Classic comedy Mel Brooks, satirizes the racism of Hollywood movies about the American west by making the hero of the movie a Black sheriff in an all-white town. A sharp comedy, Blazing Saddles is now being reexamined through the same lens as Gone with the Wind.
In spite of its significance, Gone with the Wind has always been a controversial film. As a response to the Black Lives Matter movement, and in an effort to wrestle with Hollywood’s racial biases, Gone with the Wind was temporarily removed from HBO Max. It later returned, with a disclaimer shedding light on the film’s problematic aspects. Blazing Saddles was a very different project. Rather than attempt to excuse racism, as Gone with the Wind does, Brooks’ comedy aims to expose the stupidity and futility of bigotry. Still, there have long been arguments that Blazing Saddles has glaring flaws of its own.
Per THR, a new introduction has been added to Blazing Saddles on HBO Max. Jacqueline Stewart, a TCM host and media studies professor, provides the intro as she did for Gone with the Wind. Running for over three minutes, the aim of the disclaimer is to add the necessary context to the bigotry and racist language expressed in the film. The intro acknowledges that the issue of race is vital to Blazing Saddles, but it readily denounces the bigoted attitudes included in the narrative. “Those attitudes are espoused by characters who are portrayed here as explicitly small-minded, ignorant bigots. The real, and much more enlightened perspective, is provided by the main characters played by Cleavon Little and Gene Wilder,” Stewart says in the new intro.
Stewart also shares some trivia about Blazing Saddles, mentioning how Richard Pryor was considered for the lead role at one point, but the focus of the preface is mainly to orient viewers to what they’re about to witness. Brooks has said Blazing Saddles would never get made today, railing against political correctness, but it’s more accurate to say that the taste and preferences of audiences evolve over time. Rather than merely contain Blazing Saddles to the vault of history, as Disney has opted to do with Song of the South, HBO Max is making the influential Brooks’ movie accessible to its subscribers. The only difference the intro makes, if anything, is a positive one because it invites the audience to grapple with the ugliness that is depicted on screen. Going forward, as instances of Blackface have been removed from various platforms, these honest and thoughtful intros offer a path forward in of how to grapple with bigotry and racial insensitivity in scripted works.
Given that Blazing Saddles is in the process of being reimagined as an animated remake, set in a world of anthropomorphic animals, the new version will almost certainly work to improve on the original’s shortcomings. Society evolves and shifts over time. In its attempt to speak to those shifts, valuable entertainment should also be able to shift. While dated and even racist works can be useful in a lot of ways, in of understanding our shared histories and appreciating the progress that has been made, it is vital to acknowledge elements of racism upfront as HBO Max continues to do with films like Gone with the Wind and now Blazing Saddles.
Source: THR
