Every Sperm Is Sacred
Encyclopedia
"Every Sperm Is Sacred" is a musical sketch from the movie Monty Python's The Meaning of Life. The song was released on the album Monty Python Sings
and was nominated for a BAFTA
Music Award for Best Original Song in a Film in 1983. Andre Jaquemin and Dave Howman wrote the music and Michael Palin
and Terry Jones
wrote the lyrics and performed the sketch, which is hailed as one of the Pythons' great sketches.
of Catholic teachings on reproduction
that forbid masturbation
and contraception
by artificial means. The sketch is about a Catholic Yorkshire
man (Dad, played by Michael Palin
), his wife (Mum, played by Terry Jones
) and their sixty-three children, who are about to be sold for medical experimentation purposes because their parents can no longer afford to care for such a large family with the local mill being closed. When their children ask why they don't use contraception or sterilisation, such as why the father doesn't perform self-castration, Dad explains that this is against God's wishes, and breaks into song, the chorus of which is:
The production in The Meaning of Life is quite visually elaborate, filmed in Halifax, West Yorkshire
and choreographed by Arlene Phillips
to a storyboard by director Terry Jones
. The hearty and cheerful nature of the musical number is counterpointed as the children are marched off to their fate as the song ends, singing a dour rendition of the chorus as their middle-aged Protestant neighbours (played by Graham Chapman
and Eric Idle
) comment on the teachings of the Catholic Church, to which they ironically add that they have two children, which is the exact number of times they have had sex in their marriage, a joke on the stereotype that Protestants control their reproduction by barely having any sex at all. The song is a parody of the song "Consider Yourself
", from the musical Oliver!
by Lionel Bart
. Later, Terry Jones denied that it was explicitly written to make fun of the genre of musical comedy: "'Every Sperm is Sacred' is not a parody of these things, it just is those things, it's a musical song, it's a hymn, it's a Lionel Bart-style musical, but it's not making fun of a Lionel Bart-style musical."
and reproduction
, and by extension in such areas as cloning
, where the song is used to criticize anti-cloning activists who argue that every embryo or fertilized egg is sacred. Pro-choice
activists have sung the song outside abortion clinic
s to ridicule their opponents, legal scholars alluded to it in discussions of women's reproductive rights, and it is used generally "to expose the absurdity of the anti-choice argument when taken to its extreme."
discusses the sketch as an important sign of a growing willingness in the popular media of the 1970s and 1980s to criticize the Catholic Church, saying that "Catholic attitudes toward sex and contraception are ruthlessly parodied" in the song, proving that "Catholicism was available as a legitimate subject of serious fiction." Richard Dawkins
, in his The God Delusion
, cites the song for that very reason, the illustration of the "surreal idiocy" of some pro-religion, pro-life
arguments.
use it for precisely that purpose, Talking Cock, by Richard Herring
, and Dick: A User's Guide; in both cases, the sketch is used to ridicule those who condemn masturbation
as well as sex
for any purpose other than procreation.
" being overdubbed later. This was done because the scene features numerous underage children and they (Pythons) were already "pushing the limit." Years later, several of the child actors stated they had no idea what they were singing about.
Monty Python Sings
Monty Python Sings is a comedy album of songs written by the Monty Python team.The song "Oliver Cromwell" was never released prior to this album...
and was nominated for a BAFTA
British Academy of Film and Television Arts
The British Academy of Film and Television Arts is a charity in the United Kingdom that hosts annual awards shows for excellence in film, television, television craft, video games and forms of animation.-Introduction:...
Music Award for Best Original Song in a Film in 1983. Andre Jaquemin and Dave Howman wrote the music and Michael Palin
Michael Palin
Michael Edward Palin, CBE FRGS is an English comedian, actor, writer and television presenter best known for being one of the members of the comedy group Monty Python and for his travel documentaries....
and Terry Jones
Terry Jones
Terence Graham Parry Jones is a Welsh comedian, screenwriter, actor, film director, children's author, popular historian, political commentator, and TV documentary host. He is best known as a member of the Monty Python comedy team....
wrote the lyrics and performed the sketch, which is hailed as one of the Pythons' great sketches.
