Nolte: HBO Max Vandalizes ‘Blazing Saddles’ with Patronizing Explanation

Gene Wilder as The Waco Kid and Cleavon Little as Sheriff Bart in Mel Brooks’ “Blazing
Warner Bros.

As predicted, the Woke Taliban have come for Blazing Saddles, Mel Brooks’ 1974 comedy masterpiece.

No, the classic has not been blacklisted … yet.

But HBO Max, which is part of Warner Bros., which owns Blazing Saddles lock, stock, and barrel; and is itself owned by one of those evil, conformist, all-powerful multinational conglomerates determined to swallow up the world, now forces you to sit through a tutorial before you’re allowed to watch the movie.

This is naked vandalism, a desecration of art, the same thing these eunuchs did to the 1939 masterpiece Gone with the Wind, and every bit as un-American and anti-art as a tutorial that tells you how to look at and feel about the Mona Lisa or “Baby It’s Cold Outside” or Michelangelo’s David.

Think I’m overreacting…?

The prelude, which is delivered by Turner Classic Movies host Jacqueline Stewart, instructs those who are about to view Blazing Saddles about how they are supposed to feel about the characters and what is and is not funny….

She continues the prelude saying that the race-centered comedy features “racist language and attitudes” throughout.

“Those attitudes are espoused by characters who are explicitly portrayed here as narrow-minded, ignorant bigots,” Stewart adds. “The film’s real and much more enlightened perspective is represented by the two main characters.”

Here’s what you’re supposed to laugh at, children…

Here’s what you’re not supposed to laugh at, children…

These are the good guys, children…

These are the bad guys, children…

That is not how movies work.

That is not how movies change the world and help us grow.

Blazing Saddles, which delivers a brutally funny savaging of racism, is so effective primarily because it is never patronizing or simple-minded. Nevertheless, Jacqueline Stewart’s tutorial betrays and dilutes the movie’s heart and soul, its moral literacy, with her patronizing and simple-minded exercise in moral illiteracy.

By not telling us how to think, by offering up villainous racists who are human and even, dare I say, sympathetic (because they’re dumb), and heroes (the late great Cleavon Little and Gene Wilder) who are cool, funny, and the opposite of uptight woketards, Brooks wins the argument, wins our hearts and minds. We not only identify with his heroes, we want to be those guys… But the moment a powerful and patronizing fascist corporation jumps in to tell us how to think and what to think and what is and is not funny, all of that changes. You now resent what had been a perfect exercise in empathy and decency. The very message Brooks created with his audacious brilliance, is now diminished into an overbearing Health Class movie about the dangers of VD.

And this is just the first shoe to drop off Blazing Saddles… This is nothing less than Woketard mission creep, because these fascists can’t “tutorial” their way out of the movie’s “problematic” climax — a (hilarious) satire of homosexuals. There’s no talking around that one, there’s no “Those attitudes are espoused by characters who are explicitly portrayed here as narrow-minded, ignorant bigots” escape hatch on that one. The gay satire is good-natured (not that this matters anymore) but there’s no “enlightened perspective” to offer, just pre-PC hilarity. So…

I’m afraid Blazing Saddles is still doomed.

Buy your hard copy now.

These vandals went even further with Gone with the Wind. Before you’re allowed to watch what is still The Most Popular Movie Ever Made, there’s not only a video of Stewart trashing it with a translation so simplistic it’s hard not to laugh — “Gone with the Wind is a prime text for examining expressions of white supremacy in popular culture” — a video has now been added titled The Complicated Legacy of Gone With the Wind.

Nothing is safe. Nothing is sacred. And the only reason Gone with the Wind and Blazing Saddles are still with us (for now) is because they are iconic. The non-iconic titles that rate as “problematic” are about to begin disappearing — if they haven’t already.

About a half-dozen of those aforementioned evil, conformist, all-powerful multinational conglomerates determined to swallow up the world pretty much own everything… So hold on to your hard copies.

In the meantime, though, let’s respond to this ignorance, this bigotry, this patronizing corporate vandalism and Groupthink in the only way a decent American can… Please join and excuse me while I whip this out

Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.

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