Fawlty Towers Read online

  Whenever aristocratic or socially important figures are introduced to the series, however, they are mostly depicted as dull and unintelligent. There is the Gourmet Night’s slightly handicapped Colonel Hall (he has a twitch), for instance, whose conversational range encompasses no more than the vagaries of the weather. But because of his exaggerated respect for anything to do with what he believes to be ‘important people’, Basil tries to maintain decorum, as he understands it, by avoiding introducing the Twitchens to the Halls for fear of drawing attention to the embarrassing similarity between the name of the former and the neurological affliction of the latter.

  Sybil is of course well aware of her husband’s somewhat anachronistic veneration of the aristocracy. In a passing reference to the alleged charm of cockney-speaking Mr. Johnson, in The Psychiatrist, she challenges Basil: “You seem to think that we girls should be aroused by people like Gladstone and Earl Haig and Baden Powell, don’t you?” Basil’s response is particularly revealing. “Well, at least they had a certain dignity. It’s hard to imagine Earl Haig wandering round with his shirt open to the waist, covered with identity bracelets.”

  Whatever one may have to say about the British upper classes, one would have to admit that generally speaking they obey (or at least obeyed) precepts of decent behaviour, and comport themselves unexceptionably in public. This is a basic tenet of Basil’s in matters concerning ‘high’ society, and it goes to show how little he actually expects from people — any kind of people.

  In fact, one of his main aims in life is to keep everyone at a certain distance, and since it is a typical plebeian trait to hint at intimacy with people one scarcely knows (as both Sybil and Mr. Johnson do) Basil makes a virtue out of what he sees as an aristocratic creation of an unbridgeable gulf between the vulgar individual and the man of distinction — that is, himself.

  THE SEXUAL PHOBIA

  A great deal of British humour is based on the idiosyncratic attitude of the ‘decent’ Englishman towards eroticism. Basil Fawlty is not only an example of this; he is the summation of classic British prudishness.

  For non-British people the following may be crucial information. British boys and girls over several generations have had something of their view of the sexual world influenced by their visits to the pantomime, of which a recurrent feature is men dressing up and acting as women — generally old, comic women. The Monty Python universe is pervaded by this kind of transvestism. All the group’s members used to dress up regularly in women’s clothing. It suffices to recall the famous theme song, “I’m a lumberjack and I’m okay”, to have tangible proof of their transsexual raptures.

  Terry Jones (the incarnation of Brian’s mother in Life of Brian) used to excel in female roles — in fact he hardly ever appeared out of them. Eric Idle had a great fondness for portraying gossipy ladies and venerable judges who revealed themselves as transvestites. Cleese himself appeared from time to time, and with considerable sadistic satisfaction, in grim female guises, such as Little Red Riding Hood with an axe in her hand.

  Basil Fawlty, on the other hand, is the poor blighter who was never able to use laughter to lessen the weight of the terrible burden of repressed sexuality. To him, sexuality is a sinister reality whose frivolous aspects presage the decline of Western civilisation as he knows it. And that’s why it is one of the sources of endless domestic conflict chez the Fawltys.

  It is permissible to assume that by the time we get to know them, Basil and Sybil have developed what may euphemistically be termed ‘marital problems’. We might just about envisage Sybil’s enduring a Saturday night knee-trembler, in her flouncy nightie, in the dark, under cover, but the plaint, “Basil, not now. I have a terrible headache” is probably heard more and more frequently now.

  Basil’s advances are sometimes rejected, sometimes stoically borne. Either way, any reference during daylight hours to this shameful activity makes him extremely nervous and irritated.

  Sybil would no doubt have liked things to be different (that is, she wishes there was some spark between them still) but she has stopped talking to Basil about it. (Audrey, by contrast, is privy to all these confidential matters.) A consequence of their childless — and on that account all the more cerebral — marriage, is an unavowed yearning on the part of both for love. Sybil is able at times to admit this to herself, but she can’t always contain her acrimony whenever she thinks about what Basil doesn’t or simply cannot give her.

