Analysis of Satire and Parody in Blazing Saddles "No one is born a racist bigot. In other words, racial intolerance or racial prejudice is not not genetically or biologically determined... Therefore, if most people talk about racism, it would be the first step towards revolutionary change” -Dr. Blazing Saddles by Charles Quist-AdadeMel Brooks highlights the cultural problems of the. Western era through satire containing elements of parody. John Vogel describes Blazing Saddles as "the ultimate parody of the western. The problem of racism is at the center of this film. Brooks, there is a notable tendency in his films to point the finger at racists. To better understand why he takes this approach, a little background on his life is necessary. Mel Brooks' birth name was Melvin Kaminsky. born 1926 in Brooklyn, New York. Brooks was the son of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe (Funk). Just this little piece of information begins to unveil a larger story. Many people know about the Holocaust and the difficulties that people of Jewish descent faced. David Thompson describes Brooks in his book A Biographical Dictionary of Film: "Brooks was a product of live television, hired to write gags for Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows in 1950. For more than a decade he was screenwriter for the film. Television, radio and musicals. … His first two feature films are his most personal and dangerous works. (93) Even from a brief summary like this, it can be said that Mel Brooks associates himself with comedic films that could be classified as satire and/or parody. Seeing that Brooks was born Jewish and has "Hitlerian" elements in his works, you can begin to see the connection to what might...... middle of paper ...... 014.Grant , Barry Keith. "Parody." Schirmer Encyclopedia of Cinema. Flight. 3. Detroit: SchirmerReference, 2007. 261+. Print.Lowe, NJ The classic plot and the invention of the Western narrative. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 2000. Academic Electronic Book Collection (EBSCOhost). Internet. April 8, 2014. “parody.” Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, 2014. The Web. March 30, 2014. "Satire - Definition and Examples | Literary Devices." Literary devices. Np, and Web. March 21, 2014. Thomson, David. “Mel Brooks.” A biographical dictionary of cinema. 3rd ed. New York: AAKnopf, 1994. 93-94. PrintBlanc, John. Westerns. New York: Routledge, 2011. Electronic Book Collection (EBSCOhost). Internet. Apr 2, 2014. Yasirfarabi. “Synopsis of Blazing Saddles.” IMDb. IMDb.com, June 2013. Web. March 29. 2014.