I just watched this golden oldie again, and I had forgotten just how funny and how edgy it is. A couple of months back, I wrote about "Airplane", one of my favorite comedies. In some ways, "Blazing Saddles" is very much like "Airplane". Mel Brooks (the legendary director of this film) throws in a joke in this movie wherever, whenever and however he can. As I wrote about in "Airplane", some of the jokes are funny not because they are all that great, but just because Brooks and company just keep on trying.
But something separates this movie from "Airplane". "Airplane" has no agenda but to get laughs. This film has an agenda, and a good one. It's agenda is to take a serious look (while funny) at bigotry. Brooks' work is all about that. "The Producers" uses the Holocaust to get laughs at Hitler's expense. Brooks is attempting, in my opinion, to paralyze bigotry through reducing it to what it truly is. He shows it as stupid. But this movie also shows a simple joy of movie making and messing around with new ideas. The ending is so clever, with the 4th wall being broken down. But in the end, the commentary on racism is what makes this movie so funny and so true. The caricatures are wonderfully effective...the white trash racists are made to look like the idiots that they are by the debonair and urbane Bart. In the film, a greedy Attorney General appoints a black man as a sheriff of a small town of inbreeds so that that want to move out of their town and he can buy up the land to sell it to railroad developers. He ends up being helped by the Waco Kid (an amazing performance by Gene Wilder), a drunken gunman who matches Bart in decency.
This film is merciless in its stereotypes and racial jokes. I contend that this movie could not be made today. The use of the n-word in this film is rampant, and I think that it shows, in part, where we have been over the last 30 years. This word has evolved into being even more vulgar than it was when I was a child. The offensiveness of this word has reached the point that I don't know if it could still be used in a joking context as it is in this film. I think that is a good thing...but I also have to say that there is a certain power to seeing Brooks expose the stupidity of racism through this word. Those who use it mainly fall into two categories: the first group are the bad guys who are beyond repair. But the second group are the townspeople who come to accept this man for who he is, even though they are backward in their racism and stereotypes.
This is the kind of movie that really could only be made in America. Only in a melting pot such as ours where we are forced to deal with people of other races and creed could such a movie be made. Be prepared to laugh, and to be offended.
