Blazing Saddles

I've heard about Blazing Saddles for a couple years now, since I've been hanging out with self-identified geeks.  Before that, I just thought that it was a regular John Wayne-esqe Western like the Dirty Dozen or something.  I finally watched it last night.


It's hard for me to like crazy cinematic moves like destroying the fourth wall.  It's just not my style.  I'm still not sure what I think about the Scott Pilgrim movie.  In Blazing Saddles, I was sitting there confused; why are they acting like their characters but on different sets? 

Then there was the obvious racial issues.  I get that it was critiquing racism, using stereotypes to make fun of the stereotypes.  The problem is that White people probably think that it's funny because it's exaggerating stereotypes and the true nature of Black people, while Blacks are probably thinking that it's making fun of Whites and the inaccurate and ridiculous stereotypes that they hold.  So the racial satire could still be confirming the stereotypes for Whites.  Not cool.

And the social issue that wasn't mentioned at all was sexism.  There were two women in this film: a school marm and a prostitute.  Not exactly a great diversity of characters.  At least neither of them were really stereotypical. 

I'm glad that I watched it, but I don't think that I liked it.  I was told to watch it again, that I would find it more amusing.  Um, not so sure that I'm up for that in the near, you know, ever.  But you never know!