The film Blazing Saddles is the first of its kind to star a black hero to a white audience. The popular comedy film, Blazing Saddles, is well renowned for its intense use of racial satire. Blazing Saddles was produced in 1974 by famous film director, Mel Brooks. This film was and still is definitely one of a kind, for an abundant of different reasons. One reason being this film was the first film to star a black man as a main character. Blazing Saddles uses various genres of humor in order to address issues of race, class, and gender. Blazing Saddles takes place in a little western town named Rock Ridge. However, before it sets place in Rock Ridge, it begins with African Americans working on constructing railroads. The workers come to find …show more content…
Deadpan is a type of humor that describes speaking with an emotionless face. The addition of deadpan makes racial humor easier to address. For example, on Bart’s first day of being the town’s new sheriff, an elderly lady says to Bart “up yours Nigger” with a very straight and serious face. This exposes racial issues and shows how easy it was for people in this time period to use racial slurs. The word nigger is used over a dozen times through out the film as well as the word chink. In “Revisiting Mel Brook’s and Pryor’s Subversively Brilliant Racial Satire Blazing Saddles, 40 Years Later” by Jason Bailey, he explores the racial influences in the film. He says that “the n-word… is used frequently and freely; it is used in casual dialogue and it is used as a punch line.” He explains that even though it is shocking to hear these derogatory terms, it was written to portray this time period, not to shock the audience. Blazing Saddles uses deadpan humor the most frequent to show racial prejudices from the uneducated and horrible people of Rock Ridge. Similar to racial humor being addressed in this film, issues in class are also …show more content…
In this film women are degraded frequently, by a handful of different rape comments and degrading names. Mel Brooks portrays in Blazing Saddles the reality of how women were treated in this time period, he uses humor to make it easier to address this issue. For example, when the Governor is introduced he is with a woman that is only partially clothed. She is in provocative attire and the Governor looks at her chest and says “hello boys have a good night rest, I’ll miss you.” This scene is surreal comedy because it is so ridiculous that he is speaking to her chest that it is humorous. This scene also shows how women were treated in this time period. This film takes place in an era when women were still not able to vote. Therefore, this film exposes the issues that women had during this time, in a comical manner making it more approachable. There is another scene when Hedly Lamarr hits Lili Von Shtupp and calls her a very inappropriate name, and the other gentleman says nothing about it, this shows how little women were treated in this time period. Blazing Saddles uses mostly surreal humor to address issues regarding