Watching films, understanding them or even enjoying them can only be assumed to be an individual experience. By that I mean the images that flash before a pair of eyes have no sense in themselves. They need to be filtered through and interpreted based on acquired knowledge. A corollary of the thesis above is that films stimulate different reactions from audiences as circumstances change over time. Certain films remain relevant despite the current social environment. These classics ask those important questions that are beyond time.Others fade into the dusk of nothingness or get propped up as taxidermic specimens — lifelike, but lifeless — by the adulation of fans.One such film is Mel Brooks’ “Blazing Saddles.””Blazing Saddles” is an anachronistic satirical western about the building of a railroad in the Wild West. Construction on the route has to stop because of quicksand. The railroad is quickly rerouted, but the new plan involves laying the tracks through a frontier town called Rock Ridge.To get the land cheaply, a venal politician decides on an alternative to eminent domain: He will send a gang of thugs to kill the men and children and rape the women. Rock Ridge retaliates by unintentionally appointing a black sheriff.In a tribute to the film in Time magazine, Richard Schickel wrote, “A certain number of sissies are bound to go around condescending to Blazing Saddles as a comedy of less than perfect form.””They will note that it lacks the careful construction and polished wit that are often cited by essentially humorless people, usually to justify the minor cultural sin of having a good time at a movie that is less than 35 years old and does not star either the Marx Brothers or W.C. Fields,” Schickel said.Nothing could be further from the truth.”Blazing Saddles” begins with an establishing shot of an empty, bush-strewn desert. After a while we notice the desert is actually teeming with a chain gang laying down tracks.A white boss tells the black workers to “sing a nigger song.” The blacks oblige by belting out Cole Porter’s “I Get a Kick Out of You.” Miffed, the white overlords counter with a rendition of the popular negro spiritual “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” The film goes downhill from there.The reason is viewers resist the filmmaker when their expectations are overtly subverted — think of it as the cinematic equivalent to Newton’s Third Law; audiences recognize that comedies lack bite when the essential element of surprise is missing: Shock only works when unexpected.But even more importantly, satire about race can only succeed when it skewers all races equally.Unfortunately, “Blazing Saddles” is content with tackling only whites and jews — though not in that order. The whites speak with funny accents and are all racists; a German-speaking Sioux saves a black family because “they darker than us.”Blacks are shown as intelligent underlings who demand to be treated with respect, but beyond that there is not much more that can be gleaned from their characters.When will we exorcise the spirit of white guilt?Unlike Schickel, film reviewer John Simon was unimpressed. “Mel Brooks’s film is a model of how not to make a comedy.””It is like playing tennis not only without a net but also without a court, and with twenty balls simultaneously,” Simon wrote, in “Reverse Angle.” “All kinds of gags — chiefly anachronisms, irrelevancies, reverse ethnic jokes, and out-and-out vulgarities — are thrown together pell-mell, batted about insanely in all directions, and usually beaten into the ground.””Blazing Saddles” has been overtaken by the tide of history. Those humorous touches which might have been novel in the ‘70s are the norm today. The film tosses the word “nigger” for shock value, but in the 21st century, its use in most instances is considered benign. After all, the rapper Nas nearly had it as the title of his album. A similar fate is shared by the fourth wall stunts. The fourth wall is the invisible demarcation between the characters and the audience. Hence, to break it would involve breaching the barrier by having a character directly address the audience.But, if the viewer never knew it existed, especially as it seems in this film, what would be its effect?In one scene, an old lady being beaten by a thug faces the camera and says, “Have you seen such cruelty?” Madam, what’s the point?”Blazing Saddles” has paved the way for the likes of “Superhero” and “Disaster” movies. From the farting jokes to the references to show business people —Marlene Dietrich, Cecil B. DeMille — to the ludicrous ending, this film deserves to be taken off the wall and put to sleep.After all, it’s what we do to all the other broken down nags when they can’t run no more.
 
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Contact Freke Ette at [email protected]