Content and production
The song is a satireSatire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
of Catholic teachings on reproduction
Humanae Vitae
Humanae Vitae is an encyclical written by Pope Paul VI and issued on 25 July 1968. Subtitled On the Regulation of Birth, it re-affirms the traditional teaching of the Catholic Church regarding married love, responsible parenthood, and the continuing proscription of most forms of birth...
that forbid masturbation
Masturbation
Masturbation refers to sexual stimulation of a person's own genitals, usually to the point of orgasm. The stimulation can be performed manually, by use of objects or tools, or by some combination of these methods. Masturbation is a common form of autoeroticism...
and contraception
Contraception
Contraception is the prevention of the fusion of gametes during or after sexual activity. The term contraception is a contraction of contra, which means against, and the word conception, meaning fertilization...
by artificial means. The sketch is about a Catholic Yorkshire
Yorkshire
Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...
man (Dad, played by Michael Palin
Michael Palin
Michael Edward Palin, CBE FRGS is an English comedian, actor, writer and television presenter best known for being one of the members of the comedy group Monty Python and for his travel documentaries....
), his wife (Mum, played by Terry Jones
Terry Jones
Terence Graham Parry Jones is a Welsh comedian, screenwriter, actor, film director, children's author, popular historian, political commentator, and TV documentary host. He is best known as a member of the Monty Python comedy team....
) and their sixty-three children, who are about to be sold for medical experimentation purposes because their parents can no longer afford to care for such a large family with the local mill being closed. When their children ask why they don't use contraception or sterilisation, such as why the father doesn't perform self-castration, Dad explains that this is against God's wishes, and breaks into song, the chorus of which is:
- Every sperm is sacred,
- Every sperm is great.
- If a sperm is wasted,
- God gets quite irate.
The production in The Meaning of Life is quite visually elaborate, filmed in Halifax, West Yorkshire
Halifax, West Yorkshire
Halifax is a minster town, within the Metropolitan Borough of Calderdale in West Yorkshire, England. It has an urban area population of 82,056 in the 2001 Census. It is well-known as a centre of England's woollen manufacture from the 15th century onward, originally dealing through the Halifax Piece...
and choreographed by Arlene Phillips
Arlene Phillips
Arlene Phillips OBE is an English choreographer, theatre director, talent scout, TV presenter, TV judge and former dancer, who has worked in many fields of entertainment...
to a storyboard by director Terry Jones
Terry Jones
Terence Graham Parry Jones is a Welsh comedian, screenwriter, actor, film director, children's author, popular historian, political commentator, and TV documentary host. He is best known as a member of the Monty Python comedy team....
. The hearty and cheerful nature of the musical number is counterpointed as the children are marched off to their fate as the song ends, singing a dour rendition of the chorus as their middle-aged Protestant neighbours (played by Graham Chapman
Graham Chapman
Graham Arthur Chapman was a British comedian, physician, writer, actor, and one of the six members of the Monty Python comedy troupe.-Early life and education:...
and Eric Idle
Eric Idle
Eric Idle is an English comedian, actor, author, singer, writer, and comedic composer. He was as a member of the British comedy group Monty Python, a member of the The Rutles on Saturday Night Live and author of the play, Spamalot....
) comment on the teachings of the Catholic Church, to which they ironically add that they have two children, which is the exact number of times they have had sex in their marriage, a joke on the stereotype that Protestants control their reproduction by barely having any sex at all. The song is a parody of the song "Consider Yourself
Consider Yourself
"Consider Yourself" is a song from the 1960s original West End and Broadway musical Oliver! and the 1968 film of the same name. In the 1968 Oliver! film, it is performed in the market.-In popular culture:...
", from the musical Oliver!
Oliver!
Oliver! is a British musical, with script, music and lyrics by Lionel Bart. The musical is based upon the novel Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens....
by Lionel Bart
Lionel Bart
Lionel Bart was a writer and composer of British pop music and musicals, best known for creating the book, music and lyrics for Oliver!-Early life:...
. Later, Terry Jones denied that it was explicitly written to make fun of the genre of musical comedy: "'Every Sperm is Sacred' is not a parody of these things, it just is those things, it's a musical song, it's a hymn, it's a Lionel Bart-style musical, but it's not making fun of a Lionel Bart-style musical."
Sexuality and reproduction
The very phrase "every sperm is sacred" has become almost proverbial in the field of animal and human sexualityHuman sexuality
Human sexuality is the awareness of gender differences, and the capacity to have erotic experiences and responses. Human sexuality can also be described as the way someone is sexually attracted to another person whether it is to opposite sexes , to the same sex , to either sexes , or not being...
and reproduction
Human reproduction
Human reproduction is any form of sexual reproduction resulting in the conception of a child, typically involving sexual intercourse between a man and a woman. During intercourse, the interaction between the male and female reproductive systems results in fertilization of the woman's ovum by the...
