Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Racism and stereotyping in "Blazing saddles"

It is a popular movie by Mel Brooks famous for "Space Balls". The movie was a typical Mel Brooks movie filled with satire, one liners, spoofs, parodies and several funny moments. One typically finds him regularly including some jewish cultural elements to his movies. Also, he makes it a point to always reiterate the western perceptions of Hitler and the Nazis.

What really caught my attention was one of the scenes where Lamar, the villian is recruiting bad guys for his army to take over Rock Ridge. The list of people in the line include
  1. bikers
  2. mexican bandits
  3. crusaders
  4. nazis
  5. member of ku klux klan
  6. Arabs

Now, hold on a second... What is wrong with being an Arab. (I would ask, what's wrong with being a biker) It is clearly a western stereotype being enforced by a jewish entertainer.

When I asked about this to some of my american friends, they did not even find it to be racist or wrong.

It looks like Mel Brooks does want the west to equate arabs with klansmen, nazis, crusaders and bandits. It is really unfair that the jewish people who suffered racism for centuries are trying to promote the same against Arabs to achieve their political ends.