good evening sheriff, sorry about the 'up yours, nigger'

On Blazing Saddles:

This quote epitomizes this movie. Flashback to the scene in reference, the fact that in Mel Brooks' movie he has an old lady of the west saying, "Up yours, nigger" to the newly appointed sheriff, is ridiculous. Once Sheriff Bart has proved himself as more than just a black person to the town, the same lady brings him an apple pie and an apology. Given she does confirm that he will have the decency to not mention she came by. This scene calls the question: "is this really the way that people talked and acted back in the 1870s"? but then again, this would never have happened because there would never have been a black sheriff in some 1870s, ho-dunk, town in the American west. Watching a Mel Brooks movie is like a real life Loony Toons episode without the censorship boundaries of a children's program. Only Mel Brooks can get away with a racial commentary like this, distracted by slap-stick comedy and quirky dialogue.

Way too many stereotypes are addressed in this movie. In the first scene the white men watching over the black railroad workers bother the workers for a song, like back in the days they used to be slaves. They sing "I Get a Kick Outta You", to the white men's dismay, but the men request "The Camp Town Lady". The workers are apparently unfamiliar with the song, but in the white men's excitement, they start to sing in dance. Mel Brooks switched it. He made the white men look like idiots, because they like the songs better than the blacks do. Enough so to distract from their usual bigotry and get them in trouble for slacking off. Nothing is untouchable in this movie, sexual stereotypes, intelligence stereotypes, income stereotypes, etc. Maybe in this blog credit is only given to how blacks are shown in the movie, but all races are fair game in the director's lens of Mel Brooks.

The way blacks are portrayed in this movie as if the blacks of the 1970s, when the movie was filmed, were dropped a hundred years in the past, when the movie takes place. The do understand and seem to accept the way that race relations are during this time period, but the way they interact with each other, is completely out of the time period. There are high-fives and black power signs every once in a while shared between the railroad workers. Sheriff Bart, the protagonist, is the black sheriff made to protect the town. Much like Shaft, he is cool, likable and able to handle any situation; a positively projected protagonist that is a black man. The big difference is that Sheriff Bart is just about the only black character in this movie.

This would be the third movie that the main black protagonist plays a police officer. I cannot come with any good reason for this. Maybe, it is just an easy way to make a good black character. I know that sounds a little bad, but this is a transitional period in the movie business. Viewers in America at the time period that movies like In the Heat of the Night are not going to accept characters like Virgil for no reason. Making the black character a policeman automatically places this character on the side of good. It also acts as an excuse for the character not to completely lash out against the slurs and other attacks directed at him, because the character is a police officer, he is on the side of order and justice and good. There has still yet to be a main black female character, I guess America is not quite ready yet. Next on the list is A Soldier's Story.