3 ms·

Agreed. One of the canonical versions of this meme is "you couldn't make Blazing Saddles today", which is utter nonsense: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzMFo

Agreed. One of the canonical versions of this meme is "you couldn't make Blazing Saddles today", which is utter nonsense: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzMFoNZeZm0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzMFoNZeZm0

mnky9800n 5y ago
That's a reasonable video but I feel like it could have been half as long
smsm42 5y ago
Looks like the author of the video misses the point by about a mile, taking it in the most literal sense possible. His argument is basically "yes, you couldn't make Blazing Saddles today because it was playing off the contemporary popularity of Western and its tropes, and since that is long gone, repeating it in a literal sense, as a Western parody, would be a no go now, because nobody cares anymore about Westerns". Which as I said, misses the point about a mile - the point is not about recreating the same movie, it's about making the same kind of movie - the movie pushing the boundaries and being as offensive as possible on purpose, the movie highlighting the hot topics not by solemnly lecturing the viewer, but by lampooning the hell out of it. The refutation of this point would be to provide an example of current irreverent offense-to-11 lampooning of current tropes-de-jour. I don't know - Marvel movies? Woke diversity-inclusion drama? Something else? So the author is right - nobody wants to literally make the same movie today, because the same movie is already have been made! It's however a prime example of being right on technicality and completely wrong on substance - the point is not to make a copy of Blazing Saddles, the point is making that kind of irreverent and boundless satire, which is appropriate in all times and all societies - but I can't see how Woke Hollywood could ever make something like that. Another argument is "but we don't submit to every woke demand and not everybody is getting cancelled" - of course not! If Hollywood tried to submit to every woke demand and avoid every complaint from twitter mob, no movie would be ever made at all. Of course, there's a lot of complaints that are ignored. That doesn't exclude the fact that there are clear boundaries where Woke Hollywood would never dare to tread. And irreverent no-holds-barred satire of the Blazing Saddles mold is out of these boundaries. Next argument is "well, there are stand-up comics and they aren't thrown in jail". Yeah, sure, we're not there yet. But we also not where we were when Blazing Saddles was made. We're somewhere in between the one and the other. And we're moving away from the Blazing Saddles.
- handrous 5y ago
  What, and whom, do you think BS was lampooning? I'd expect a true modern successor to lean pretty far toward the "woke diversity-inclusion drama" side of things.
  - smsm42 5y ago
    BS is lampooning a lot of things - corrupt politicians, demagogues, racists, ignorance, religious intolerance, Western movie tropes, cinema tropes in general, and by the end it turns into a total glorious mayhem where everybody gets a pie in the face (in both metaphorical and the most literal sense). So you'd be tempted to ask - why would Woke Hollywood or their woke twitter mob watchdogs object to lampooning corrupt politicians or racists? And the answer to that is exactly the reason why woke cancel culture is so awful - because the intent does not matter. If something can be taken as offensive by any construction of the most hostile reading of it - and a hostile reading (watching) of Blazing Saddles surely could find a lot of "problematic" things within it - completely ignoring the intent, the context and concentrating only on the form and the worst possible interpretation of it that could be invented - then it's unacceptable and must be destroyed. That's exactly the crux of the problem and the point of the argument about Blazing Saddles - the problem is that even when you agree on the premises, like racism is bad, corrupt politicians are bad, etc. - if you express it in a manner that may seem to somebody, even in theory, "problematic", you're still the enemy.

mnky9800n 5y ago

That's a reasonable video but I feel like it could have been half as long

smsm42 5y ago

Looks like the author of the video misses the point by about a mile, taking it in the most literal sense possible. His argument is basically "yes, you couldn't make Blazing Saddles today because it was playing off the contemporary popularity of Western and its tropes, and since that is long gone, repeating it in a literal sense, as a Western parody, would be a no go now, because nobody cares anymore about Westerns". Which as I said, misses the point about a mile - the point is not about recreating the same movie, it's about making the same kind of movie - the movie pushing the boundaries and being as offensive as possible on purpose, the movie highlighting the hot topics not by solemnly lecturing the viewer, but by lampooning the hell out of it. The refutation of this point would be to provide an example of current irreverent offense-to-11 lampooning of current tropes-de-jour. I don't know - Marvel movies? Woke diversity-inclusion drama? Something else? So the author is right - nobody wants to literally make the same movie today, because the same movie is already have been made! It's however a prime example of being right on technicality and completely wrong on substance - the point is not to make a copy of Blazing Saddles, the point is making that kind of irreverent and boundless satire, which is appropriate in all times and all societies - but I can't see how Woke Hollywood could ever make something like that. Another argument is "but we don't submit to every woke demand and not everybody is getting cancelled" - of course not! If Hollywood tried to submit to every woke demand and avoid every complaint from twitter mob, no movie would be ever made at all. Of course, there's a lot of complaints that are ignored. That doesn't exclude the fact that there are clear boundaries where Woke Hollywood would never dare to tread. And irreverent no-holds-barred satire of the Blazing Saddles mold is out of these boundaries. Next argument is "well, there are stand-up comics and they aren't thrown in jail". Yeah, sure, we're not there yet. But we also not where we were when Blazing Saddles was made. We're somewhere in between the one and the other. And we're moving away from the Blazing Saddles.

handrous 5y ago
What, and whom, do you think BS was lampooning? I'd expect a true modern successor to lean pretty far toward the "woke diversity-inclusion drama" side of things.
- smsm42 5y ago
  BS is lampooning a lot of things - corrupt politicians, demagogues, racists, ignorance, religious intolerance, Western movie tropes, cinema tropes in general, and by the end it turns into a total glorious mayhem where everybody gets a pie in the face (in both metaphorical and the most literal sense). So you'd be tempted to ask - why would Woke Hollywood or their woke twitter mob watchdogs object to lampooning corrupt politicians or racists? And the answer to that is exactly the reason why woke cancel culture is so awful - because the intent does not matter. If something can be taken as offensive by any construction of the most hostile reading of it - and a hostile reading (watching) of Blazing Saddles surely could find a lot of "problematic" things within it - completely ignoring the intent, the context and concentrating only on the form and the worst possible interpretation of it that could be invented - then it's unacceptable and must be destroyed. That's exactly the crux of the problem and the point of the argument about Blazing Saddles - the problem is that even when you agree on the premises, like racism is bad, corrupt politicians are bad, etc. - if you express it in a manner that may seem to somebody, even in theory, "problematic", you're still the enemy.