Blazing Saddles is comedy history actually. It had Richard Pryor as writer and erstwhile star, but they didn’t want him to do it because, well, he was Richard Pryor. Right there you have a movie you have to see. The comedy was pointed at stuff in the world. It’s definitely not reducible to slapstick. Young Frankenstein was a genre parody too, but not much beyond that.
In many ways, the Deltas ARE the problem in the sense that they are the ones who embody white male entitlement. The Omegas may have been pompous, elite, white men, but they really don’t “do” anything evil. They are good students. They are active in athletics and extracurriculars like ROTC, student government and the newspaper.
The Deltas are a bunch of fuckups. And yet they never suffer any real consequences for their fuckupedness. In fact, it is shown how each of them go on to very successful careers, in spite of putting in precisely zero effort.
Now maybe that is the subversive nature of films from the late 70s/early 80s like Animal House, Stripes, Trading Places, Caddyshack and others. That you have this class of pompous elitists patting themselves on the back over how elite they are while these lazy buffoons just show up and achieve just as much, if not more without even trying. In a true meritocracy, the Deltas would probably end up homeless shortly after flunking out of college.
They are going to make a sequel for the 20 teens. The Omegas are going to be recognized at last for their pluck, and failure to commit prosecutable crimes as Republicans. The arc of justice is long but curves towards being great again.
And it was very much in keeping with the times. You’d hear people like Gordon Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell, Cat Stevens, and Harry Chapin fairly frequently on the radio up until about 1975 or 1976. Then they all just kinda disappeared from the airwaves. That style of music had outlived its welcome. Belushi expressed a widespread sentiment in that scene.
Until about 5 years ago, I assumed that the “I gave my love a chicken that had no bones” song was written as a parody for the movie. I was completely gobsmacked when I was told (on this board) that it’s a real, well known folk song.
Some other mild trivia - the actor in that scene was a friend of John Landis, and has appeared in a bunch of his movies as “charming” whatever - “charming guy with guitar” (Animal House), “Charming G.I” (Twilight Zone the Movie), “Charming Trooper” (Blues Brothers), etc.
He also had a few 70s hits, probably most famously this one and this one.