This film has generated enough hot air for us to be blessed with two essays...

Blazing Saddles: A Raucous Western Spoof
By Trina Merry

"What's a dazzling urbanite like you doing in a rustic setting like this?"

Leave it to Mel Brooks to try to tackle a parody on the Old West that places the 1970's in the 1870's. A Gucci-wearing sheriff with dazzling style and a talent for outwitting his enemies indeed seems out of place in a town of in-bred "Johnsons". What does this contrast between the smooth African American hipster Bart, a worker on the new railroad going through, and the simple Rockridge townsfolk reveal about Americans thirty years ago?

Blazing Saddles most notably examines racial prejudice and hatred in America by showing audiences that the simple townsfolk of Rockridge will believe anything they're told. They are afraid of the unknown and quick to whip out their guns at anyone strange. "You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know... morons."

Bart believes, as many have, that education and progress will change attitudes and hatred. He has compassion and truly believes that once he establishes himself, and that once the townspeople get to know him, they've will accept him. Of course, he withers with the first "up yours, nigger" from a little old lady.

Bart didn't know what it was like to come from Rockridge, he only knew he was left out of the wagon train circle, abused at work, unjustly imprisoned, and nearly executed by white settlers. The Johnsons certainly didn't understand Bart's experience or know what the railroad worker community was like. However, Bart was open to learning about life in Rockridge, whereas the town prided themselves on their ability to drive out strangers. The truth is no one was listening to the other person, what they had was, in the line made famous in Cool Hand Luke, "What we have here is a failure to communicate."

It wasn't until some external force started oppressing them all that they were able to fight back together; this united the people of the town and the railroad company. Blazing Saddles, for all its humor, reveals the need for a deeply respectful dialogue to emerge between communities and allow for the divine to touch us.

In the Old West, African Americans were working on railroads for the white settlers along with immigrants from Asia and Ireland. All were hoping for a new start. In Brooks' west, the white railroad gang abused the workers and treated them like slaves, viewing them as worthless (less than a $400 handcart) and good for only one thing- entertainment.

Blazing Saddles must have struck a chord in the 1970's when, in the midst of implementing the results of a very public Civil Rights Movement, parts of America would only meet the African American in a positive way through Motown and sports.

Certainly the writers of Blazing Saddles didn't think the American government (nor that of Rockridge) was doing its job during the 70's, especially with Vietnam and Watergate as near memories. However, the writers were able to laugh at the governmental failures then. The front pages of newspapers today show that government and politics haven't changed that much.

In Blazing Saddles, Brooks himself plays "The Gov", the idiot leader of a corrupt governmental system intent on keeping his "phony baloney job". Hedley Lamarr's superfluous use of words and handy hanging post out back gave him all the confidence he needed to corrupt the government with perverse power. He seamlessly mixed politics with his own business agenda.

Blazing Saddles even addresses show business itself. The actors give direct takes to the audience and the band performs in the middle of the Old West, waving at Bart. The end erupts in utter chaos, revealing the production environment itself: the studio lot, studio tours, and even the cafeteria. After several minutes of this, even the actors sit in the theater with the audience hoping there's a happy ending. Mel Brooks leaves nothing sacred.

In Blazing Saddles, the entire town crams into the church for safety and direction from the railroad gang. The reverend wants to flee, but is forced to stay and play a lukewarm, mostly annoying role. He tries to defend Bart and morally direct the town, but when the town responds by shooting his Bible, he leaves Bart "on his own". The reverend quickly changes moral sides and conducts the town meeting over the problem of their new sheriff. He tries to continue leading the town, but generally gets in the way.

Blazing Saddles argues that the church gets in the way of good with its loud rants at inopportune times, acting as a distracting force. This kind of humor reveals a hard truth for believers as today moral activists from various faith communities push issues to center stage and often push politics to the pulpit. Just how Americans will integrate faith and public life in meaningful ways in the coming years is worthy of public discourse and dialogue.

Comedy reveals our flaws and ultimately transforms us by a kind of grace. So where do we find grace in Blazing Saddles? The Waco Kid confesses to Bart that he is at his end and needs "all the help he can get". Through their friendship, he receives a new identity and a purpose for his quick hand. Likewise, Mongo becomes more than a "pawn in the game of life". He is allowed to think and do good for the town. The abused railroad workers are given the opportunity to use their skills to save Rockridge and receive what they came to the West and America for, a place to call home.

Overall Brooks seems to be suggesting that we all need to laugh at ourselves. The process of filmmaking should be fun and if it isn't, what is the point of making a film, especially a comedy? Perhaps the ending is meant to place us, as filmmakers, back in the theater, and see what we will next create, what stories we will tell.

Comedy and laughter give us breathing room to examine our humanity. They allow us the opportunity to examine our culture, our country, and, most importantly, ourselves. They permit us to question together where we came from, where we are going, and how we all got here in the first place. We laugh to deal with our shortcomings and with the messiness of life.

