"You Couldn't Make Blazing Saddles Today!"
Why Hacker News recommends it
Pointed to as an informative rebuttal to the popular claim and as an explanation of the film's satirical effect on Westerns.
What it is
A long video essay arguing against the claim that Blazing Saddles could not be made today. It looks at the film as satire of the sanitized Western genre and what it did to that genre.
Recommended by 2 HN commenters across 2 different months, 2020 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Recommends nerfhammer · 2020-02 · on “Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner on their 70-year friendship”
I saw a good youtube video about how blazing saddles was satirizing decades of hyper popular sanitized Western genre and helped kill it [this video]
Recommends Terr_ · 2025-03 · on “The "Take It Down" Act”
There's an informative video-dive into that, centered on the effect of the movie Blazing Saddles : [this video]
Cites Arainach · 2021-07 · on “No More Movies”
Agreed. One of the canonical versions of this meme is "you couldn't make Blazing Saddles today", which is utter nonsense: [this video]
Cites Terr_ · 2025-04 · on “I wrote a book called “Crap Towns”. It seemed funny at the time”
The same phenomenon exists when people talk about the movie Blazing Saddles. It's transgressive content worked because it was satirizing "wholesome" Wild West shows, holding up a funhouse mirror to their less-obvious absurdities and racist aspects. It was so successful, its targets don't exist anymore. [this video]