Some people can literally get away with anything — say anything, do anything — and people will let them. Other people attempt a mildly dirty joke and bring total silence down on a party. Mel Brooks is the lifetime president of that group.
– Roger Ebert’s 1974 Review of
Blazing Saddles.
When I scrolled past a headline posting the 50th anniversary of Blazing Saddles, I could not help but smile. That movie is seared in my memory because it taught me much about White people. It also taught me that Black people saw humor differently than White people.
It was my first immersion into integration at Skyline High School in Dallas. My years from pre-school through Junior High (6th-9th) were homogenous.
We saw teachers in White, but to see a White student in my DISD school was unheard of; unless they were left because the family house didn’t sell before Labor Day, White folks made sure their children didn’t share a classroom with us.
So, when a student named Jonathan Bernstein came to school still rolling in laughter from seeing Blazing Saddles, I had to go.
At first, he thought it would be a good idea, but after looking at my afro and coppertoned features, he was not nearly as sure I would enjoy his favorite flick.
What made it worse was that a Black dude whose name escapes me said just the opposite, “Don’t go see that racist shit!
“Bruh man’s” sentiments aligned with those of others who looked like me.
Now I had to go.
In a pre-release interview, one of the movie’s co-writers, Richard Pryor, mused about the film and his thoughts on its creator, Mel Brooks.
Sitting on the famed couch of the Johnny Carson Show, Pryor was ambiguous about the whole thing.
Pryor eloped with one of his patented comedic tangents when asked if he was one of the writers.
“I hope they keep all that stuff in the movie. It was one of the craziest scripts I ever read in my life. It’s absolute nonsense, but it can be a very funny picture. Brooks has an extraordinarily hateful kind of comedy. Absolute insanity.”
There is little time for leisurely endeavors when you go to school and work 32 hours a week at Gibson’s Discount Center (a precursor to stores like K-Mart and WalMart). But eventually, I made it in to see the movie.
I bought my ticket in a White neighborhood and watched it all by my lonesome. It was the laughter that Bernstein described. It had all the racist shit that the brother said. And Pryor’s remark that the script was hateful and absolute insanity was spot on.
It was the trifecta that I went back to watch at least 50 times.
Someone on the internet recently asked how the Black com- munity views Blazing Saddles. This was the main response.
“I was recently considering how to present the film to my movie-loving teen, and I realized I had no idea how the Black community viewed the movie. Obviously, it is a snapshot of the time it was made and was ground-breaking.
We all know Richard Pryor was involved as a co-screenwriter.
There are many ways to debate the film’s subject matter and its comedic/artistic/social merits.
This morning, I asked an older Black gentleman in my building what he thought of “Blazing Saddles,” he said he had never seen it.
I’m guessing it was the Black dude I went to high school with.
Blazing Saddles is 50 years old, and I can tell you that I urged my three daughters (and three generations) to see it for at least three reasons.
First, Cleavon Little, who got the lead part mainly because the studio thought Pryor was too risky, is hilarious. I was sold from the moment he appeared arrayed in a suede suit, Gucci saddle bags, and more arrogance than any Black man could be afforded in the late 1800s.
Secondly, the use of the word “Nigger” is so commensurate with the level of racial ignorance that it balances out in pure humor.
Finally, the movie is tailored for anyone who has attention deficit disorder. Themes are playing over themes interrelated to other themes.
Mel Brooks used all these threads and some dirty jokes to create a lifelong masterpiece.
You may not think that it’s Black history, but I do.
A long-time Texas Metro News columnist, Dallas native Vincent L. Hall is an author, writer, award-winning writer, and a lifelong Drapetomaniac.
