Blazing Saddles

Well, I finally saw Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles for the first time since I had a real conscience. I may have watched parts of it out of curiosity over the years, but I remembered what I had seen quite differently. My overall impression was that it was hopelessly racist against so many different types of people. No group comes out of this unscathed, though whites are the least obviously stereotyped. This may be because I'm not accustomed to searching out white stereotypes, though. Needless to say, I was offended by various times by portrayals of Hispanics, Arabs, Native Americans, Jews, etc. The movie did have, potentially, two saving graces however.

The first was its wonderfully post-modern ending where Bart and the Waco Kid are riding through Hollywood and decide to go catch the ending of Blazing Saddles. Once they begin watching the movie, they themselves as characters are even more hyperaware of themselves as artifice than usual. My favorite touch was that on screen, the Waco Kid is eating movie theatre popcorn even as his doubled character is watching him from the confines of a movie theatre seat.

The other saving grace arose from the plot. While it is racist against everyone, it does save itself a little bit in regards to African-Americans by having Bart be a brilliant hero who thinks outside the box. This allows the film to create a situation where the whites who are stereotyped as racist (with a couple exceptions) are made into complete idiots. This allows Hedley Lamarr, the head-honcho of the jerks, to instruct his gang of criminals to "do that voodoo that you do so well." The line is of course stolen from Cole Porter, but what makes the line brilliant, and the movie's second saving grace, is that Hedley Lamarr, who abhors non-WASPs, is invoking a traditionally black, pagan belief system in order to cheer on his motley crew.