“And you can quote me on that”.
Everyone is a big fan of something. Me? I love Curb Your Enthusiasm, I’m Alan Partridge and pissing on the parades of the self assured and insecure. You’re probably a big fan of me, because I’m really awesome. In fact, you probably go around telling people the address of this site, whilst quoting some of my splendidly well turned phrases. If you don’t, I’m coming to get you.
There are many people in this world that love nothing more than to quote from other people’s work. The two shows I mentioned above are both eminently quotable. In fact, I’ve occasionally caught myself quoting lines from both and have subsequently pissed myself off. I hate it when I hear others doing it and generally give them some much deserved grief for it. I’m not a bad person, I’m just not a particularly tolerant one when it comes to the foibles of Man.
Possibly the most oft-quoted show is Monty Python’s Flying Circus, a show which, nearly 40 years ago, helped redefine comedy sketch shows. I’ll admit that, when I was young, I watched the show and found it to be sporadically funny, watching on the recommendation of my father, who howled hysterically throughout. Let’s be honest, it’s not really very funny and hasn’t stood the test of time. It’s an incredibly middle class show and relies heavily on surreal situations, with what many believe to be keenly observed dialogue which, to my mind, is just dull. The show often depicts the working class as idiots whilst championing the middle class as the only people that matter. It is my opinion that the Terry Gilliam animations are the best element of the show, but that’s beside the point. Love you Terry. Mwah.
Fans of Python are, almost invariably, middle class white people that love to spout lines from the show amongst their circle of friends. Many a time I have been sat in a pub and overheard some lank haired, spotty, gangly fools exchanging lines from the show in what I can only see as an attempt to be funny by proxy.
You are not funny because you have committed the entire show to memory. You are not funny because you have seen Spamalot 6 times. You are not funny because you can reenact the entire black knight scene from Monty Python and The Holy Grail, or can drunkenly sing the songs from the films outside my window at three o’clock in the morning. You are an unoriginal, tedious bore and will never be as funny as the people you are emulating because you have no talent or ability to create your own humour. That is why you are sitting in the pub drinking cheap cider with friends who appear to have been photocopied from the pages of Kerrang, circa 1986, whilst spouting someone else’s jokes. Please stop.
The above is a short list of shows and films that are prime examples of overly quoted material. Shows and films that I cannot bear to hear lines repeated from. I like Spaced. I like Star Wars. But that doesn’t mean it’s OK to quote them. Furthermore, rabid fans, it is not OK to sit and say the lines while these things are on and you are in my presence. Oh no. No, no, no. If I were sitting watching one of the above (pretty unlikely in the case of Star Trek, as I’m not stupid) and you started to quote, they would be turned off and you would be pummeled into silence with whatever is closest to hand. If that happens to be your own arm, so be it.
Were you to quote some classic poetry or a passage from Shakespeare, my disapproval would be the same. People are all too quick to drop a phrase from Oscar Wilde and the like, in an attempt to appear witty and urbane. However, it just makes you look like someone that can’t come up with anything themselves, which is truly disappointing as the human brain is an incredibly complex and capable bit of kit. Use it wisely. Stop biting rhymes like a sucker emcee and do something creative with it.
Imitation may well be the sincerest form of flattery, but it is not a passport to credibility. It’s just annoying. And you can quote me on that.
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Comments
Comment from Bud
Time: February 18, 2008, 1:46 pm
You terrible cunt etc etc.
As I said, I’ve been guilty of exactly this in the past and want to apologise to THE ENTIRE WORLD for being a useless shit. Quoting shouldn’t be allowed.
Comment from ticktockhouse
Time: February 19, 2008, 11:31 am
Broadly though, I do agree with you. There’s little that’s less funny than people standing around telling each other that nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. I think perhaps the most irksome element of this unabated quotery is the silly voices.
It did serve a purpose in my youth however, as my parents’ draconian bedtime rules often meant that I missed many of the post-watershed shows I really should have been watching in the mid-80s. The ability of a couple of my contemporaries to remember and quote the shows verbatim really did turn out to be quite useful
As you say, in its time, Python helped redefine comedy sketch shows, and I think this is the reason why so many men-of-a-certain-age find it so gutbustingly funny. It falls prey to the same thing that comedy always succumbs to though…new jokes become old jokes, or the “funniness” of a joke tends to be inversely proportional to its age, especially when every fucker is quoting it.
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Comment from ticktockhouse
Time: February 18, 2008, 9:21 am
“…Skip to the end…”