilbert.
Gubar: And I’m Susan Gubar.
MOB: And she’s mad!
Sir Sigmund jerks a finger across his throat and the men pipe down.
G/G: We’re not mad. And we’re two people, for heaven’s sake!
KH (who has been staring in dismay at the women): But I thought you were on the right path. I thought you understood about the anxiety of influence…
G/G: But you see, you can’t just leave it at that. You forget to examine the female experience of literature. Just think how many women in 19th-century novels begin with a disclaimer, or worse, by passing themselves off as men. Women don’t just experience an anxiety of influence. They experience an anxiety of authorship altogether. Just by being women their voices are suspect, suppressed, Other. So when they write they don’t look for fathers to fight with. They look for sister predecessors that prove to them that they can do it, that they can create art. The relationship between the woman poet and the male poet is more than agonistic, but the relationship between the woman poet and her predecessor is one of cooperation.
KH: But that’s just what makes them not great. They need to absorb, misread, and produce in a strength that’s self-evident…
G/G: But that is nearly impossible if the surrounding society is convinced that self-evident strength in women is witchcraft…which is why we wrote our book.
Man in MOB: And that’s how we know she’s MAD!
MOB: MAD! MAD!
King Harold shakes his head in sorrow.
SS: (whistles) Now hold on! (The men subside.) That isn’t proper proof that the women are mad. Now what is a madwoman’s natural habitat?
Man in MOB: An attic?
SS: Exactly! And what makes a madwoman hysterical?
Another man: Their uterus?
SS: Okay. And what else is hysterical in an attic?
Man: Bertha Mason?
SS: Exactly! So if these women weigh the same as a three-volume first edition of Jane Eyre, then that means… He waves a hand in circles to help them.
MOB (catching on): She’s mad!
Joyously the Mob grabs Gilbert and Gubar and propels them to a large balance, where someone whips out a copy of Jane Eyre and places it on one end. They settle the women on the other end. It seems as if the women are going to win, but all at once the scales balance, and the men shout gleefully, "To the attic!" and drag Gilbert and Gubar out of sight.
SS: Cheer up, King Harold. We have yet to find the Holy Grail of Meaning.
KH: Yes. (rousing himself) We must trek on. (sighs) I thought we almost had it for a while.
Scene IV: The Round Table vs. the French
King Harold, Sir Sigmund, and their entourage leave the village, cross another forest, and find themselves in a clearing that surrounds a large castle.
KH: Maybe these people can help us.
SS: Go ahead. Shout.
KH: All right. You there! People of this castle! I am Harold, King of the Critics!
A French head pops up behind the parapet high above their heads. It is Luce Irigaray, wearing a large helmet.
LI: What do you want?
KH: I am Harold, King of the Critics, and I am here with some of my knights from the Round Table.
LI: King of the Critics? Who are the Critics?
KH: Well, it’s what we are.
LI: We are?
KH: Yes, and we’re asking for directions. You see, we have a quest to find the Holy Grail of Meaning.
LI: Oh, that. We’ve already got one. (Bends down and whispers to Helene Cixous, who is behind the parapet also): I told him we’ve already got one. Cixous snickers.
KH: You what?
LI: Actually, we’ve got more than one.
Cixous snickers again.
KH (half to himself): More than one? —Look here, we don’t have time for this. We are on a quest.
LI: Do you think Meaning comes from One, you silly English-speaking-type person?
KH: We were sent on a mission by—
LI: Oh, go away.
KH: Stop! I command you to let us in!
LI: You do, do you? (She stands up in full view.) Well, I wave my private parts at you, you silly English k-niggots.
SS (apoplectic): But you don’t have any private parts!
LI: Says who?
SS: It’s self-evident. You are a woman, you see, and you are merely saying that because you are full of penis envy. We have penises. Here, let me show you…
LI: Oh, spare me. I’ve seen it before. You are suffering from a major misconception here. Just because women don’t have penises doesn’t mean they have Nothing. On the contrary, a woman has a wonderful body that knows itself by not being one or made up of ones. You are so fixated on what you can see! You men set up this penis envy thing because castration is important to you and you can’t bear it if it’s not important to us, too. So making women into this passive home for the penis and No Thing more is the whole raison d’être for your argument. So go away, I have no more time for you.
KH: If you don’t let us in we’re going to charge the gates!
