OPINION: The right-wing misinterpretation of ‘Blazing Saddles’ is very noticeable.

Editor’s note: Noah Berlatsky (@nberlat) is a freelance writer living in Chicago. The views expressed here are his own.view more opinions On CNN.

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At least on social media, Mel Brooks’ classic Blazing Saddles has become a standard example of a film that would be impossible to make today due to the prevalence of left-wing political correctness. But rewatching the 1974 film on its 50th anniversary, what stands out is its gleeful, irreverent anti-racism and its overt enthusiasm for insulting and ridiculing racists.

Blazing Saddles is a movie that doesn’t need to be remade and cannot be recreated. But if it were to be remade, it would almost certainly not be the left that would oppose it.

Like most Brooks films, “Blazing Saddles” (distributor currently shares parent company with CNN) is a collection of vaudeville skits and set pieces, as well as a coherent story. But as far as the plot goes, this is a Western about the nefarious Attorney General Hedley Lamarr (Harvey Korman) trying to take over the town of Rock Ridge, which is being turned into a railroad stop.

When Lamar’s thugs kill the Sheriff of Lockridge and the town petitions his successor, Governor William J. . Hedley believes that the good people of Rockridge would rather kill their own sheriff than be defended by a black man. But he wasn’t counting on Sheriff Bart’s wit or the ridiculous movie they were in.

This silliness includes an R rating and many gags (courtesy of co-writer Richard Pryor) that offend white people who say racial slurs. Mel Brooks reportedly said in a 2017 interview that Hollywood wouldn’t make the movie now because “we’ve become so absurdly politically correct that it’s the death of comedy.” However, this is almost certainly the case.

Although Brooks himself is not a conservative, his arguments are embraced by many on the right. “This movie would probably put most 24-year-olds into a coma. It’s like a nonstop series of racist and sexist jokes that wouldn’t be in a Hollywood movie today.” ” Fox News quoted one Twitter user as claiming.Another post claimed The film showed that “we weren’t always so close to each other.”

There are several moments in this film that may be cut or changed in the remake. Brooks, for example, wears brown makeup to play a Native American leader. Today, producers and directors say that if they’re going to represent a Native American on screen, they should probably hire and pay a Native American actor, even if the gag is that the Native American speaks Yiddish. I would point it out.

But much of the rest of the film indulges in edgy racism, such as that of right-wing commentator Charlie Kirk, who attacked Martin Luther King Jr. on Martin Luther King Jr. Day this year. isn’t it. Instead, “Blazing Saddles” puts racial slurs into the mouths of people who are clearly marked as bad guys. In that sense, it’s similar to Quentin Tarantino’s 2012 anti-racist western, Django Unchained.

But I think Blazing Saddles is far more aggressive than Django Unchained in denying and trolling the Charlie Kirks of the world. In “Django,” a black hero shoots and kills a number of white racists. But these white racists are clearly located in the antebellum, slave-holding past.

In contrast, Brooks’ films are less time-based. The ostensible setting is 1874. But in the end, the actors break through the fourth wall and onto a modern Hollywood studio set, firing guns and throwing pies.

Among the thugs Lamar hires to destroy Rockridge are several 1920s KKK members in full uniform. Hitler himself appears near the end of the film. The racism expressed in this film is a thing of the past, but like the pie that fills the climactic battle, it continues to bleed into the present, spilling over from time constraints.

Moreover, Brooks doesn’t just associate racism with brutal, murderous villains, as Tarantino does. Instead, Blazing Saddles depicts everyday good white townspeople as racists and, because they are racists, irredeemably stupid.

In one of the film’s most famous scenes, the white men of Lockridge prepare to shoot Bart en masse. But Bart, acting out the stereotypes of the cold, bad black man and the powerless, good, respectful black man, escapes by holding a gun to his own head and running away while muttering to himself. Faced with their double prejudice, the white residents of Rockridge glowered like Star Trek’s bamboo-clad robots. “You’re such a good person,” Bart tells himself, safe, “and they’re really stupid!”

Gene Wilder, who plays Bart’s quick-drawing friend Jim, is even more revealing. After enduring racist insults from a kind white grandmother, Jim reassures Bart, “Remember, they’re just farmers.” “They’re the people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know…you idiots.”

Wilder famously delivered that last line with such casual, deadpan vitriol that Little broke out of character and yelled profanities at the camera.

In 2024, Charlie Kirk will get a big stage to insult Martin Luther King. But we shouldn’t openly say that rural white MAGA voters, or “people of the land,” are deplorable racists. You should be respectful. But 50 years ago, Blazing Saddles was a movie about people who lived in a small town and hung out at a diner, even if that racist looked like your grandma. He said it was bad manners to treat racists with respect, even if they were.

If a movie like Brooks’ masterpiece were made today, the left would be overjoyed. It is the right-wingers who slowly and dimly realize that they are being insulted and howl with rage–hopefully, they will howl after reading this article. The best way to honor “Blazing Saddles” is to piss off some racists.