  Basil, who doesn’t want to consider their floundering sexual intimacy a problem, refuses to realise that there may be a causal link between his own hysteria and Sybil’s frigidity — and he would never openly recognise that he sometimes actually wishes that he were capable of being unfaithful.

  However, we as onlookers should not consider this a sad state of affairs. Without these sexual frustrations, obviously, the entire rationale of Fawlty Towers would have collapsed.

  There is substantial proof of this in that no fewer than three attempts have been made in the U S A. to adapt the idea of Fawlty Towers to the taste of U.S. television audiences. The first, called Snaveley, was produced during the summer of 1978 by Viacom and ABC, and never got past the pilot stage. Cleese himself, in an interview for the Los Angeles Times, suggested that the reasons for its failure was that “the producers feared it (the real Fawlty Towers) was too mean-spirited”, and that there was “a noticeable attempt to reassure the audience that the people in the show were all right folks.”

  In 1983 the same companies again collaborated in an effort to bring forth a replica of Fawlty Towers. It was called Amanda’s by the Sea, featuring a female character (played by Bea Arthur) in the main role. Here the Basil-type character was not merely relegated to the background, but omitted entirely! The series was planned to run in six parts, but only one episode was shot. It was a lamentable travesty of everything that Fawlty Towers stood for. Would you be able to imagine the hotel run by Sybil alone? It would just work smoothly, and where’s the fun in that?

  Finally, as recently as 1998, a project was launched by CBS, involving an interesting deal for John Cleese and Connie Booth. The series, named Payne (after the hotel owners, Royal and Constance Payne) went on air with an initial nine episodes. The show was apparently better conceived and executed than its predecessors, but lacked the sexual frustrations inherent in the original — Mrs. Payne having too much sex appeal to accurately replicate Sybil’s dilemma, and Mr. Payne being far too liberal to be at all likely to accommodate the moral contortions which form such important constituents of Basil’s problems.

  This is at least what I have been able to discern from descriptions of and comments about that series (I have not myself seen any of the above-mentioned shows), and apparently even such a topic as Breeze’s sexuality (Breeze being the allotrope of Polly) is discussible in Payne. It would have been strictly out of order for Sybil and Basil to venture on to such potentially hazardous ground.

  The question thus arises: is Fawlty Towers in its original version at all accessible to American viewers? Strange as it may seem, its lack of a modern ethos (especially in relation to sex and drugs) does not prevent enlightened American viewers from drawing immense pleasure from it. From my own first-hand experience I can certify that the four video cassettes comprising the entire series were almost invariably unavailable from the video stores I frequented during a one-year stay in Los Angeles. Most of the people with a sense of humour I spoke to in Los Angeles knew exactly what the series was about, and they quite often had a few pertinent quotes up their sleeves to be used on the right occasion.

  Rather than compare Fawlty Towers with any of its imitators, it would be more to the point, I think, to place its psychological core in relation to that of another, and this time very successful, American television show. Although Married with Children (featuring the shoe salesman Al Bundy, his busty, red-haired wife and two kids) has nothing in common with the former in most respects, there is one common factor — the secret horrors of a marriage that has bec
ome abhorrent but apparently indissoluble.

  On a personal note, in the case of my own first and probably last marriage, I had the ambiguous privilege of watching myself gradually metamorphose into a perfect Basil-clone (almost needless to add that my wife simultaneously became more and more like the old dragon). I heard myself dropping deeply ironic remarks which were beyond my wife’s comprehension (“It’s called ‘style’, dear — you would never understand”). I heard her in turn constantly asking me to do this or not to do that, with the result that I became clumsy and irrational, misplacing things, falling off ladders, backing my car into others. In short, I was Basil. I could hear myself deliver lines which were veritable quotes from an imaginary and virtually endless Fawlty Towers; I observed myself turning into the captured male, hands and feet tied to the domestic totem pole, reduced to vindicate myself against my savage aggressor through verbal retaliation.

