Of Sketchy Perception in a Monty Python Sketch

Not noticing something that’s right before your eyes? Happens all the time. The phenomenon fueled the 2004 Ig Nobel Prize-winning invisible-gorilla research of Americans Chris Chabris and Dan Simons. Now, two researchers in the UK point to a stark example in a Monty Python sketch:

“And now for something completely different: Inattentional blindness during a Monty Python’s Flying Circus sketch,” Richard Wiseman and Caroline Watt, i-Perception (2015) volume 6, pages 38–40. The authors, at the University of Hertfordshire and the University of Edinburgh, explain:

Perceptual science has frequently benefited from studying illusions created outside of academia. Here, we describe a striking, but little-known, example of inattentional blindness from the British comedy series “Monty Python’s Flying Circus.” Viewers fail to attend to several highly incongruous characters in the sketch, despite these characters being clearly visible onscreen. The sketch has the potential to be a valuable research and teaching resource, as well as providing a vivid illustration of how people often fail to see something completely different….

Despite widespread interest in inattentional blindness, most researchers are unaware that a striking example of the phenomenon appears in the British comedy series “Monty Python’s Flying Circus.” Episode 12 of the second series of Monty Python’s Flying Circus aired in December 1970 contained a short sketch entitled “Ypres 1914—Abandoned.” This sketch takes place during the First World War, and begins with a close-up image of a harmonica being played by a British soldier (Eric Idle). The camera then slowly zooms out to reveal four soldiers (including John Cleese, Eric Idle, and Michael Palin) sitting in an army encampment. Standing behind them are several actors dressed in a series of highly incongruous costumes, including that of a nun wearing a large white hat (Graham Chapman), a sheikh, and a Greek Orthodox priest….

Here’s the Monty Python sketch itself, with an added layer of meaning (a narrator, speaking in Polish):