Blazing Saddles

Blazing Saddles is a 1974 movie directed by Brooks was aided by four other writers, including comedian in an unusually chaotic screenwriting process. The film has often been misunderstood by critics, for example as a simple burlesque,Screen: 'Blazing Saddles,' a Western in Burlesque by Vincent Canby (1974) The New York Times.DVD Review: Blazing Saddles by Eric Henderson (June 21, 2004) Slant. but it has also been an audience favorite.Blazing Saddles Rotten Tomatoes. Despite its broad and vulgar humor, frequent sight gags, and use of racist slurs, Blazing Saddles does have a serious message, and it expresses the message by subverting tropes and breaking things: the western film genre, stereotypes, expectations, time and the 
One could make a dull film that says 'racism is bad', or one could make an "unapologetically politically incorrect [film that] also skewers nearly every western trope listed on" TV TropesFilm / Blazing Saddles TV Tropes. that became a blockbuster and was eventually inducted into the US National Film Registry.'Blazing Saddles' Makes National Film Registry by Linda Wertheimer (December 30, 2006; 8:00 AM ET) NPR. Regarding films that hit one over the head with 'racism is bad', in 2020 HBO Max attempted to do just this by adding a 3-minute mandatory content warning to the streaming edition of the film, delivered by African-American film historian Jacqueline Stewart, stating in part:Before Watching Blazing Saddles You’re Now Required To Watch A Lecture On Race by Liana Keane (June 2024) Giant Freakin Robot."Blazing Saddles" HBO Max intro (August 17, 2020) YouTube.
The problem with this approach is that it no longer allows the uninitiated to watch a well-regarded comedy Western without other preconceived notions, essentially hobbling the viewer's thought process as the plot develops — rather, it puts viewers on notice from before the start.
The basic premise for Blazing Saddles is that it is set in the year 1874, but also in the year 1974 at the same time, with cultural references from 1974 drifting into the dialogue of the 1874 setting. This works as a plot device because 1874 was towards the end of the Reconstruction era (1865-1877) as well as firmly within the so-called (e.g. predating the first ) and 1974 was shortly after the Civil Rights era (1954-1968).
You couldn't make Blazing Saddles in the year ! Because white racists would be even more upset at being repeatedly pwned as hard as Blazing Saddles pwned them in 1974.
==Racism==
Blazing Saddles was not just the first Hollywood film to extensively use the slur 'nigger', but the film needed to do so to succeed.Blazing Saddles by Michael Schlesinger, Library of Congress. It did so in a seemingly gratuitous but actually not-at-all gratuitous way, so as to make the comedy work by showing the "ridiculous backwards thinking that is born out of racism".Why we need 'Blazing Saddles' now more than ever by Marta Rusek (May 23, 2016) WHYY. The CEO of Warner Brothers, Ted Ashley, after seeing a screening of the film told Brooks to cut all instances of the word from the film as well as to make other cuts, but they stayed in because Ashley did not know that Brooks' contract gave him final-cut rights.19 Things We Learned From the 'Blazing Saddles' Commentary by Kevin Carr (May 7, 2014) Film School Rejects.
With notable exceptions, racist slurs are confined to villainous characters or at least to characters who are acting villainously. Exceptions are:
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Racism is portrayed in a class-based way: the foremen, overseers, and the townspeople are portrayed as vulgar racists, freely using slurs and otherwise openly expressing their racism, whereas the attorney general and governor are "genteel racists"Genteel racism by Aqua Rusa (January 7, 2019). (also known as "aversive racists"The Imperative of Integration by Elizabeth Anderson (2013) Princeton University Press. ISBN 0691158118. Page 49.) but who otherwise express racism and whose racism depends upon the manipulation and exploitation of the vulgar racism of others.
