Is it enough to note that Cleavon Little played by far the smartest character in the film, and that the other blacks were largely smarter and wiser than their white counterparts?
And yes, the context of setting, era and era of the film are all critical to evaluating the question.
I agree. But my point is that it seems to give anyone, racist or not, a freedom to tell black jokes when polite society wouldn’t allow it otherwise. Do you disagree?
And all that makes the jokes and usage non-racist? It plays on and perpetuates every racist stereotype in the book. And it mocks them. That doesn’t mean that it isn’t racist. It clearly is. That doesn’t mean that people don’t laugh at it. Disney keeps Song Of The South from re-release and viewings because it is racist. Not mean racist like Birth Of A Nation, or funny racist like Blazing Saddles, but “aren’t they charming and deferential” racist.
Mel Brooks and company made a movie mocking racism and Hollywood. But it is racist and a Hollywood movie.
I don’t think that can be questioned in an absolute sense. But I don’t know that it’s a meaningful question. Perhaps the better one is “Is the use of negative forms of humor (racism, sexism, cultural stereotyping, etc.) allowable or even an asset when its net effect is to demean the negative aspects of the thinking?”
It would take a dim mind indeed to come away from BS with a diminished attitude towards blacks; it’s possible that the sly inversion of racist tropes even sparked change in some racist mindsets. So racist yes; but a bad thing overall…?
It’s the mindset, not the word that’s the problem.
The word nigger is a symptom of racism not a cause of it. If you could eliminate the word completely from the English language and never have it spoken or written again, you wouldn’t have eliminated racism. Racists would just use other ways to manifest their mindset.
The public campaign to eliminate the word nigger from usage does serve a purpose. But the purpose is to make people think about what they’re saying and why they’re saying it. It’s a campaign to change the way people think not the way they talk.
The end goal isn’t to make the word nigger forbidden. The end goal is to make the word nigger unnecessary because nobody has a reason to use it.
Some dumbass quoting a movie line out of context does not a racist movie make. O Brother Where Art Thou is another example of a period piece that shows historical racism, but is not a racist movie. PBS presented a documentary about the treatment of blacks post-slavery entitled Slavery by Another Name, wherein several former slave owners and racist law makers and their ugly words are quoted. Do you think that historical depiction is racist, too? Or is your problem with satire?
I never really thought about it before, but I first saw this movie with my parents, NW PA’s staunchest representation of racists, and they laughed as loud and hard at every joke along with me, their embarrassingly liberal daughter. I don’t think it was because their racist views were being validated, I think it was because it was a really fucking funny movie.
You should rectify that.
Truly. Do it late at night with the curtains pulled and wearing headphones if you must, but BS is a classic, one of the most gutbustingly hilarious movies ever made, and a strong statement of several kinds despite its questionable ingredients. Trust me, right after you watch it, you’ll…
“Want to see it again?”
Part of the point of the movie is that there were many sorts of racism in the U.S. at that time. (And, to be fair, everywhere else.) Prejudice against blacks was just a small part of it. One exchange in the film shows this clearly. The townspeople need the help of the railroad workers to stop the plans of the bad guys in the film (the railroad company and the politicians and the hired guns they have bribed or employed). The railroad workers are willing to help if the townspeople give them some land to live on and farm. The railroad workers are a mixture of blacks (who were presumably only a generation or so away from slavery) and recent Chinese and Irish immigrants. This exchange goes as follows:
Olson Johnson: All right… we’ll give some land to the niggers and the chinks. But we don’t want the Irish!
[everyone complains]
Olson Johnson: Aw, prairie shit… Everybody!
[everyone rejoices]
People forget that there was once prejudice against groups that we know think of as incredibly mainstream like people of Irish ancestry.
To which I’d point attention at Caddyshack, made long after serious discrimination against the Irish and Catholics was gone but in which blatant prejudice was a key plot point. Or to National Lampoon’s 1970s campaign against those dirty low-life tricksters, the Dutch.
“about racism” =/= necessarily “racist” ; it CAN be but it need not.
Birth Of A Nation *justifies *racist volence as righteous, and does so in all serious earnest. But it is a well made production for its time AND it WAS an influential work of propaganda so it remains available for study and evaluation.
Song Of The South *abets a romanticized self-image *of a racist society. Having been created as a piece of edifying entertainment for children, the implicit message of casually abiding that POV without providing much social context (which even when it was released caused some confusion), is considered by the studio as carrying too much risk of losing commercial goodwill.
Blazing Saddles ridicules racism by setting up an absurd situation through which to identify and attack the racist premises (including mainstream Hollywoood’s own avoidance of the issue) – those of us who saw it when it came out had no question that it was an antiracist work. BUT because it then proceeds to do its thing taking for granted a * caricaturesquely racist* universe, using crass broad comedy complete with abundant use of the n-word, rape jokes, fart gags, horse punching, jokes at the expense of just about every possible population ("…AND Methodists!"), rape jokes and a confusing breaking-the-wall ending, many in the modern audience feel… ambivalent. Somewhat embarrassed to find it funny. Confused about on whom is the joke. Worried that the racist who does not get it is laughing with the racist characters instead of at them.
Good! That means it, and many other comedic and serious pieces fiction and nonfiction in film, literature, and social discourse have done their job and you don’t casually accept racist-premised situations and statements any more. So for some it’s “taking longer than we thought” – doesn’t make the movie itself become what it was against.
You said “rape jokes” twice.
He hit Buddy!
Get him, girls!
Which BTW, Blazing Saddles being one of those pieces that are definitely “of their time”, to me one of the most telltale signs of that are the rape references, perhaps even more than the racist references.
So think about it, people:
“…I like rape…”
“…women and children stampeded and cattle raped!”
“-Exceptin’ the womenfolk, of course”
“You spare the women?”
“-Naw, we rape the shit outta them”
… do we laugh?
Nigger nigger nigger nigger. You aren’t going to get in trouble with the mods.
The movie is obvious in its message. It should come as no surprise that stupid racists will find ways to continue being stupid and racist.
…but you repeat yourself.
I had almost forgot that one. In the full quote, didn’t Slim Pickens say that they would pull a #6 on them? And a #6 was where they go something like “wamping and wailing, killing and raping everything in town”? Then Mel Brooks says “You spare the women?” and Slim says that we rape the shit out of them at the #6 celebration dance later that night or some other term? See, now you assholes have me quoting the movie! 