Quote:
Originally Posted by Wormius
I think it's similar to "All in the Family". The humour is about the dumb kind of comments Archie makes. We're really laughing at him, not with him, or empathizing with his point of view. In "Blazing Saddles" you have the strong protagonist, and you are laughing at the racists' stupidity. One movie that comes to mind is "Idiocracy". The smart people in the movie don't say anything really racist or bigoted, while the obviously moronic characters do.
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All true. But Blazing Saddles still couldn't be made today. Even though it's clearly anti-racist, the language it uses and attitudes it satirizes have become taboo to portray, even when they're portrayed as idiotic.
A comedy about racism would extremely hard to get made today, full-stop. But back in the 60s and 70s they made comedies about
everything - racism (Blazing Saddles, All in the Family), pedophilia (Lolita), Nazis (the Producers, Hogan's Heroes), etc.