It is useful to compare Blazing Saddles to Mark Twain's 1884 novel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Huckleberry Finn was banned frequently for varying reasons, including initially for what was called "backwards talking", i.e., using dialog that was representative of how people actually spoke.Banned: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, conversation with Jocelyn A. Chadwick (September 2017) PBS. The book also used the word 'nigger' 213 times, something that was responsible along with its alleged racism for more modern attempts at bannings.Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Elizabeth R. Purdy (2009) The Free Speech Encyclopedia, Middle Tennessee State University. Huckleberry Finn, however, at its core, deals with racism and the meaning of freedom.
==Bart as trickster==
There are several points in the film that make it clear that Bart's character is a trickster, an archetype that is common in folklore from around the world, but that is most noteworthy for the film with the character from African-American folktales.
==Epic theatre==
Though the West is portrayed in a broad or cartoonish way, it is in some ways more realistic than other Hollywood westerns due to people's frank and crude speech and overt racism. Not unlike the Ig Nobel Prize, Blazing Saddles works by first making people laugh, then making people think.the Ig Nobel Prizes Improbable Research. The use of multiple breakings of the fourth wall in Blazing Saddles is not just an attempt at humor but also an attempt at audience engagementBreaking the Fourth Wall — What It Is, Why People Avoid and Why Some Don't Lionheart Theatre Company. — making people think after they laugh. Similarly, the breaking of the time barrier — the frequent references from the 1874 setting to 1974 and other time periods — serves both as a comedic element and as a way of signalling to the audience an unstated 'Hey, look here. Things haven't changed so much.' In this regard, Blazing Saddles borrows directly from the two primary techniques of anti-fascist playwright concept of "epic theatre":
#Verfremdungseffekt (estrangement effect), which includes breaking the fourth wall as well as for actors to portray multiple characters. In Blazing Saddles, Brooks portrays the Governor, the Sioux chief, and one of the men lined up to join Lamarr's gang. Brooks also voices over two parts, the lead singer in the German army chorus and the cowboy trying to kiss Lili von Shtupp.
#Historicization — commenting on the current time from plays based in historical time
Brooks was certainly familiar with Brecht's plays before writing Blazing Saddles because he first met Gene Wilder when Wilder and Brooks' wife, Anne Bancroft, were acting in Brecht's anti-war play Mother Courage. Gene Wilder: From Brecht to Willy Wonka: After achieving Hollywood success through absurd comic genius, Gene Wilder did what no one does. He quit making movies. by Sean Fennessey (August 31, 2016) Portside.
One can see the potential effectiveness of addressing racism in the US by engaging with the that history repeats itself (1874 is 1974), not by ignoring the ills of the past, as in Putin's RussiaHow Alexei Navalny got trapped by Russian history: The opposition leader would not recognize the continuity of state violence and its social consequences. by Sergei Lebedev (July 22, 2024 at 7:15 a.m. EDT) The Washington Post.The Heroic Illusion of Alexei Navalny by Sergei Lebedev (Summer 2024) Liberties 4(4). but by confronting them and trying to break the cycle.
===The shadow plot===
Unusually, there is a shadow plot line in Blazing Saddles that is only sometimes obvious.
There are several references to German militarism in the film that advance somewhat chronologically:
So, the Nazi shadow plot in Blazing Saddles progresses with regard to German militarism: from relative innocence, to humor and cooptation, to crime, to guilt and judgment, and finally to historic portrayal and mockery ("They lose me right after the bunker scene."). The shadow plot breaks the time barrier in a more sustained way, pushing the audience to think about racism and crimes in Nazi Germany simultaneously with racism and crimes in the western United States of the 1800s.
