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We're becoming more like the oppressed serfs every day. It's not as funny as in the movie since it's actually happening to us now. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAaWvVFERVAFor those of you with dial-up, here's the transcript of the scene. with their bare hands. A few serfs here and there carry what pathetic foodstuffs they have gathered up the road toward some castle or other.] cart in the same direction.] ARTHUR: Old woman! DENNIS: Man! ARTHUR: Man, sorry. What knight lives in that castle over there? DENNIS: I’m thirty-seven. ARTHUR: What? DENNIS: I’m thirty-seven. I’m not old!15 ARTHUR: Well, I can’t just call you ‘Man.’ DENNIS: Well, you could say ‘Dennis.’ ARTHUR: Well, I didn’t know you were called ‘Dennis.’ DENNIS: Well, you didn’t bother to find out, did you? ARTHUR: I did say sorry about the ‘old woman,’ but from the behind you looked— DENNIS: What I object to is you automatically treat me like an inferior! ARTHUR: Well, I am king... DENNIS: Oh king, eh? Very nice. An’ how’d you get that, eh? By exploitin’ the workers, by ’angin’ on to outdated imperialist dogma which perpetuates the economic an’ social differences in our society! If there’s ever going to be any progress—
WOMAN SERF: Dennis, there’s some lovely filth down here— Oh... How d’you do? ARTHUR: How do you do, good lady. I am Arthur, king of the Britons. Whose castle is that?
WOMAN: King of the who? ARTHUR: The Britons. WOMAN: Who are the Britons? ARTHUR: Well, we all are. We’re all Britons and I am your king. WOMAN: I didn’t know we had a king. I thought we were an autonomous collective. DENNIS: You’re foolin’ yourself. We’re living in a dictatorship, a self-perpetuating autocracy in which the working classes— WOMAN: Oh, there you go, bringing class into it again. DENNIS: That’s what it’s all about! If only people would— ARTHUR: Please, please good people. I am in haste. Who lives in that castle? WOMAN: No one lives there. ARTHUR: Then who is your lord? WOMAN: We don’t have a lord. ARTHUR: What? DENNIS: I told you. We’re an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take it in turns to act as a sort of executive-officer-for-the-week.18 ARTHUR: Yes. DENNIS: But all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special bi-weekly meeting. ARTHUR: Yes, I see. DENNIS: By a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs— ARTHUR: Be quiet! DENNIS: —but by a two-thirds majority in the case of more major— ARTHUR: Be quiet! I order you to be quiet! WOMAN: Order, eh? Who does he think he is?
ARTHUR: I am your king! WOMAN: Well, I didn’t vote for you. ARTHUR: You don’t vote for kings. WOMAN: Well, ’ow did you become king then? ARTHUR: The Lady of the Lake , her arm clad in the purest, shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water signifying by Divine Providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur . That is why I am your king!19 DENNIS: Listen. Strange women lyin’ in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony. ARTHUR: Be quiet! DENNIS: Well you can’t expect to wield supreme executive power just ’cause some watery tart threw a sword at you! ARTHUR: Shut up! DENNIS: I mean, if I went around sayin’ I was an emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they’d put me away!20
ARTHUR: Shut up! Will you shut up! DENNIS: Ah, now we see the violence inherent in the system. ARTHUR: Shut up! DENNIS: Oh! Come and see the violence inherent in the system! Help! Help! I’m being repressed!
ARTHUR: Bloody peasant!
DENNIS: Oh, what a giveaway. Did you here that? Did you here that, eh? That’s what I’m on about. Did you see him repressing me? You saw it didn’t you?
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