, and by extension in such areas as cloning
Cloning
Cloning in biology is the process of producing similar populations of genetically identical individuals that occurs in nature when organisms such as bacteria, insects or plants reproduce asexually. Cloning in biotechnology refers to processes used to create copies of DNA fragments , cells , or...
, where the song is used to criticize anti-cloning activists who argue that every embryo or fertilized egg is sacred. Pro-choice
Pro-choice
Support for the legalization of abortion is centered around the pro-choice movement, a sociopolitical movement supporting the ethical view that a woman should have the legal right to elective abortion, meaning the right to terminate her pregnancy....
activists have sung the song outside abortion clinic
Abortion clinic
An abortion clinic is a medical facility that primarily performs or specializes in abortions. Such clinics may be public medical centers or private medical practices.-Canada:*There were 197 abortion providers in Canada in 2001....
s to ridicule their opponents, legal scholars alluded to it in discussions of women's reproductive rights, and it is used generally "to expose the absurdity of the anti-choice argument when taken to its extreme."
Religion
The religious import of the sketch is equally significant, and is reflected in the widely dispersed usage of the phrase. In the book Monty Python and Philosophy, the argument is teased out to reach a broader (still humorous) conclusion: "The Pythons ask us to consider the consequences of the belief that God cares about our reproductive practices and sees everything. If so, then he watches our sexual activities. . . . Christians must concede that all things considered, this [watching people have sex] is one of God's less onerous activities." Philip JenkinsPhilip Jenkins
Philip Jenkins is as of 2010 the Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Humanities at Pennsylvania State University . He was Professor and a Distinguished Professor of History and Religious studies at the same institution; and also assistant, associate and then full professor of Criminal Justice and...
discusses the sketch as an important sign of a growing willingness in the popular media of the 1970s and 1980s to criticize the Catholic Church, saying that "Catholic attitudes toward sex and contraception are ruthlessly parodied" in the song, proving that "Catholicism was available as a legitimate subject of serious fiction." Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
Clinton Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL , known as Richard Dawkins, is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author...
, in his The God Delusion
The God Delusion
The God Delusion is a 2006 bestselling non-fiction book by British biologist Richard Dawkins, professorial fellow of New College, Oxford, and inaugural holder of the Charles Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford.In The God Delusion, Dawkins contends that...
, cites the song for that very reason, the illustration of the "surreal idiocy" of some pro-religion, pro-life
Pro-life
Opposition to the legalization of abortion is centered around the pro-life, or anti-abortion, movement, a social and political movement opposing elective abortion on moral grounds and supporting its legal prohibition or restriction...
arguments.
Masturbation
It is sometimes difficult to separate the comic from the serious application of the phrase, and two recent publications on the penisPenis
The penis is a biological feature of male animals including both vertebrates and invertebrates...
use it for precisely that purpose, Talking Cock, by Richard Herring
Richard Herring
Richard Keith Herring is a British comedian and writer, whose early work includes his involvement in the double-act, Lee and Herring...
, and Dick: A User's Guide; in both cases, the sketch is used to ridicule those who condemn masturbation
Masturbation
Masturbation refers to sexual stimulation of a person's own genitals, usually to the point of orgasm. The stimulation can be performed manually, by use of objects or tools, or by some combination of these methods. Masturbation is a common form of autoeroticism...
as well as sex
Sexual intercourse
Sexual intercourse, also known as copulation or coitus, commonly refers to the act in which a male's penis enters a female's vagina for the purposes of sexual pleasure or reproduction. The entities may be of opposite sexes, or they may be hermaphroditic, as is the case with snails...
for any purpose other than procreation.
Reverse censorship
According to the interview with Michael Palin on the DVD extras, he said "at the end of my sock" in the original scene, with the word "cockPenis
The penis is a biological feature of male animals including both vertebrates and invertebrates...
" being overdubbed later. This was done because the scene features numerous underage children and they (Pythons) were already "pushing the limit." Years later, several of the child actors stated they had no idea what they were singing about.
See also
- ContraceptionContraceptionContraception is the prevention of the fusion of gametes during or after sexual activity. The term contraception is a contraction of contra, which means against, and the word conception, meaning fertilization...
- Catholic Church
- Humor about CatholicismHumor about CatholicismThe Catholic Church has been a subject for humor, from the time of the Reformation to the present day. Such humor ranges from mild burlesque to vicious satirical attacks...
- Sperm in vain