Like the Waco Kid, the film invites us, the audience, to confess that we need all the help we can get and that to create and embrace community over isolation and fear is good citizenship. Comedy can lead us to that place where we are allowed to laugh our "amens" and heal together.

As I turn off my DVD player, I hope we can find our happy ending as a nation and ride stylishly off into the sunset together on our own blazing saddles.

Trina Merry has a B.A in Communications Media from Azusa Pacific University. She is an art director, and has worked as an assistant director and set production assistant. Some of the projects she has worked on are: "xXx: State of the Union", "The Island", "Fun with Dick and Jane" and the upcoming Showtime series "Sleeper Cell". She is currently collaborating with APU and Biola alumni on "36 Parables", a film project based on the parables of Christ.
© Trina Merry

Of Beans and Spurs and Racial Slurs: Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles
By Rae Stabosz, University of Delaware

A crude assortment of bodily sounds, made by the cowboys eating beans.

Cowboy: God dang! Jes'!
Lyle: How 'bout some more beans, Mr. Taggart?
Mr. Taggart : I'd say you've had enough.

Historical Perspective

Mel Brooks released Blazing Saddles thirty-one years ago, in 1974. Hip-hop culture was in its infancy. Jamaican DJ Kool Herc had recently moved to the West Bronx in New York City to emcee parties where guests created the earliest rap lyrics out of school yard rhymes, jail house verse and television theme songs like "The Ballad of Gilligan's Island." In 1974, Sidney Poitier was going on ten years as the sole black leading man in Hollywood, specializing in tender-tough men of intelligence, wit, and sterling character. Film directors Gordon Parks ("Shaft", 1971), his son Gordon Parks, Jr. ("Superfly", 1972), and Melvin Van Peebles ("Sweet Sweetback's Baad Asssss Song", 1971) were just beginning to rock the cinematic world with action films featuring black heroes who stuck it to The Man instead of playing nice with nuns.

And then there was Mel Brooks. He put race front and center in Blazing Saddles when he cast Cleavon Little in the role of Black Bart, the first black sheriff in the West. While the film contains the mixture of parody, slapstick, word play, and comic anachronism that we expect from a Mel Brooks comedy, it plays strongest as a commentary on race in America. Its contents may appear tame to a generation raised with the civil rights struggle a fait accomplis, hip-hop culture a dominant force, and interracial romance so common in television and film that it is no longer a matter of comment. But "Blazing Saddles" still has the power to shock.

How would a contemporary audience react to a comedy where white characters use the term "nigger" twenty times in rapid-fire succession in the first half hour? I cannot help but think any white filmmaker who tried this today might be in for a critical and popular lynching. Even if it were clear that the film did not endorse use of the epithet, our racially sensitive culture would flinch from the raw racism. Contemporary racism is far less innocently open. To explore its parameters we now have a generation of black filmmakers including Spike Lee, John Singleton, Robert Townsend, Eddie Murphy, Don Cheadle, the Hughes brothers, the Wayans brothers, Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle, and Mos Def, all of whom assume multiple roles (e.g. writer, director, producer, actor) to maintain creative control and bring their visions to the screen. A recent critical and box office success that took a penetrating, sophisticated look at race in America was "Crash", a collaboration of a white writer/director, Paul Haggis, and producers both white and black, including actor Don Cheadle.

Good for the Heart

"Comedy is the art of making people laugh without making them puke," says Steve Martin, while Aristotle speculated that comedy originated in ancient (even to him) festivals of mirth known as komos, in which a procession of extravagantly dressed men sang, danced, and capered obscenely around the image of a large phallus. "If this theory is true," notes David Simpson of DePaul University, "it gives a whole new meaning to the phrase 'stand-up routine'. " Bodily fluids and functions have always held a place of honor in comedy, which elicits laughter from the spectacle of human aspirations brought low by the weakness and vulnerability of human flesh. "Blazing Saddles" remains one of Mel Brooks's most popular films. This is almost certainly because its earnest critique of racism is woven into an outrageous mix of low humor that includes flatulence (the famous bean scene), large phalluses ("Is it true how zey say zat you people are... gifted?"), gunshots to the groin, bathroom humor, breast gags, pie fights, even a whiff of bestiality ("people stampeded and cattle raped.")

Plot and Character

The plot is a parody of a typical 1930's or 40's Hollywood Western. The small western town of Rockridge lies directly in the pathway of a new railroad track. Corrupt Attorney General Hedley Lamarr (Harvey Korman) intends to drive the people of Rockridge out of their homes and out of town so he can buy their land and sell it to the railroad. He sends a gang of thuggish cowboys in to shoot up the town and frighten the townsfolk. Their sheriff dead, the citizens of Rockridge gather at their church to ponder the situation.

Church Congregation [singing]:

"Now is a time of great decision
Are we to stay or up and quit?
There's no avoiding this conclusion:
Our town is turning into shit. Amen."