  I dare say that any intelligent married man has a latent Basil germinating within himself. If he is lucky, the Basil within never receives the stimulus appropriate to his developing into a real monster, but it is upon this possibility that the series’ uncanny projection and its almost irresistible attraction rests.

  It is worthy of note that many (not all!) women who watch the series instinctively side with Sybil, and feel sorry for, and protective of, Manuel. To them Sybil is a quite normal and reasonable woman, and Manuel daft but harmless, and at least eager to please, whereas Basil inevitably gets everything monstrously wrong. On a superficial level there is some justification for this reading of the situation, but from a deeper perspective it’s not only faulty, but also, surely, a sign of a petty and ungenerous way of observing reality. Above all, it’s a non-humourous way of looking at it.

  In the liberated republic of humour, Basil may be seen as a genius who for some reason has got stuck in a situation far below his real station. His powers of imagination, even if askew, are so vast that he simply must misinterpret the most commonplace, everyday events. His measureless exaggerations and inappropriate actions are the manifestations of superhuman creative and affective forces held captive by Lilliputians. His majestic intellect resembles the magnifying glass through which the flea appears an elephant. No wonder that nobody understands what he is talking about: his is a true prophetic voice crying in the wilderness.

  He belongs in an altogether different world; his tragedy is that he doesn’t have the minimal comfort or assurance of knowing it. He is a fallen angel, a Gnostic lost in material confusion. The conflict between his superior intelligence on the one hand, and his near-complete inability to cope with the material world on the other, is the primum mobile of the crazy, other, universe he unfurls before our eyes.

  Basil: Zoom! What was that? “That was your life, mate.” That was quick, do I get another? “Sorry, mate, that’s your lot.”

  Sybil: Basil.

  Basil: Back to the world of dreams. Yes, dear?

  Only an enlightened mind perceives reality thus, and we mustn’t forget that John Cleese, the mastermind behind this sudden illumination, was in 1978-79 working simultaneously on the production of the second set of Fawlty Towers and ex-Python Terry Gilliams film production, Life of Brian. This film is entirely predicated on a non-orthodox conception of Christ. Along with mockery of revolutionary groups and their sectarianism, there is a Gnostic undertone to the film’s message, namely, “See through the illusions of the world, judge for yourself and do not fall prey to moral fanaticism. Be a Jesus unto yourself.”

  To equate oneself with Jesus has always in the view of the established Christian churches been considered the most malignant of heresies. It is precisely this hubristic self-identification with Jesus that lies at the root of gnosticism, a doctrine much in vogue among enlightened people in the Mediterranean area during the first centuries of our era. By stressing the spiritual ubiquity of Christ at the expense of his historical aspect, the Gnostic doctrine acquired some resemblance to Buddhist teachings, where the Buddha is considered as being not so much a historical figure as a state of mind. (I make reference to this because Basil’s lightning-quick reflection, “Back to the world of dreams” encapsulates references to Gnostic as well as Hindu conceptions of this world as a veil of illusion.)4

  To an enlightened Gnostic mind, sexuality represents an element of the obfuscation of true perception. Entangled in a web of constant illusion, while always claiming to be completely free from it, Basil is destined to have very serious problems. The sexual Freudian slip, therefore, is a constituent of many of Basil’s spontaneously arising mishaps, notably in the two episodes, The Psychiatrist and The Wedding Party, where his sexual phobia is the dominant theme of the drama.

  In The Psychiatrist — a truly sublime episode — we witness the superimposition of his obsession with social status onto his sexual paranoia, with the ensuing total eclipse of all his mental faculties.

  As soon as the young and sexy Mr. Johnson appears on the scene, the tone is set. Sybil, making no effort to conceal her fascination, is intent on wounding Basil by way of his Achilles heel. She opens her campaign by dropping a suggestive remark to Mr. Johnson about the number of messages he has received during his brief absence from the hotel. We have at this juncture already been led to infer (by overhearing Sybil’s side of a telephone conversation) that her closest friend, Audrey, has been physically attacked by her lover (presumably the infamous George) and is now, as a consequence, suffering from a nosebleed. (Sybil, to herself: “I don’t know why she stays with him.”) Basil, having found the speaking clock engaged, though his wife is not talking to it, has withdrawn to the office. Upon Sybil’s jolly remark to Johnson: “Oh well, you’re only single once!” he interjects, sarcastically, and out of view: “Twice can be arranged!”

