Blazing Saddles as cultural critique

[Alexander King]

Kerim,

I'm not sure if Blazing Saddles is the most effective movie for 
teaching, but I do think it is one of the most brilliant 
deconstructions of racism in the USA I have ever seen in any medium. 
I love the concluding scene where the sherriff has gained the 
acceptance of the racist town. One leader conceded "We'll take the 
niggers and the chinks, but not the Irish," to which the sherriff 
holds out for the Irish, too, and they concede to let everybody live 
in peace--not only is racism absurd, only a knucklehead would insist 
on being racist when confronted with it.

The Yiddish Indian is pretty surreal, but it brings up a talking 
point of the common cause (and also common kinships in Texas and 
Oklahoma) among Indians and Blacks in Reconstruction era America. 
While Brooks is excellent at mocking racism, his take on gender is 
not what one would call post-feminst (references to "Kansas City 
faries" and "Tutonic Twat," joking about rape). However, his send-up 
of Germans in the film could produce a talking point of German 
language and culture in rural America in the 19th century, although 
Brooks certainly had other motives for mocking Germans in nearly 
every film he was making those days.

A problem I see with BS and many other comedies is the use of obscene 
language, which produces scandolous hilarity among native speakers, 
but can easily get SLL into deep trouble.

What about "Airplane"? Any chance of your students getting the literal humor?

"Darmok" from the 5th season of Star Trek-Next Generation is an 
excellent story about learning another culture's metaphors. Picard's 
problem isn't linguistic in the narrow sense. The universal 
translator works fine, but the alien's speech is mostly references to 
mythological heroes and episodes. Thus he has the great 
cross-cultural problem of learning another culture's metaphors, 
especially important since that culture eshews denotative speech.

best,
Alex


At 2:19 pm +0800 15/8/06, Kerim Friedman wrote:
>Teaching in Taiwan, I find my students do not have the English ability
>necessary to follow films like "American Tongues" and "Cross Talk" -
>but many Hollywood films, and some documentaries from the Discovery
>Channel and National Geographic, etc. are available here with Chinese
>subtitles at the night market. Which brings me to my question: Can
>anyone think of popular films (contemporary or classics, US or
>foreign) with language related themes that might be suitable for
>teaching? I've thought of a few, but I'm not too happy with the list
>so far:
>
>Windtalkers (2002)
>Pygmalion (1938)
>The Unconquered (1954)
>Enfant sauvage, L' (1970) (many more such films about feral children
>are listed at http://www.feralchildren.com )
>Children of a Lesser God (1986)
>Ishi: The Last Yahi (1992)
>Lost in Translation (2003)
>The Conversation (1974)
>
>I almost added Blazing Saddles for the Yiddish-speaking Indian chief,
>but then thought better of it...
>
>Obviously some of these films are better than others (as far as
>teaching is concerned) - but I just wanted to put something out to jog
>people's minds. Send your suggestions to me at this address (off
>list): oxusnet [at] gmail [dot] com.
>
>I'm traveling for a while, but I'll edit together all the suggestions
>and mail it back to the list  (and on the web) when I get back.  When
>you send your suggestions please state how I should list your name and
>affiliation if I post this list publicly on the web.
>
>Thanks!
>
>Kerim
>
>--
>____________________________________
>P. Kerim Friedman
>Department of Indigenous Cultures
>College of Indigenous Studies
>National DongHwa University, TAIWAN
>http://kerim.oxus.net/
>______________________________


-- 
University of Aberdeen  http://www.abdn.ac.uk/anthropology
            Koryaks Net  http://www.koryaks.net

tel:+44(1224)27 2732
fax:+44(1224)27 2552