Is Blazing Saddles My Face/Off?

I watched Blazing Saddles (1974) for the first time yesterday and I am officially shook. It is still considered one the greatest comedies of all time to this day, so I expected to be entertained and looked forward to how boldly it tackled race and social issues for its era. But instead, I was just too distracted by the constant barrage of racial slurs.

Photo by Warner Bros./Getty Images - Image courtesy gettyimages.com

Look, I get the historical context. In 1974, Mel Brooks and Richard Pryor (who co-wrote the screenplay) intended the language as part of the satire – using over-the-top bigotry to expose how ridiculous and ugly racism is. At the time, the shock factor was seen as brave and even necessary to confront mainstream audiences with the absurdity of prejudice.

But watching it now, the shock factor overwhelms the humor for me. I don’t consider myself overly sensitive when it comes to comedy, and I try to approach older works with an awareness of the time in which they were made. But the continuous derogatory language ended up being disconcerting enough that I struggled to laugh at the surrounding jokes. Instead of highlighting the film’s wit or cleverness, the words themselves dominated my experience. Which sucks.

This reaction made me think about how movies are so appreciated in the context of when they were made. For Blazing Saddles, what once served as biting social commentary just seems like blatant racism today, ruining the enjoyment by a later generation.

But let’s lighten up for a second and think. This kind of applies to all movies. For example, to me Face/Off (1997) starring John Travolta and Nicolas Cage is the shit. However, when I showed this movie to my husband, he thought it was absurd and terrible. And after consulting a divorce attorney, I realized I may be taking his feelings too personally. So, I tried to put myself in his shoes – the seeing kind.

Photograph by AF archive / Alamy

The movie is pretty absurd - which, to me, is what makes it great.

“I want to take his face…. off.” Classic!

If the above is not cinematic excellence, I don’t know what is. Add some John Woo doves scatter-flying in a church and we’ve got a Best Picture contender right here. But, I digress.

To him, it was just absurd – without the fun. It reminds me of when I went back and watched Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990) as an adult and saw its live-action depiction of human-sized turtles in fedoras and trench coats serving as a workable disguise to stroll around town.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Movie (1990)

If I didn’t see that shit as a child, I don’t think I could have tolerated that kind of suspension of disbelief today. (Side note: Holy crap! Sam Rockwell played the Head Thug?! Great, now I have to go back and watch that deliciously awful thing again.)

So, I get that Blazing Saddles was groundbreaking at the time and how it opened doors for more daring comedy. But that was about as far as I could get. If only they had disguised the racism in a fedora and trench coat, I could have really gotten behind it. Next time!