LI: I warned you! (To the others inside the castle) Vite, vite! Le catapult! Et fetchez la vache!
Cixous: What did you say?
LI: La vache! La vache!
Cixous: Are you calling me a bitch?
LI: Yes!!
Cixous: Well, thank you very much.
LI: Yes, yes, just get into the catapult.
Cixous gets into the catapult and the French fling her over, screaming wildly.
KH: Oh, no! They’re throwing French feminists at us! Run away! Run away!
LI (dusting off her hands): Well, that takes care of that.
NARRATOR: So the knights fled from the castle of French feminists and spread out over the countryside, searching high and low for the Holy Grail of Meaning. They had many adventures, and many songs and stories entered the legends because of them. Because of this experience, however, King Harold grew more and more bitter, and his heart grew stubborn because of the feminists. In fact, he came to dislike anything that reminded him of the feminists—anything, indeed, that seemed to contradict the spirit of individual agonism. But he kept doggedly on at the quest, he and his band of noble and unique knights of Criticism.
Eventually, King Harold and his entourage arrived at the Mysterious Cave of Knowledge. They stood at a distance debating what to do…
Scene V: The Critics vs. Sorcerer Jacques
King Harold and his critics of the Round Table approach the Mysterious Cave of Knowledge. It is a misshapen hole in the earth that reminds them of things dangerous and slightly dirty.
KH: Shall we approach?
A new voice cuts them short.
SJ: You don’t know enough to approach!
SS: Who was that?
A strange man dressed in goatskins appears in a thunderous puff of smoke, standing above them on a rock.
KH: Hello. I am Harold, King of the Critics. Who are you?
SJ: I am Jacques Lacan, sorcerer extraordinaire. King of the Critics, are you? We’ll see about that.
Sorcerer Jacques causes a cloud of smoke and thunder to explode just to their left.
SS: What was that for?
SJ: That’s for me to know and you to find out.
KH: Look here. We are on a quest for the Holy Grail of Meaning. We suspect there is something to be found in that cave.
SJ: What is to be found in that cave is beyond the likes of you. If you found the Grrrail, you wouldn’t know what to do with it! (He punctuates this speech with explosions of smoke on the countryside.)
KH: Would you stop insulting us and be clear?
SJ: Clear? There’s no such thing as clear. We just think there is. Our language, based as it is on the supposed relationship of signifier and signified, is actually a complex tangle of associations that stem from our split recognition of ourselves.
KH: Huh?
SS: I think I know what you’re saying. It’s at the point that a person recognizes himself as a self that the importance of language comes in.
SJ (turning to glare interestedly at him): So. And furthermore, our language, developed as a means of conceptualizing self, is hopelessly phallocentric. Who are you?
SS: My name is Sir Sigmund .
SJ (eyes glittering): Ah! Yes, it is from you that my work primarily takes its impetus. You will not have known the developments in linguistic theory, have you?
SS: No, but I am following you a little.
SJ: Good. I had hoped you would. However, you are quite wrong in several respects.
SS: Am I?
SJ (nods curtly and explodes some smoke at the mouth of the cave): Indeed. That whole debate about the locus of female pleasure—total bosh and poppycock. The phallocentric means of conceptualization applies to every member of that debate, male or female, and the meaning you are trying to squeeze out of your language is zilch. The phallus is a signifier, the ultimate signifier, for that attempt to locate meaning in the Other.
KH (breaking in): I am sick and tired of all this talk about phalluses. We were sent on a quest by—
SJ (grinning unpleasantly): By whom?
King Harold subsides with a worried frown.
SJ: You don’t believe in God, do you? If you do, I should have to hit you, if you were worth it. The Other is that dubious quality of being that we know nothing about except perhaps through the ununifiable, inarticulate jouissance of woman—
KH (stormy): There’s that word again! I am sick and tired of that word!
SJ: Then you’d better not go into the cave.
KH: I’m going to try, dammit.
SJ (grinning): Okay, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.
KH: Come, my noble brethren!
King Harold storms down the path to the mouth of the cave, but all at once a rabbit appears lippety-clippety in his way.
SJ (calling helpfully): Look out for that rabbit!
KH (drawing his sword): Screw the rabbit!
Sorcerer Jacques wiggles a finger, and the rabbit leaps rabidly at the knights, drawing unbelievable amounts of blood.