Summoning their courage in a show of solidarity that we recognize from countless old westerns, the townsfolk decide to stick it out:

"What are we made of? Our fathers came across the prairie, fought Indians, fought drought, fought locusts, fought Dix - remember when Richard Dix came in here and tried to take over this town? Well, we didn't give up then, and by gum, we're not gonna give up now."

The townsfolk demand that the sex-addled Governor (Mel Brooks, in one of three
cameos) send them a new sheriff to defend the town from the cowboys. Hedley Lamarr convinces the Governor to appoint the first black sheriff in the West, and offers him Black Bart, a railroad worker about to be hung on trumped-up criminal charges, as his man. Rockridge greets its new black sheriff with dismay ("The sheriff is a ni… ni…ni…") that turns to murderous anger ("Lynch him!"). Bart escapes their clutches by taking himself hostage and threatening to "kill the nigger" if they don't back off which they do, a successful ploy Bart marvels at for its stupidity. Safely inside his new sheriff's office, Bart makes the acquaintance of The Waco Kid (Gene Wilder), once the fastest gun in the West and now a burnt-out drunk who quickly becomes Bart's only friend and ally.

Brooks' original plan was to cast Richard Pryor, then an up-and-coming black stand-up comedian and one of the film's writers, as Black Bart opposite Gig Young's Waco Kid. But industry "suits" were nervous about Richard Pryor's adult humor including riffs on his own cocaine use, and Gig Young had a breakdown on the first day of shooting causing immediate replacement by Wilder. Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor never even met on the "Blazing Saddles" set, although they later showed a superb on-screen chemistry that made box office hits of "Silver Streak" and "Stir Crazy" and modest successes of "Another You" and "See No Evil, Hear No Evil."

Cleavon Little's Black Bart is not as baad asss as Sweet Sweetback, Shaft or Super Fly. He does not have the earthy dignity or the steely intelligence of Homer Smith ("Lilies of the Field") and Virgil Tibbs ("In the Heat of the Night"). He is not above making a minstrel clown of himself in order to divert attention and escape the brunt of the white man's malice. He is clever, opportunistic, wise in the ways of racism but never bitter about either the violence of the redneck cowboys or the casual bigotry of the Rockridge townsfolk. Little gives a subtle, restrained performance as Black Bart although one can "hear" Richard Pryor's dialogue and wonder what would have been added (and what subtracted) in his brasher hands. The presence of Gene Wilder as the Waco Kid propels the film into buddy movie territory that adds charm and softens the edges of the blunt send-up of racism and the steady stream of vulgar jokes.

Into the Sunset

Eventually Black Bart, with the assistance of the Waco Kid, triumphs over all obstacles to defeat his foes and drive Hedley Lamarr out of town. The movie ends in a wild free-for-all in which the characters break the fourth wall, find themselves on the set of a Hollywood film, and proceed to brawl through several other movie sets and out on to the streets of Hollywood, where at Graumann's Chinese Theatre they wander into a showing of the film currently on the marquee which turns out to be… "Blazing Saddles"! Black Bart and Hedley Lamarr have a final showdown outside of Grauman's, where Lamarr is killed and Bart rejoins the Waco Kid on the desert set outside of Rockridge. The two ride off into the sunset. As they approach the far end of the camera range, they stop their horses, dismount, hand the reins over to set assistants, climb into a limousine and ride off the set in style.

Bart: Work here is done. I'm needed elsewhere now. I'm needed wherever outlaws rule the West, wherever innocent women and children are afraid to walk the streets, wherever a man cannot live in simple dignity, wherever a people cry out for justice.

The Townspeople: (in unison) Bullshit!

Bart: All right, you caught me. Speaking the plain truth is getting pretty damn dull around here.

* Simpson, D. (1998) "Comedy and Tragedy" from DePaul University, School for New Learning in the Humanities Web Site, http://condor.depaul.edu/~dsimpson/tlove/comic-tragic.html

**Richard Dix was one of the few silent era stars who successfully made the transition to talkies. He was best known for his work in westerns. "Blazing Saddles" is full of tidbits to delight film buffs and industry insiders. When a brute named Mongo rides into town, a Mexican townsman cries, "Mongo! Santa Maria!" - a shout out to Mongo Santa Maria, a renowned Cuban bongo player. When Black Bart rides into town, orchestral music swells and then the camera pans past Count Basie and his orchestra, playing music in the desert.

Rae D. Stabosz holds a day job as Associate Director of the Foreign Language Media Center at the University of Delaware, but her real love is for theology, books, and film. She runs a successful Internet book business, Pious Ladies Bookmobile, which specializes in Catholic authors and the science fiction, fantasy, and horror genres. She has recently launched The Pious Ladies Literary Agency, currently representing fantasy and horror screenwriters/novelists Mark E. Rogers and Kyle Crocco. Her recent writing includes "The Catholic Blogosphere: New Spaces of Freedom for the Good Press," in The Pauline Cooperators Magazine, Spring 2005, and "Trapped in Castle Anthrax: Monty Python and the Holy Grail" for the 2004 City of Angels Film Festival.