Movie Analysis: Blazing Saddles

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Analysis
“What in the wide, wide world of sports is goin’ on here?”
The authentic country twang of Frankie Laine in the title sequence gives Blazing Saddles the appearance of a classic Western, but within the first few minutes, the satirical nature of the film makes itself abundantly clear. The opening scene of Blazing Saddles communicates the setting and the character archetypes, both as they appear on the surface and as they will manifest throughout the film. Though the film explores this dynamic in greater depth later on, this scene establishes that the crafty underdog protagonist around which Westerns revolve is not one of the white men, and does not receive universal love and appreciation. “‘Black’ Bart,” central character and eventual …show more content…

This full reversal of setting widens the scope of Blazing Saddles’ commentary from critiquing just the Western genre to Hollywood as a whole, and from critiquing just racism to discrimination in a grander sense. The song to which about forty men in tuxedos and top hats stumble through their Fred Astaire-esque dance sequence comments on attitudes toward homosexuality how the Western part critiques racial differences. From the lyrics of the song to the personalities of the dancers, the song gives the impression of being “somehow foreign (‘French’) but also ... unnatural (a ‘mistake’)” (Potgieter 351). The naming of this number implies that in this diegetic world, something about this dance number erodes at the respectability of these men. Dom Deluise, as the director of this film within a film, refers to the dancers, all men, as “girls,” “ladies,” “Sissy Marys,” and occasionally homosexual slurs, not in a joking manner, but frequently enough that the detail fades to the background (Brooks). This overuse of sensitive terms harkens back to the opening scene of the film and myriad of racially-charged words that characters like Lyle threw out without a second

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