is that the qanon anti semite actor or the guy who made blazing saddles i always get mixed up

Blazing Saddles guy

Ok I'm not going to say he isn't problematic. But!

Blazing saddles destroyed a genre by being such a scathing satire.

There were more things that did it, but pre blazing saddles tv was like 80% cowboy stuff. Post Blazing Saddles the genre practically disappeared.

To make a fictional comparison: Imagine that at the hight of ACAB thoughts and awareness, (like late 2020 vibes I think?) A movie came out that ripped cop procedural shows so bad that by the next year almost all of them are off the air and less than 10 new ones come out and they all are dropped by the end of the next year.

Like, that's how hard Blazing Saddles went. People did hate it. He ruined the image of the idealistic picture of cowboys and westerns being perfect pillars of American morality.

Blazing Saddles didn't just say that the average Western character was racist, he called them idiots. Straight to the camera in the most loveable moment of the show.

This isn't to excuse anything in it. Just to let you know that this shot was a head shot to an American revisionist giant.

And that counts for something.

Fair warning if you are vaguely intrigued and try to watch - it uses the N-word a LOT

Mel Brooks was a Jewish actor-director who made films that made fun of just about everything, especially nazis and racism in general

(the racist mitzo is thinking of is probably Mel Gibson)

Brooks also made Young Frankenstein, my fave Frankenstein movie

Blazing Saddles makes the idea of racism into a joke - as in “the people who believe this are dumb as hell” . The joke is that racism is nonsensical and stupid, and so are the people who believe in it. That’s the joke. (One of the many, many jokes.) It was also written in part by Richard Pryor who was originally supposed to also star in the movie, but the studio wouldn’t insure him. Later on in 1980, Richard Pryor said he swore off saying the N-word altogether- six years after the movie was released. By then, it was already in there forever. Regarding the language, and many of the jokes used in the film, its relationship to the audience was very different in 1974. As one reviewer stated in relation to how Blazing Saddles’ relationship to popular culture has changed since it’s release in 1974, “I don't know that we ought to make studying evolution of Richard Pryor a prerequisite to the viewing of Blazing Saddles, but we might all take notice of the fact that works of art are always products of the time in which they are produced. One of the great things about Blazing Saddles is its implicit critique of American racial attitudes and Hollywood's whitewashing of history via Western mythologies…. The racial critique of Blazing Saddles mightn't be the most remarkable thing about it -- it's a postmodern film with a Borscht Belt sensibility that marries the silly to the sublime.” (The article does contain use of the N-word, in its use of direct quotes.)

When I think of Mel Brooks and his satires on racism (among other topics), I can’t help but also think of Taika Waititi and how he wrote Nazis in Jo Jo Rabbit. Nazis beliefs are shown to be utterly ridiculous and the Nazis in turn don’t become cool heroes or something to be admired like they often do when gentile directors make movies about Nazis. It’s like how Mel Brooks made The Producers. He turns them into a laughing stock. There’s a really, really good video essay about this by a queer Jewish YouTuber you should absolutely watch, talking about the differences in how Jewish filmmakers portray Nazis VS how gentiles tend to. I think there’s an ongoing conversation there in how filmmakers have conversations about race.

I don’t think you could make Blazing Saddles today. It’s undeniable that it had an impact on popular culture and the film industry, so much so that it’s still referenced, often without people knowing they’re referencing it. (Kind of like when people say “let’s turn it up to 11 - how many people do you know that have actually seen Spinal Tap?) When people talk about being offended by Blazing Saddles today, I’m always reminded that our relationship to the subject matter has fundamentally changed, and I think part of the reason is that movies like this brought the conversation into the mainstream.

Interesting to me is that when my dad, a teenager at the time, saw Blazing Saddles in theaters with his brother and dad, people didn’t walk out on account of the racism or sexism or anything like that. The part people did walk out on was a scene where some cowboys are eating beans around a fire and farting and burping a lot. Seriously, he said that was the scene that did it. (At least at the showing he went to.)

Anyway Blazing Saddles does have a place in pop culture history and I don’t think it could be made today. Also if you do choose to watch this, I’m not saying it doesn’t have problems, but I think you also have to consider who wrote it and the audience that received it, and its contribution to the greater conversation about racism that’s being had through the medium of satire.

Always remember that the people who made it made it knowing they were trying to make a POINT ON PURPOSE through humor that pointed out the absolute horrible ridiculousness of racists & racism. It did so as bluntly as possible to DRIVE THE POINT HOME. 

We are Offended by it now, I suspect he hoped we would be someday.  But it was absolutely NECESSARY and I’m grateful to Mr Brooks for doing it.  Mr Brooks is still alive.  I wonder what he’d say if we asked him if he’s happy we find the offensive bits offensive now, when most people did not bat an eye at the time.