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Monty Python comedian John Cleese has said that he has been advised to not play any university campuses in the future, due to students having taken political correctness from a “good idea” into something where any criticism can be labelled as “cruel”.
Cleese, who wrote and starred in the likes of Monty Python’s Life of Brian, which was majorly critical of religion and was widely condemned upon its release as a result, spoke in a video for The Big Think in which he discussed why we can’t have political correctness and comedy “at the same time”. Cleese said: “I’ve been warned recently not to go to university campuses because political correctness has been taken from being a good idea, from ‘let us not be mean particularly to people who are not able to look after themselves very well’, to the point where any kind of criticism of any kind of individual or group can be labelled cruel.
“The whole point about comedy is that all comedy is critical.”
Speaking of how he believes people should react when they are offended, he added: “Some newspapers offend me with their laziness, their nastiness and their inaccuracy. But I’m not going to expect someone to stop that happening; I shall simply speak out about it. Sometimes there people who are offended… and they want to somehow come up and say “right, stop that” to whoever is offending them, and of course, as former chairman of the BBC once said: “There are some people who I would wish to offend.” And I think there’s some truth in that, too.”
Cleese continued: “The idea that you have to be protected from any kind of uncomfortable emotion is one I absolutely do not subscribe to.”
As a co-founder of business training programme Video Arts, Cleese has provided talks to students over the years on both business and psychology, though the comedian has now claimed that he won’t be returning to campuses any time soon.
