It's a shame that she is not mentioned. In answer to one of the other posters wondering about Monty Python, the answer is yes. She told me that Eric Idle or possibly Terry Jones (?) at one point had a fascination with these illustrations and I believe they corresponded. In any case, it wasn't just the rabbit sketch - some of the interstitial animations between skits are taken directly from tropes in these drawings.
> like a barber with a wooden leg (which, for reasons that escape me, was the height of medieval comedy)
Surely this is no great mystery? Barbers acted as amateur surgeons across the mediaeval world. They'd typically be the ones amputating the limbs, not the ones having amputated...
They also seem to miss a fairly obvious reason for the fearsome but humorous rabbits and snails:
Farmers, as most monks were, do not get on horseback and fight dragons but instead get on their knees and wage war with small rodents and snails that eat the fruits of their garden.
It's self deprecation. In annals recounting heroic deeds and legends, we have monks illustrating their own epic battles (and defeats) at the hands of the dastardly hares. Those fruit stealing @#$%s.
It double as a counterpoint to the notion of saintly innocent white bunnies, too.
"Christ bunnies me arse, little buggers will find themselves on their own cross if I catch them in me cloves again."
This is more of a ex-British empire thing, but at least some surgeons I have heard of in Australia insist, among medical company, of being called "Mister" not "Doctor", to set them apart from "mere doctors".
I think this is a formal distinction in the UK, but in Australia I think both groups can be called Dr.
It is also to do with the doctor-patient relationship. The surgeon-patient relationship is far more limited. A patient is refered to a surgeon by a doctor for a specific treatment.
Considering that in the pre-medchem era (i.e. until 1935 when sulphonamides entered the field) surgery was the only field of medicine that actually worked, this is strange. Physicians could diagnose patients just fine since before the days of Papyrus Eber, but the treatment options were very limited.
> Physicians could diagnose patients just fine since before the days of Papyrus Eber, but the treatment options were very limited.
Can you elaborate on this? Until germ theory and lesion theory, western medicine lacked the concept of etiology of disease, limiting the ability to accurately and consistently diagnose disease. Doctors operated within a Galenic framework and relied heavily, if not exclusively, on uroscopy for diagnosis (hence diabetes mellitus -- to pass through sweet urine).
> surgery was the only field of medicine that actually worked
"War is the only proper school for surgeons." -- Hippocrates
Doctors, following Hippocratic and Galenic traditions, would refuse to perform surgery, due to its usage of knives and causing harm to the patient. Even the study of anatomy by means of human dissection was discouraged until the 16th century, when Vesalius and others published their landmark works. Prior anatomical publications (such as those by Leonardo da Vinci) likely presented dissections of other animals as if they were human, due to the presence of structures such as the rete mirabile.
In the absence of antibiotics, surgery was a risky, and frequently lethal procedure. One surgery famously led to the death of 3 people. Before the advent of chloroform in the 1800s, there was no way for surgeons to effectively anesthetize subjects. Consequently, surgery was not looked upon favorably, nor considered a reliable medical practice.
They were probably doing equivalent things until more recently. My local barber has a retro sign hanging in his shop that looks to be an antique one from a barber shop probably in the 1800's. It lists 'tooth pulling' as one of the activities alongside har cutting and shaving etc.
Strangely, the tooth extraction didn't cost much more than a shave & a haircut - I wonder what sort of anaesthetic was used!? :)
But it was the CBS late night movie in 1977. Also, the wikipedia page just says "some people" -- not sure that "overestimates" the number of people who would have been aware of killer bunnies.
Where did you live in 1977 that only had 3 channels? I was in the greater LA media market and I think we received about 20 terrestrial channels counting all the UHF. About every other VHF channel picked something up.
Also, my recollection is that TV airing of movies that were a couple of years old was a bfd back then. My father worked 2pm to 10pm in 1977 and he and my mom were huge monty python fans, so I bet they watched it.
It also aired on PBS, the dates are not in the wikipedia article, but by the time the Carter incident became public it might have aired a few times.
And 1975 is when Monty Python started to show on public television in the US (vs 1969 on BBC). I was only 7 in 1979, but I know we as a family watched flying circus when it aired (I didn't control the TV during prime time, but flying circus, dr who, nova, macneil lehrer newshour, some business news show, and yoga are all shows I remember watching with my parents on PBS) https://www.nytimes.com/1975/04/26/archives/monty-pythons-fl...
I find it hard to believe there were not any people who made some humorous connections between the killer rabbit of caerbannog and the killer rabbit of a Plains, Georgia pond.
Cable wasn't much of a thing outside the big metros until the 80's. Most of the rural area in 75 had over the air. LA and NYC were there own world, and it showed from some of the writings of the time.
Someone might have, but it sure wasn't enough to justify the entry, and given the author didn't cite a source, I'm pretty sure it was just the author.
I didn't say anything about cable. From what I know of the history of cable, it started for places that were geographically isolated from receiving terrestrial broadcast (because of a valley of whatever). Terrestrial == over-the-air. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrestrial_television
Not sure why they NYT would have called it a "killer rabbit" if it was not a monty python reference.
If I ever somehow acquire a Bill Gates level fortune, my plan is to use it to fund a secret research program tasked with using genetic engineering to create the low level monsters from assorted MMORPGS and figuring out how to set up self-sustaining breeding populations of them in the wild near towns.
Offhand, I can't think of an MMORPG that had low level killer rabbits (zombie or not). It's mostly giant snakes, giant bats, giant rats, small orcs, small goblins, small kobolds, small gnolls, small gelatinous cubes, and things like that. (Skeletons are also common, but they don't seem feasible except as robotic skeletons).
However, I'll add killer rabbits, as they would fit right in.
Wikipedia entry states "The idea for the rabbit in the movie was taken from the façade of the cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris. This illustrates the weakness of cowardice by showing a knight fleeing from a rabbit."
I watched the movie with my son (11) a few weeks ago, and was wondering if he'd enjoy the sometimes dry humor: he loved it, esp. the questioning at the Bridge of Death.
Apparently there are three (maybe two?) knights chasing rabbits in the stonework of the facade, and another in the stained glass of the west rose window:
My son is also 11 and a Monty Python virgin. Thanks for reminding me of this necessary cultural education and that it will be at least semi age-appropriate. Damn I'm looking forward to both watching it again myself and watching him watching it.
And, depending upon his reaction it, on to Life of Brian in order to cement critical thinking skills against any future attempts to recruit him into lifelong religious servitude (and of course learning the details of latin grammar).
Oh they absolutely were. Their research into the time periods in which they wrote sketches was often far better than that of "serious" films and TV series. Notably, Terry Jones has had a deep professional and personal interest in medieval literature and art his whole life. I'd bet good money on his being intimately familiar with medieval killer rabbits when they worked on Holy Grail.
“Drolleries sometimes also depicted comedic scenes, like a barber with a wooden leg (which, for reasons that escape me, was the height of medieval comedy) or a man sawing a branch out from under himself“
... because how could the barber amputate his own leg? Ahaha...
It's a shame that she is not mentioned. In answer to one of the other posters wondering about Monty Python, the answer is yes. She told me that Eric Idle or possibly Terry Jones (?) at one point had a fascination with these illustrations and I believe they corresponded. In any case, it wasn't just the rabbit sketch - some of the interstitial animations between skits are taken directly from tropes in these drawings.