The Fish-Slapping Dance is a sketch that appears in "Mr and Mrs Brian Norris' Ford Popular," the twenty-eighth episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus.
Synopsis[]
Two soldiers in Safari outfits and pith helmets are standing on a lock. The first soldier (Michael Palin) dances up to the second soldier (John Cleese) and slaps him several times with two small pilchards as light-hearted music plays. Eventually, the first soldier stops. The second soldier calmly produces a large halibut and whacks the first soldier in the face with it, knocking him into the water.
An animation by Terry Gilliam follows where the first soldier is eaten by a Nazi fish and then by a British fish and then finally, by a Chinese fish.
Behind the scenes[]
The sketch was originally written and filmed in 1971 for the Pythons' 1971 May Day special (Their contribution to the Euroshow 1971. Uncovered in 1999 for Python Night). It was eventually included in Mr and Mrs Brian Norris' Ford Popular.
The music is "Merrymakers Dance" from "Nell Gwynn suite" by British composer Sir Edward German (1862-1936).
It is about a quarter of a minute long, but its fast-paced non sequitur nature has been enough to endear it to fans. Due to its nature it has not been reproduced for live shows, etc., and therefore does not always receive the same recognition as other popular Python sketches. It remains, however, one of Michael Palin's favorite routines on the show. Palin once said that the sketch summarises concisely what Monty Python is all about.
The Fish-Slapping Dance in popular culture[]
In the Monty Python-inspired Broadway theatre show Spamalot, there is a song called "The Fisch Schlapping Song" which opens the performance and is sung by pseudo-Finnish people, before the historian abruptly ends the song. During the song, men and women dressed in stereotypical Scandinavian garb slap each other with fish, very similar to the original sketch.
In the computer-animated film Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie, based on the VeggieTales video series, the citizens of Ninevah are portrayed as slapping each other with fish.
The Swedish comedy team Angne & Svullo did their own version of the fish slapping dance in one episode of their popular TV show in the late eighties. The sketch starts the same as the original: first Angne slaps Svullo a few times in the face with small fish, then Svullo takes out a big fish and with a single blow knocks Angne into the water, laughing hysterically. However, in their version an old lady with an umbrella then comes by and starts hitting Svullo with her umbrella until he too falls into the water.
The "slapping"-feature in mIRC ("X slaps Y around a bit with a large trout" where X is the person performing the action and Y is the nickname of the selected target) may be a reference to The Fish-Slapping Dance.
In an interview, George Harrison's son, Dhani Harrison, said that the Fish-Slapping Dance was one of his father's favourite Sketches.
The Chaser's War on Everything did a "British comedy sketch" that mainly parodied Monty Python. At one point, someone is slapped with a fish.
The 1978 Clint Eastwood movie "Every Which Way but Loose" contains a scene clearly inspired by the sketch. Clint's character is fishing in a lake when some guy with a gun sneaks up from behind to capture him. At the precise moment he tells Clint to put 'em up, a fish takes the hook and heads for the horizon. The guy with the gun tucks the rifle under his arm, grabs the rod from Clint and fights the fish. Clearly it's the biggest fish he's ever been hooked into. When he has it on a short leash he orders Clint to grab it. Clint obliges, then without losing a beat spins round and slaps him with it, knocking him into the lake, and grabs the gun.
External links[]
pl:Taniec z policzkowaniem rybami
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