Blazing Saddles Gets a Warning From HBO

Movies

Remember when they assured us they weren’t coming for Blazing Saddles? Yeah, they’re coming for Blazing Saddles. Following their scramble to ensure that people who watched Gone with the Wind on their streaming service understood that slavery is bad, HBO has now put a lecture in front of Blazing Saddles. This particular condescending bit of wokeness comes from Jacqueline Stewart, a professor at the University of Chicago, a host on Turner Classic Movies, and, I assume, someone who’s never laughed at anything in her life. Stewart’s speech “informs audiences about the director’s spoofing ways,” in case you didn’t know who Mel Brooks is, and goes on to let all us ignorant plebes know that, although there’s racism in the movie, “Those attitudes are espoused by characters who are explicitly portrayed here as narrow-minded, ignorant bigots… The film’s real and much more enlightened perspective is represented by the two main characters.” That’s reassuring; when I first saw Blazing Saddles, I thought Cleavon Little and Gene Wilder were the bad guys and I was supposed to root for the Klan. It’s hard to say if the DVD and Blu-ray will top the best-selling list on Amazon like Gone with the Wind did two months ago, partly because it’s already sold out and partly because people snatched it up at the same time they did the most popular movie in history.

Honestly, have we had enough yet? Are we tired of being treated like children? Aren’t you insulted that HBO, Warner Bros., and Professor Patronizing don’t think you possess the cognitive ability to understand a movie where a bunch of guys fart around a campfire? Is there anything we’re capable of figuring out for ourselves, or is there going to be a very special introduction to Ace Ventura: Pet Detective that puts the societal norms of the early 90s in context for the viewer? (“Don’t be alarmed that the dolphin’s name is Snowflake.”) I know it’s only movies about race that we need help processing right now, but sooner or later, even the people who make everything about race will run out of those. Aside from being insulting, infantilizing, and a scary harbinger of the outright banning that will undoubtedly follow, I think John Nolte makes a great point about these intros in his article on the subject: they hurt the film. Art is meant to be experienced, not to be “put into context” by someone who had nothing to do with creating it – and, since they feel the need to tell you how and what to think about it, can’t possibly like it all that much. Art needs to stand on its own and be allowed to speak to those who consume it however it will. Is someone watching Blazing Saddles for the first time going to laugh nearly as hard if they already know who each character is and how they’re supposed to view them, or what the point of the jokes is? Of course not; they’ll be looking at their watch and playing with their phone, wondering why their dad thinks Mel Brooks is such a genius. In light of that, these contextualizations are the first step in eliminating “problematic” art, because they ruin it so much that future generations won’t even bother with it. Thank God for home video.

Sidebar: I don’t think it’s an accident – whether intentionally or in a cosmic sense, if you go for that sort of thing – that a bunch of celebrities, including William Shatner (a conservative) and Neil Gaiman (a liberal), will be reading Ray Bradbury’s classic sci-fi novel Fahrenheit 451 to honor the late author’s 100^th birthday. The dystopian nightmares these writers dreamt up are becoming a reality, and at the rate at which the authoritarians among us are growing emboldened, we’ve got a small window to stop this evil in its tracks.

Do you agree with HBO putting a lecture in front of Blazing Saddles? Have you seen the film? Are you buying stock in DVD and Blu-ray manufacturing companies? Let us know in the comments and stay tuned to Geeks + Gamers for more movie news!