KH: Run away! Run away!
The knights retreat, bleeding profusely, and return to where Sorcerer Jacques is smirking on the bluff.
KH (panting): Right. We’ll have to use the Holy Hand Grenade to kill that rabbit.
SJ (half to himself): Ah, how ridiculous it is when meaning is reduced to questions of fucking.
The Critics produce the Holy Hand Grenade, blow up the rabbit, and enter the cave. There they find an inscription made by the Great Gnostic of Alexandria.
KH: Look! It says that in order to find the Holy Grail of Meaning, we must look for the Castle of—Umph.
SS: The Castle of what?
KH: Umph.
SS: I beg your pardon?
KH: That’s just what it says. Umph. Well, we’d best be on our way.
NARRATOR: So the noble Critics of the Round Table leave the Mysterious Cave of Knowledge to search for the Castle of Umph. On their way they come across a frightening ravine, the Divide of Articulation…
Scene VI: The Ordeal of the Critics
King Harold arrives at a smoke-belching, deep ravine. There he meets up with several of his straying knights and they all approach a rickety rope bridge guarded by a gnomish woman, Jane Gallop.
KH: Here, one of you approach her.
Knight (approaching): I wish to cross this bridge, madam.
JG: He who would pass to the other side must answer me these questions three. What is your name?
Knight: Lancelot the Oversexed.
JG: What is your quest?
Knight: To find the Holy Grail of Meaning.
JG: What is your favorite color?
Knight: Blue.
JG: You may pass.
The knight disappears over the misty bridge.
SS: Well, this ought to be easy.
Sir Sigmund approaches the gnome.
JG: He who would pass to the other side must answer me these questions three. What is your name?
SS: Sir Sigmund.
JG: What is your quest?
SS: To find the Holy Grail of Meaning.
JG: And how does Lacan help us to articulate the female sexual experience?
SS (angry): How can you expect me to know that? Oh, well, I’ll give it a shot. Sorcerer Jacques just told us how the phallocentric conception is a part of our language and a part of our development of self. Is it that the female sexual experience is a split-off from this undifferentiated story of development?
JG: Wrong!
Sir Sigmund is whirled through the air, wailing, to his doom in the murky ravine.
JG (to KH): Would you like to try?
KH: Sure. But what’s the correct answer to his question?
JG: It’s simple—or not. Lacan explains phallocentrism as a dependence on sight, as others do, but he links it to our idea of the signifier—something we can see—as exchanged from the signified—what we can’t see but only imagine is represented by the signifier. So language is phallocentric, and flaunting this in debate is a way of stating the case in a refreshingly antagonistic way. It helps us because we can now say that female sexual experience is less concentric than contiguous—it does not have a prick in the center of the hole, but it is mobile, without morphology, without evidence—it is the scent of a woman.
KH (muttering): Well, something smells.
JG: Now for you. What is your name?
KH: I am Harold, King of the Critics.
JG: What is your quest?
KH: To find the Holy Grail of Meaning.
JG: Who is your favorite author?
KH: Are you kidding? He’s the most canonical author in the world! You mean you don’t know?
JG: I…Ahhhhhhh!
Gallop is thrown wailing into the abyss. King Harold dusts off his hands.
KH: It just goes to show, if you need a trump card, play Shakespeare.
He crosses the bridge into the Vale of Language.
Scene VII and Last: This Means War!
King Harold and the ragged remnants of his troop approach what appears to be the Castle of Umph. He stands at the huge door and knocks.
KH: Hallo in there! We are seeking the Holy Grail of Meaning! Is this the Castle of Umph?
Luce Irigaray appears over the parapet above.
LI: You again? Oh, you bother me. Go away, or I will taunt you a second time.
KH: Look here, I’ve had about enough of this…
LI: You’ve had enough? I fart in your general direction, k-niggots.
KH: For the last time, are you going to open up?
LI: For the last time, no! (Derisive French laughter.)
She dumps a chamber pot on King Harold’s head. The laughter doubles.
KH: That’s it. This means war, men!
The King and his men muster a suddenly endless army of armed knights preparing to destroy the castle.
KH (war cry): DEATH TO THE RESENTERS!
Just as they are about to charge, a large police force arrives in a squeal of tires and sirens to arrest the violent men. And to this day the Holy Grail of Meaning is yet to be definitely located…
THE END (?)