Niggers! 
Well, I bet that got your attention. ‘The N-word’, as it is usually censored. You know, I find it bizarre that such an ‘offensive’ word is so often and openly used by those who are supposed to be offended by it. ‘It’s all about reclaiming the word’. Yup, I’ve heard it all before. However, if one thinks that using an offensive word is okay to be used by people with a specific skin colour, but not okay to be used by others with a different skin colour, that is treating a group differently based on the colour of their skin… is that not racism? You’re not ‘reclaiming’, you’re adding to the problem. Either don’t use it at all or allow everyone to use it.

Still, it’s not always about the word being used in and of itself. Context is massively important. Purposely going out of your way to be racist and using ‘nigger’ (or variants thereof) is massively different to using it to make a valid point. White writer/director, Quentin Tarantino is often derided for using ‘nigger’ (or ‘nigga’) in his films and yet, a black director like (off the top of my head) Spike Lee isn’t. Why? If QT is making a film like Django Unchained in which the main plot is about a freed slave during one of the worst eras in American history when slavery was rife, when people used ‘the N-word’ in abundance, then surely his script and characters should be authentic? If Django Unchained had been written and directed by a black person, nobody would care. So QT is being judged by the colour of his skin and not by his work. Of course, not all of QT’s films are set during the slavery era. He has made several contemporary flicks and yes, his scripts still drop ‘N-bombs’. But, he is writing honestly and creating characters that would use the word. As a writer, you have to write honestly, otherwise you’re just lying to yourself and your audience.

Okay, I’ve gone off on a bit of a slightly related tangent here. The aim of this article is not to point out the hypocrisy of it being okay for a black person to say ‘nigger’ (and its variants) but not okay for a white person to do the same, this article is looking at the difference between being racist and making fun of racism. The genesis of this rant came from my scrolling through social media over the last few months. I don’t have a huge social media presence. I have Facebook and Twitter (yes, I’m still calling it Twitter. Fuck you Elon) accounts and that’s it. I use Facebook to stay connected with friends, general tomfoolery and such. While Twitter is used more for this blog and to keep in contact with game devs, publishers and the like. Still, I often do just scroll through Facebook and Twitter to see what is going on in the world. Every now and then… quite often ‘now and then’, I’ll be scrolling through a social media platform and see a particular point made about a specific film.

I keep seeing various posts saying that the Mel Brooks classic, Blazing Saddles (50 years old this year), would not be made today. I usually reply with a bit of snark, sarcasm and pedantry, I’ll usually reply with something along the lines of; ‘of course it wouldn’t be made today, that would be a major case of plagiarism because the film already exists’. The point being made with these posts is that if Blazing Saddles didn’t exist, the same film could not be made in today’s climate because of the use of ‘nigger’ and the overall tone. I call bullshit because (as mentioned) films are still made today using the ‘N-word’ regularly. See QT’s work as an example. One post I saw even edited every use of the word ‘nigger’ from Blazing Saddles together into one clip. Yup, it was headed with the usual ‘this wouldn’t be made today’ rhetoric.

More often than not, these posts include a suggestion that the ‘snowflakes’ of today couldn’t handle the film as it is ‘anti-woke’ (or ‘non woke’, see above). I do need to add here that I detest the use of ‘woke’ because it is now so over and misused that it has lost all meaning now. People call anything ‘woke’ these days, even when it makes zero sense. Female lead in a film, it’s ‘woke’ apparently. I grew up watching Eddie Murphy films in the ’80s, and not once did anyone ever say that Beverly Hills Cop was ‘woke’. Yet now, a back lead in a film and the film is labelled as ‘woke’. Woke, as a word/phrase, is utterly meaningless, and I only use it for this article out of pure convenience. Back to the point, I honestly do not know if these Blazing Saddles posts are made by people who have ever seen the film or not. Blazing Saddles is not a racist film, it is a film that makes fun of racism. The film is not ‘anti-woke’, it is one of the most ‘woke’ films ever made.