==Postmodernism==
Blazing Saddles has been called a postmodernist film.Beginning Postmodernism by Tim Woods (1999) Manchester University Press. ISBN 0719052114."Blazing Saddles as Postmodern Ethnic Carnival" by Bill Hug (2013) Studies in Popular Culture 36(1):63-81.Blazing Saddles (1974) by Jason Fraley (August 15, 2013) Film Spectrum.Blazing Saddles (1973) by Walter Metz (1 Dec 2015) Walter's World. Tim Woods in his book Beginning Postmodernism defines postmodernist film as meeting four criteria:
#A pastiche of styles and genres
#A flattening of history
#Self-referentiality
#"A celebration of the collapse of the distinction between high and low cultural styles and techniques"
In Blazing Saddles, one can see:
#The film has the dominant Western style, but also the German film of the 1930s (), and the . It also references .
#Conflation of the years 1874 and 1974, and other time periods
#Actors speaking directly to the camera (breaking the fourth wall), , and 
#Reference to high style (The Blue Angel, Judgment at Nuremberg) and low style ()
==Going too far?==
===Antifeminism?===
Bethany Hegener, writing for Medium, has noted the offensiveness of rape jokes in the film.Blazing Saddles and Its Horrors by Bethany Hegener (Jan 31, 2018) Medium (archived from 4 Oct 2019 04:57:46 UTC). Blazing Saddles has two or three rape 'jokes' (, , and ), and arguably rape jokes are never funny. The jokes do establish character, however, showing just how awful the villainous characters are who make these statements. So, if one is going to criticize a work of fiction, one should first understand how fiction works, which Hegener does not seem to understand. As author Azar Nafisi puts it:Book bans signal the dangerous direction society is moving by Azar Nafisi (February 14, 2022 at 12:00 p.m. EST) The Washington Post.
In other words, writers/directors/actors do not usually subscribe to every word that a character states. Actors have to read their lines whether they agree with them or not. To make good fiction, writers have to make villains, heroes and ambiguous characters. In Blazing Saddles, Burton Gilliam actually had difficulty saying the word 'nigger', particularly to Cleavon Little whom he liked. Cleavon told Burton:Daily Dialogue — March 20, 2014 by Scott Myers (Mar 20, 2014) Go Into the Story.
Also, one should not quote mine, as Hegener did.
Hegener has claimed that the Lili von Shtupp is exemplary of the objectification and sexualization of women in the film, but it is noteworthy that . Furthermore, during her stage show, she shows that she can take care of herself by mockery and by physical force: and . Plus, she dismissively sidesteps Lamarr's sexual advances without repercussions.
===Gay stereotyping?===
Greg Hernandez, writing for Gay Star News, has stated that the portrayal of gay men is stereotypicalWhy I had a hard time watching 1974's Blazing Saddles with my 2016 eyes: Classic comedy's gay stereotypes and racial slurs hard to take by Greg Hernandez (5 September 2016; 7:56 BST) Gay Star News (archived from July 30, 2019). and — unless one looks carefully — not redemptive unlike how racism is portrayed. However, at five brief points there are indications otherwise:
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#Much later in the great fight scene, 
#Immediately after that encounter, 
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The second and third instances could be described as foreshadowings of the groundbreaking gay cowboy film 
The overall theme of "The French Mistake" scene can be read as coming out of the closet. The music, belonging to the dancers, shortly precedes their appearance and continues through the melee, indicating that the dancers have actually invaded the cowboys' space, rather than the other way around.Intersecting Film, Music, and Queerness by Jack Curtis Dubowsky (2016) Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 1349687138. Chapter 7: Blazing Saddles: Music and Meaning in 'The French Mistake'. In the second instance, both the dancer and the cowboy exit what could be described as a metaphorical closet, as they leave the passageway.
Notably, Brooks' intention was not to laugh at gays: he has claimed to have vetted his humor with his gay friends,Mein camp: His brand of comedy is scatological and politically incorrect but Mel Brooks is on a roll. As his hit revival of The Producers comes to London, he talks to Emma Brockes about reality TV, Ali G and why Hitler is funny by Emma Brockes (27 Sep 2004 06.35 EDT) The Guardian. which is not to say that it is inoffensive or that all gays will find it funny, but rather that Brooks does at least have some cultural sensitivity. "Within the context of Blazing Saddles, gay humor can be read as either pure outrageousness, or as an analogous conterpart to a steady stream of racist language designed to attack racism as stupidity."
