Trigger Warning: Could a Classic Film Like Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles Be Possible in Today’s Toxic, Woke Culture?
“Comedy has to walk a thin line, take risks. It’s the lecherous little elf whispering in the king’s ear, telling the truth about human behaviour.” Mel Brooks
The Mel Brooks’ anti-racist, cult classic film Blazing Saddles turns fifty years old next year; “Kung Fu Fighting” was the number one song on the Billboard charts, Foxy Brown was a box-office hit, and The Six Million Dollar Man was the top-rated television show the year Blazing Saddles was released.
I was only nine years old when it first came out so, obviously, I didn’t see it until years later. As a nine-year-old, I was only concerned with trying to hold onto jumbo pencils, learning to write in cursive, and staying in the lines when I colored.
Blazing Saddles quickly became my favorite comedy. I’m glad it was released in 1974 because it could never be released in today’s toxic atmosphere. If Blazing Saddles was made today, it would go the route of Ghostbusters 2016, and we know how that turned out! Blazing Saddles has become the Huckleberry Finn of cinema.
A friend of mine, who has HBO Max, told me about the “trigger warning” HBO has placed at the start of the classic Western spoof Blazing Saddles. The “trigger warning” points out to viewers the film’s ‘racist language and attitudes’ throughout. I would’ve never believed in a thousand years that HBO would stoop this low.
HBO has fallen prey to the “woke mob.” They’ve tried to sanitize a “problematic” movie by giving it an ideologically palatable introduction. It tried this before with Gone with the Wind. The “explainer” this time is from the same professor who explained the racism in HBO’s reissue of Gone with the Wind, University of Chicago Cinema and Media Studies professor Jacqueline Stewart.
Professor Jacqueline Stewart doesn’t care that the movie is anti-racist in theme, her only concern is the use of the “n-word” and how many times it’s been used — 17 times. So what!
I want to ask if Blazing Saddles — and Gone with the Wind for that matter — needs an “explainer,” then why doesn’t Dave Chappelle’s character Clayton Bigsby need one? Bigsby — a blind Black Klansman wearing a white hood and shouting “white power!” at a KKK meeting — is similar to Blazing Saddles, it is anti-racist in nature. It pokes fun at racists and racism yet it has no “explainer.”
The Mel Brooks film released in 1974 has gained a type of cult-like status. The irony was that Blazing Saddles was co-written by Richard Pryor and while it was being shown in theaters, Pryor was arrested in Richmond, Va., for using the same language in his act.
How could a movie like Blazing Saddles get away with the blatant use of the “n-word”? In the ’70s, the ‘“Thought Police ‘ weren’t on constant patrol, they could be found throughout most of the ’70s hanging out in the proverbial doughnut shops. That’s not to say there weren’t shows which were canceled or edited, it just seemed to snowball and gain momentum as the decades progressed.
In a Mel Brooks interview with the BBC, he proclaims that political correctness is “the death of comedy”.
“It’s okay not to hurt the feelings of various tribes and groups,” he said. “However, it’s not good for comedy.
“Comedy has to walk a thin line, take risks. It’s the lecherous little elf whispering in the king’s ear, telling the truth about human behaviour.”
There are several reasons Blazing Saddles would be a no-go today. There’s the “gay” stereotype during the fight scene at the end of the movie where the mincing and hissing effeminate director Buddy Bizarre — brilliantly portrayed by Dom DeLuise — calls the dancers “sissy Marys!” and “faggots” and is thrown into the action.
There’s a jab at the Jews when Hedley Lamarr claims that Slim Pickens’ character Taggart’s idea to “kill the first born male child in every household” was “Too Jewish.” He also uses the “n-word” occasionally as well using the word “faggot” and “chink.”
Native Americans were called “little red devils” and even had the chief speaking in Yiddish.
The biggest reason Blazing Saddles could never be released in today’s woke culture is racism, more specifically the “n-word.” Blazing Saddles is a film that pulls no punches satirizing every race and nationality,
Mel satirizes Mexicans, Chinese, the Irish, and, in fact, almost every nationality on the planet. Mel Brooks also finds humor in drug abuse, capital punishment, physical and mental disabilities, cruelty to animals, and farting.
In a 2016 interview with Rolling Stone Magazine, Mel Brooks spoke about the liberal usage of the “n-word”:
“So I called up a friend of mine, this guy who was a brilliant writer and the best stand-up comic of all time: Richard Pryor. I said, ‘Richard, read this, tell me what you think.’ He read it and said, ‘Yeah, this is good … this is real. I like this.’ I asked, ‘Right, but what about the N word? We can’t say this so many times …’ ‘Well, Mel, you can’t say it. But the bad guys can say it. They would say it!’ Then I asked him to come write it with us, and he said sure. That was how it started.”
What gets me riled up about “wokeness” isn’t only censorship. It’s the deliberate constraints on the creativity of movies and television in particular. It’s the forcing of diversity, equity, and inclusion on the viewer.
Many filmmakers in Hollywood believe they only need to check the boxes of diversity, equity, and inclusion, a kind of tick-box culture.
Some examples of “wokeness” gone amok are Ghostbusters (2016), any old TV shows “updated” to include a diversified cast, and Amazon’s Lord of the Rings prequel-slash-reboot The Rings of Power.
2023© ElbyJames