Once upon a time – that’s how fairy tales begin. And sometimes, it’s how debates begin, too – about works of art we’ve long since crowned as classics. But what happens when these works are viewed through the lens of a new era? When collective memory suddenly finds corners that hurt?
A prime example: Life of Brian. Monty Python’s 1979 satire – an anarchic mockery of the Bible, a firework of jokes with a sacred seriousness. A cult film for decades, one that even survived church protests with British nonchalance. And yet today, a new debate rages over a scene that had long gone mostly unnoticed: Loretta.
In this scene, a man declares that he wants to be called Loretta and have babies – much to the confusion of his fellow revolutionaries. Back then, it was a quirky jab at leftist group dynamics and political correctness. Today, the scene stands accused of being insensitive toward trans identities. And what does John Cleese say about it? Nothing. Or rather: He says it stays. Period.
“The scene wasn’t a problem for 40 years,” the Monty Python co-founder explains. “Why should it be now?” Cleese sees no relevance in the Loretta debate, no argument that would justify altering the material. Not even when Tony Award winners recommend it. Not even when the entire debate around stage adaptations now feels like a tightrope walk between self-censorship and online outrage. Cleese remains steadfast – as does Loretta.
The New Sensitivity
Cleese’s stance is clear. But he is far from alone in his frustration over current “correction waves” sweeping through the canon of cultural history like an algorithm crawling through old tweets. Even works like The Lord of the Rings, which Tolkien once wrote as a tribute to the myths of Europe, are being scrutinized.
Suddenly, there are questions about whether the Elves are too fair-skinned, the Orcs too demonic, the people of Gondor too idealized. And whether all of it echoes a racist worldview - the image of the “noble West” versus the “barbaric East.” Haradrim, Easterlings, dark skin tones and curved swords. Colonial rhetoric in fantasy language?
Maybe. Maybe not.
But here lies the nerve of our time: in the tension between the desire for justice - and the danger of rewriting cultural memory as if it were a flawed script. With trigger warnings before Disney movies, new disclaimers for Shakespeare, and a digital X-ray scan of every allegory. Even words that were once just rhymes are now potential tripwires.
Was Everything Better Back Then? Or Was Everything Just Barbarism?
It’s a dangerous argument that surfaces again and again: that the past was nothing more than a museum of cruelty. A place of structural violence, racism, sexism - and that the art of the time was merely a mirror of that. That we must rewrite everything to make it fair by today’s standards.
But what if the opposite of barbarism is not censorship, but context? What if the goal is not to “cleanse” old works, but to better understand them? A John Cleese who says “Loretta stays” is not necessarily being stubborn. He is an artist choosing to leave the work in its original time - not out of defiance, but out of principle.
Because - who decides what is still allowed to be shown? Who hands out the new seal of “contemporary approval”?
A classic film is not a contract with the present. It is a voice from the past. And those voices can provoke, irritate, confuse. That is their right - perhaps even their duty.
And so Life of Brian remains a satire of society - then and now. And Loretta? She stays right where she was: in the heart of the discourse, between freedom and progress, between laughter and reflection. Maybe not everything was better back then. But maybe it wasn’t all just barbarism either.
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