==One of the greatest conservative movies of all time!==
The basic problem with conservatives claiming that Blazing Saddles is a conservative film, rather than an anti-racist film, is that it relies on conflating political correctness with liberalism and political incorrectness with conservativism. Political correctness is an ideology-based concept that varies by ideology; for example, Conservapedia has nearly completely banned the use of certain terminology (e.g., the near-total ban of the acronym 'BCE' and the word 'fuck', the latter excepted in rare cases when quoting people they hateSearch results for 'fuck*' Conservapedia (archived from 21 Oct 2019 06:09:47 UTC).) and the banning of certain concepts such as support of evolution (despite it being supported by the Catholic Church since 1950Note that Andrew Schlafly is a Catholic. But evidently not a very good one.). As the film itself demonstrates, one can use 'politically incorrect' terminology in the service of a larger lesson.
===Conservapedia===
Conservapedia thinks that Blazing Saddles is one of the "Greatest Conservative Movies",Essay:Greatest Conservative Movies Conservapedia (archived from September 30, 2019). and Andrew Schlafly agrees.Revision history of "Essay:Greatest Conservative Movies" (archived from 7 Oct 2019 04:45:16 UTC). The reason given is, "A politically incorrect western, something liberals are sure to despise." Apparently, either no one at Conservapedia has seen the film, or more likely, no one there has understood it. Considering that the list also includes 1984, Fight Club, and Parasite (no, really), it's entirely possible that it is the latter. Putting the word 'nigger' in a film does not automatically make it conservative (or liberal or anything else), otherwise this very webpage that you are reading now would also be conservative.
===Breitbart===
John Nolte of Breitbart has claimed in a 2014 review that all copies of Blazing Saddles will eventually be burned by the left wing.'Blazing Saddles' Review: Buy a Copy Before the Left Burns Them All by John Nolte (8 May 2014) Breitbart (archived from August 19, 2019). Credibly, Nolte did enjoy the film and did understand that racism was the major theme of the film. In a separate piece, Nolte also listed ten "reasons" (all non sequiturs, of course) why he thinks that the film will eventually be banned by liberals:10 Reasons to Believe the Left Will Eventually Ban 'Blazing Saddles' by John Nolte (9 May 2014) Breitbart (archived from August 19, 2019).
Ironically, Nolte's writing 'n***er' rather than the word itself, is self-defeating in his argument because he either self-censored or was censored by the far-right Breitbart, bringing him , and is a form of political correctness itself. Furthermore, the idea that using a euphemism for a racist term somehow makes one not racist falls into the "mistaking the map for the territory" fallacy.
Taken as a whole, Nolte's prediction seems to assume that liberals are some sort of monolithic organization because the first eight reasons given are concerning individuals or organizations expressing their free speech rights to criticize other people's particular expressions of free speech rights. Reason number nine, Citizens United, concerns whether a corporation is a person and whether money is a form of speech. Reason number ten deals primarily with whether inflammatory speakers should be allowed to speak on college campuses. The ACLU has in fact often defended free speech on campuses,Speech on Campus American Civil Liberties Organization. despite many conservatives' belief that the ACLU is a liberal bugaboo.
Nolte also makes the claim that the film is not "peering down from a place of superior sanctimony like the makers of and This is patently false, since Blazing Saddles gleefully mocks:
===Western Free Press===
Eric Blake, writing for Western Free Press, has written that "This is one of those films that's Conservative By Default. That is, it's effectively become Conservative over the years, as the Left, to be blunt, has gotten more and more insane."The Greatest Conservative Films: Blazing Saddles (1974) by Eric Blake (January 24, 2018 at 9:41 pm) Western Free Press (archived from May 20, 2018).To which we respond: If the right wants to see insane, it should look in a mirror. Blake wasted his time getting a "Bachelor's in Political Science and a Master's in Film Studies" from the University of South Florida, otherwise he might have known better about writing this drivel. Western Free Press is a self-described "news and opinion site for conservatives and libertarians".About Us Western Free Press (archived from July 13, 2019).
