The movie they say you couldn’t make today but if you know the story behind the making of Blazing Saddles!, you’d already know Mel Brooks had difficulty making it then! I figure numerous state the ignorant phrase to acknowledge how humor evolves and the critics of it, Team America and The Life of Brian miss the point. To me, the villains making all the racial slurs are not just the villains, they also prove to stupid and the many Johnsons who make up Rock Ridge learn that not all stereotypes are accurate. The thin-skinned Mills and Zoomers who feign their disgust quickly forget how they found the weak shit from Adam Sandler they loved religiously, was never funny…he was just another Jerry Lewis, no talent and full of himself.
What I find the funniest outside Blazing is how Warner Brothers didn’t have any notes nor objections over the n-word being used amongst the mocking of the Germans, Chinese and Irish. No, they found the farting scene to be the most tasteless part. Plus, when it was aired on CBS, slurs were left intact while the Yiddish word shtupp (sic) was dubbed over to just “shhhhh…” I would say it backfired. It only gave us Gentiles a strong clue what this word meant since schmuck was frequently heard on TV.
I think the hardest part Mel’s masterpiece of parody will have in finding a future audience to preserve its legacy, will be the core jokes…all the tropes in Westerns. When it hit the theaters in 1974, this genre had mostly faded from mainstream film and TV but everyone was familiar with he was poking fun at. Americans grew up watching John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, Lee Marvin, Roy Rogers and Clint Eastwood through either medium. Mel adding few drops of reality colliding into the mix of clichés is what sold it. The same for Airplane!, Top Secret, Young Frankenstein, Silent Movie and High Anxiety. Parodies of other genres contemporary audiences aren’t exposed to very often anymore: the airline disaster; WWII; Horror minus gore, guts and jump cuts; slapstick and Hitchcock thrillers respectively. I’m just glad I may be in the last generation to “get it” and truly enjoy it, not sit back and poo poo via chronological snobbery or presentism. Oh, by the way humorless people, I knew even then, the n-word was wrong and inappropriate way back in the pre-internet days we all call the Seventies and Eighties. Ergo, Blazing Saddles! never said, and still doesn’t, you now have permission to say it. Those who did, especially in Public discourse…remnants of George Wallace supporters. Today, we call them MAGA voters’ grandparents.