  This hypothetical assumption (as far as Basil’s own marriage goes) is the starting-point of a series of neurotic complications which become more convoluted with every effort of Basil’s to mend fences. Sybil’s forthright and unabashed remarks as to the attractiveness of Mr. Johnson force Basil to define what he means by masculine virtues.

  Sex-appeal doesn’t come into the question — Basil’s ideal turns out to be the perfect English gentleman and aristocrat. Realising that not every man who qualifies as a gentleman in modern society can be nobly born, he benevolently extends the criterion to encompass education, dry wit and civilised behaviour in general.

  Sybil, on the other hand, makes no secret of her wish to have a man who would, at least in bed, behave as a man and not a gentleman, and continues to rub salt into Basil’s wound. Although Sybil is capable, superficially at least, of observing the conventions of polite society, she is never more than a step away from her own innate vulgarity (see, for instance, the opening scene of The Hotel Inspectors, where another of those uninhibited conversations with Audrey may be overheard by anyone, guest or staff, within earshot). If necessary, she will tell a lie and ratify it with a confident smile.

  For example, in The Kipper and the Corpse, she tells Dr. Price, who would have liked some sausages for dinner (it is past 9:00 p.m.): “Oh, I’m afraid chef will have locked them away.” As a matter of fact, this is one of the most automatic and recurrent lies one’s likely to hear in the hotel and restaurant business.

  Like Basil, Sybil sometimes displays a stunning lack of tact, as in the beginning of Gourmet Night, when she badly embarrasses André, as Basil is only too eager to point out. Her laugh can be a thing of dread, and she is not above obliging hapless guests to endure her soliloquies. One example of this occurs in the opening scene of Waldorf Salad, in which she obtusely intrudes on Mr. Libson’s much-desired privacy. Subsequently, she reads and smokes next to the Hamiltons as they dine. In The Psychiatrist she rattles on interminably about her mother and her mother’s “death force”, totally oblivious of Johnson’s complete lack of interest.

  When speaking to Mr. Johnson she displays an infatuation with pagan symbols and superstitions which are in perfect harmony with the waiting room literature s
he so avidly reads in her leisure hours. As we already know, Sybil was working as a hairdresser when she first met Basil, in fact, the course she took in hairdressing was the only further education she ever had. She was taught her trade in the early 1960s, when the beehive and other heavily augmented hairstyles were all the rage, and Sybil remained faithful to this coiffure, even though it became quite out of fashion by the mid-1970s.

  In her way Sybil is just as much an anachronism as Basil. The hippie movement passed her by without her even noticing. All her ideals were shaped by her petit-bourgeois environment, which goes some way to explaining why she now seems so much to regret the absence of all the fun she could have had in life, if only she’d known better. But then again, her lower-middle-class instincts are so strong that she will never be able to break free of their confines and pass beyond the narrow horizon of the petite commerçante.

  Small money matters, clothes and interior decorating make up her world at home, conversations with Audrey and at the hairdresser’s provide her with the gossip she needs for her intellectual fulfilment. And she’s a golfer, too.

  When she sees young Johnson, she thinks to herself how marvellous it must be to be a pagan, a hedonist, a live spirit. In The Anniversary she explicitly articulates her disappointment in this respect. “Fifteen years I’ve been with you,” she says, “When I think of what I might have had.” She’s in much the same state of mind as she concocts a rather childish excuse to take a closer look at Johnson’s hairy chest and tight leather trousers. Such obvious provocation naturally makes Basil disparage her intelligence all the more, as does her equating of sex appeal with Johnson’s rather simian attributes — “Monkeys know how to enjoy themselves. That’s what make them sexy, I suppose.” The war between reason and instinct is fully engaged when the three doctors Abbott appear.