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"You Couldn't Make Blazing Saddles Today!"

Infranaut2 HN recommenders · 2020–2025
468K views · commentary · evergreen · Uploaded 2020-01-02

A long video essay arguing against the claim that Blazing Saddles could not be made today. It looks at the film as satire of the sanitized Western genre and what it did to that genre.

Pointed to as an informative rebuttal to the popular claim and as an explanation of the film's satirical effect on Westerns.

Film analysis & criticismFree speech, censorship & civil libertiesSatire & parody

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4 comments from Hacker News

@nerfhammer2020 · in “Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner on their 70-year friendship”

I saw a good youtube video about how blazing saddles was satirizing decades of hyper popular sanitized Western genre and helped kill it [VIDEO]

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@Arainach2021 · in “No More Movies”

Agreed. One of the canonical versions of this meme is "you couldn't make Blazing Saddles today", which is utter nonsense: [VIDEO]

CitesView on HN
@Terr_2025 · in “The "Take It Down" Act”

There's an informative video-dive into that, centered on the effect of the movie Blazing Saddles : [VIDEO]

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@Terr_2025 · in “I wrote a book called “Crap Towns”. It seemed funny at the time”

The same phenomenon exists when people talk about the movie Blazing Saddles. It's transgressive content worked because it was satirizing "wholesome" Wild West shows, holding up a funhouse mirror to their less-obvious absurdities and racist aspects. It was so successful, its targets don't exist anymore. [VIDEO]

CitesView on HN