The main star of Blazing Saddles is Cleavon Little, a black actor playing Sheriff Bart. He’s the good guy and the hero of the film. A role originally written for Richard Pryor. However, Pryor’s issues with drugs made him uninsurable and so, the studio refused to hire him. Though Richard Pryor is credited with the screenplay. Yup, this ‘racist’ film (as some people suggest) was co-written by a black comedian/actor. Anyway, the basic plot of Blazing Saddles is that a black Sheriff takes control of a hick town and cleans it up. There is racism in the film, but it’s the bad guys who are the racists, and the bigotry used is shown to be a bad thing. As Gene Wilder’s Jim/Waco Kid said:

“You’ve got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know… morons.”

Morons, the racists in the film are morons. The overuse of ‘nigger’ here is done to make fun of racists… that’s the whole point of the film. It’s highlighting that racism is a bad thing. So the claims that the film would not be made today seem to be massively misplaced. Why wouldn’t a film that points out that racism is bad be made today? How is highlighting the stupidity of racism ‘anti-woke’? I swear that these Blazing Saddles posts that I see on social media have no idea what Blazing Saddles is or its point. I think that people have seen a clip or two of characters saying ‘nigger’ and they get shared with comments from people that have no idea what they are commenting on. This film is a perfect example of the point of this article. The difference between being racist and making fun of racism. Using the word ‘nigger’ does not make something/one racist, but how the word is used and context is massively important.

I was born in the mid-’70s and grew up through the ’80s. It was a decade when racist ‘comedy’ was flourishing here in the UK. We used to have a fat comedian called Bernard Manning (he’s dead now), he was famous for being a massive bigot. Manning told racist jokes like they were going out of fashion. He didn’t make fun of racism, he was just a racist. I’ve personally never found him funny, at the time or now in retrospect. We even had a show called The Comedians from the ’70s to the ’90s, and it was a show that celebrated working men’s club-styled stand-up comedy. It was crammed with racist jokes, and it used to air during primetime TV. Comedians such as the previously mentioned Bernard Manning and the very white Jim Davidson doing his ‘Chalky’ black character were both regulars, among many others.

But, we also had comedies that, like Blazing Saddles, made fun of racism. There used to be a TV show called Love Thy Neighbour. It stopped in 1976, but with only three TV channels in the UK in the early ’80s, the show would get repeated a lot. The basic plot of Love Thy Neighbour was about a white fella, Eddie Booth (Jack Smethurst) who has his world turned upside-down when a new family move in next door. Booth’s new neighbour’s patriarch was the black Bill Reynolds (Rudolph Walker).

All through Love Thy Neighbour, white fella Eddie Booth was the moron. He would display his bigotry and call his neighbour things like ‘nig-nog and ‘sambo’. He was an out-and-out racist who was not shy about showing his feelings. However, and much like with Blazing Saddles, he was the bad guy. He always got his comeuppance, and it was his black neighbour, Bill Reynolds, who would win out in the end.

Admittedly, the black guy would often call his white neighbour ‘honky’ and such. However, he only ever acted out in defence and only after he had been attacked himself. They were both stubborn characters, but the racism in Love Thy Neighbour was shown to be a bad thing. Eddie Booth was written to be an idiot, while Bill Reynolds was written to be more educated. You laughed at the white character, but you laughed with the black character. Even so, Love Thy Neighbour is one of those TV shows that you’ll never see on TV these days, because it’s not PC, because it’s wrong in today’s climate. Why? It’s making fun of racism. In fact, Rudolph Walker who played Bill Reynolds wrote a great piece for The Guardian newspaper back in 2001 looking back at his career and he praised the show:

“… a lot of people still think that show was racist. But that was the 70s. You cannot compare then and now. And Love They Neighbour was a very clever comedy, because in nearly every show, the white neighbour was shown to be wrong.”

Love Thy Neighbour also had a film version made in 1973. Again, this is the difference between being racist and making fun of racism. Why wouldn’t a film like Blazing Saddles be made today, what is the problem with showing that racism is a bad thing? Why can’t Love Thy Neighbour be shown on TV any more? Why can we not make comedies that use racism as its driving force and show that it is a bad thing? Being racist and making fun of racism, two very different things.

Anyway, happy 50th Blazing Saddles.

“All right… we’ll give some land to the niggers and the chinks. But we don’t want the Irish!”