Content and Production
The song is a satire of Catholic teachings on reproduction that forbid masturbation and contraception by artificial means. The sketch is about a Catholic Yorkshire man played by Michael Palin, his wife played by Terry Jones and their sixty-three children, who are about to be sold for scientific 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 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 style pastiche 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."
Read more about this topic: Every Sperm Is Sacred
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