Citing Nolte and “professional asshole” Steven Crowder as his primary sources of information,TOP 5: Triggering Movies That Couldn’t Be Made Today | Louder With Crowder by Steven Crowder (Oct 22, 2016) YouTube. Blake quotes Crowder's video:
Never mind that xenophobia as a concept has existed since ancient times, and the word itself has existed since 1903.xenophobia (n.) Online Etymology Dictionary. The professional asshole can't even be bothered to Google it.
Blake states that Lamarr is a "big-government guy through-and-through — assumes like a Lefty that the racism of the townspeople will be such that they just won't find it in themselves to actually accept a black sheriff." Though Lamarr is Attorney General for an unnamed podunk state, where is the big government? He has no visible government employees of his own; Taggart, his henchman, is a railroad foreman, not a government employee. Lamarr even has to ask for favors (, ) from the hangman, who conveniently operates just outside his office. The townspeople do in fact reject Bart as the sheriff from knee-jerk racism and nearly murder him outright, but are only convinced to accept Bart after he rescues them from Mongo, who had foolishly been sent by Taggart.
Based on Crowder, Blake's argument is basically that since the film is politically incorrect, it is therefore conservative: a conflation of the two concepts. Although Blake also understands the main theme of the film — racism — and that racists can perhaps change their views, what he doesn't understand in the film is:
*That not all of the racists in the film have changed their views by the end of the film (vulgar racists Taggart and Lyle, and genteel racist Lamarr)
*The strong and overt alignment of racism with conservativism since the rise of the alt-right or its many antecedents, including the more subtle Nixonian Southern Strategy
Like Breitbart, either Blake or Western Free Press self-censored and used 'n——r' rather than the actual word. If one cannot even name the thing that is wrong to say in a gratuitous context, one's argument is failing.
==The film itself==
If you've never seen Blazing Saddles before, you should find a copy and watch it first. The videos do not show the whole movie, and the text (obviously) leaves out the excellent camerawork and editing as well as actors' nuance. Also, it goes without saying, if you have to explain a joke, it isn't funny. The purpose of the annotations below is to explain some of the humor and some of the historical context.
===The opening scene===
The opening scene shows most of the basic themes that follow in the rest of the film: the building of the railroad (and implicit robber baronism), racial slurs, racist class structure, the sly subversion of the African American laborers, and the duping of dimwitted white overseers and foremen.
===Quicksand===
===Land: see snatch===
===The Ballad of Rock Ridge===
===The sheriff is a…===
===Sheriff Bart===
===Never mind that shit, here comes Mongo!===
===Seduced and abandoned===
===Mock Ridge===
===The French Mistake===
===Finale===
==See also==
*Tomorrow Belongs to Me — another song from Cabaret
*Whitewashing in film
==External links==
*Screenplay versions: neither of these are based on the final cut
**Blazing Saddles, Mel Brooks' Black Bart, An Original Screenplay by Mel Brooks, Richard Pryor, Andrew Bergman, Norman Steinberg, Alan Uger. Final, February 6, 1973, Revised through February 27, 1973.
**Blazing Saddles by Mel Brooks. A searchable screenplay.
*Blazing Saddles by Manuel Cuadra and James Ellis, Afterlives of Slavery
*Annotated Bibliography: Blazing Saddles by Manuel Cuadra (February 26, 2018)
*Blazing Saddles on IMDb
*Blazing Saddles on TV Tropes
==Notes==
==References==
Category:Films
Category:Government incompetence
Category:Postmodernism
Category:Racism
Category:Side-by-side articles
Category:Stereotypes