Blazing Saddles (1974)
Director: Mel Brooks
Blazing Saddles was a movie written in 1974 that came after the civil rights movement and an era of change. There is a great deal of emphasis placed on racism and the movie mocks the patronizing stereotypes of too many earlier American films. Blazing Saddles does a great job of releasing the stigmas, racisms, and stereotypes of American history out to the public in a very amusing way. One of the characters by the name of Lyle, the white railroad foreman, asks the black railroad workers to sing “a good old nigger work song.” In response, the main character Bart leads his friends in a smooth a cappella arrangement of the song “I Get a Kick Out of You,” and then watches in amusement as the white supervisors try to show them how it’s done with a jive shucking rendition of “Camp Town Ladies.” Mel Brooks was a genius in the way in which the film will stand back and let the racists make fun of one another.
The movie not only uses irony and stereotypical characters, but it also shows us non-conventional filming and scripting techniques (such as the characters looking directly at the camera as they are communicating with the viewer) to make the point that racism is totally unreasonable and just plain wrong.
Although Mel Brooks used free speech to ridicule free speech, I don’t feel Blazing Saddles could be pulled off today the way it was pulled off in 1974. The film’s dialogue is riddled with racist, sexist, bigoted speech. There would be protestors marching in front of Warner Brothers Studios if a director decided to put this type of film out in today’s society.
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