so um I've been seeing a lot of people
recently using Mel Brooks as a sort of
blanket defense of any kind of you know
satire that transgresses societal taboos
and you know this this is nothing new
I've been seeing Mel Brooks used in this
way for decades
[Music]
but the problem with that line of
thinking is it misunderstands what made
Mel Brooks great what makes him resonate
so today we're gonna talk about Mel
Brooks the year was 2004 you gonna eat
your tots the United States had just
invaded Iraq the black-eyed peas were
getting retarded in here Zach Braff was
at his artistic peak and the producers
was still one of the hottest tickets on
Broadway Nathan Lane and Matthew
Broderick had returned to the roles
which they had originated which had
netted a then record breaking 12 Tony's
student rush tickets were really cheap
back then so I was seeing every musical
that I could on Broadway but to this day
I have never left harder at any stage
production than at that original cast of
Mel Brooks's the producers in 2004
[Music]
and if you've only seen the movie
adaptation of the stage musical you
might be wondering really work work work
work work and yes I can't even really
explain what was lost in translation in
the movie adaptation of the musical it's
functionally identical perhaps to
identical because everything that made
it work on stage it just doesn't work on
film they come in that the aesthetics of
breaking the fourth wall on film are
just different than on stage right the
stage musical is also a big love letter
to the heydays of the 40s and 50s
musical pageantry and the world of the
stage in general we all love this thing
called the theater the movie version
either did not know how to capture this
or did not care to capture this on film
but maybe it's just being in the same
room with these world-class trained
showgirls tap dancing and stormtrooper
outfits is just hilarious we're on
screen it's like it just feels tired it
feels like we've been here before I was
born in Dusseldorf and that is why they
call me roll don't be stupid be a
smarter come and join the not-see party
so if you guys want to talk about Mel
Brooks and where when and how he was a
comedy innovator then let's talk about
Mel Brooks
Mel Brooks was born Melvin Kaminsky in
Brooklyn New York in 1926 his father
died when he was 2 and the youngest of
four boys he was a small sickly kid who
got picked on a lot
Brooks would later go on to say that
this was where he learned to use comedy
as a defense mechanism to cloak his pain
and humor
I want to thank Hitler for being such a
funny guy on stage Mel Brooks would also
like you to know that he is a Jew Jews
[Music]
behind me you see a phalanx an avalanche
of Jews who have come with their
[Music]
I don't like the way you're walking
you've been into the sacramental wine
again after serving as a corporal in
World War two in Germany engaging in
such operations as defusing landmines
Brooks was hired by Sid Caesar to be a
television comedy writer it was during
this period as a television writer that
Brooks developed his comedy ethos which
is basically throw everything at the
wall and see what sticks you see this in
his most popular movies it's just joke
after joke after joke if there is a dud
there is hardly time for it to land
before the next joke starts so wild
Brooks definitely had an ethos biases
and a point of view in his comedy the
rapid-fire nature of it kind of make it
clear that he didn't think through the
implications of a lot of it you've just
entered the territory of Robin Hood and
his Merry Men peggle is where straight
just marry some of Brooks's comedy with
gay characters in particular has aged
poorly while Brooks was certainly not
averse to physical comedy and slapstick
his bread and butter tended to rest more
on transgression of societal taboos some
of it has aged well I get no kick from
champagne
[Music]
some of it is not watch and here's why
that doesn't bother me personally as a
viewer comedy is the quickest to age and
the most likely to aged poorly yes some
of it even a lot of it is problematic
yes you can still enjoy it I do his 1974
film Blazing Saddles is one of the great
transgressive comedies of all time good
to slaughter every last one so the point
is share it's back from top to bottom
Blazing Saddles is a razor-sharp
skewering of the absurdity of racism
these are people of the land the common
clay of the new West and this is part of
what makes Brooks so fondly remembered
today where the likes of say David
Zucker are kind of sad well people still
think airplane is funny so there's that
it's wrong we question if you do as an
outgrowth from his difficult childhood
Brooks wasn't just about comedy for
comedies sake comedy could be a weapon
and one of Brooks's favorite targets
happen to be history's greatest monster
heckler on
[Applause]
Brooke saw comedy not just as a weapon
of ridicule but as a way of robbing
Hitler of his posthumous power
Brooks's approach of reductio ad
absurdum to Nazis was a catharsis for
Jewish identity and this hardly started
with Brooks Yiddish folklore is full of
these trickster Bugs Bunny style
characters who confront corrupt and
unjust power structures using nothing
but their wits Herschel of austere Paul
being one of the most well known the
Inquisition rips his subjects also
weren't limited to Nazi violence against
the Jews take one of the more famous
scenes from history of the world part
one it's better to lose your skull cap
than your skull there you have Brooks on
film making light of a period of history
that while nowhere near the Holocaust in
terms of scale still openly targeted
Jewish citizens and it's debatable how
mining Jewish suffering even if you are
Jewish for comedy in the Spanish
Inquisition differs from the Holocaust
which Brooks has always avoided
depicting directly but he has also gone
on record as saying that the root of a
lot of his humors anger specifically
anger at anti-semitism the problem with
this kind of media created by a Jew as
an expression of Jewish identity to be
consumed largely however by a Gentile
audience is that and there's a there's a
little bit of troubling history of
things that Jews say and do being
misrepresented and used against them
[Music]
let's go back now way back back before
Brooks - what laid the groundwork for
springtime for Hitler to even survive
and thrive in the first place
yes let's go back to the big H in
question film about war war - was
box-office gold before the United States
even entered the war and most everything
that came out during that time glorified
the war machine just as much as anything
Germany was charting out film and
literature about the war were used to
boost a narrative of American
exceptionalism and greatness according
to Thomas Doherty in the morgue
ephemeral currency of social prestige
and cultural cachet the motion picture
industry achieved an ascendancy in
American culture it was never again to
recapture but while this American
ascendancy was fueled by images of the
Machine of war
little confronted the actual ideology of
fascism or the true horrors perpetrated
in the name of Hitler's Reich one of the
earliest and most well known examples of
satirizing Hitler's brand of fascism
came in the form of Charlie Chaplin's
the Great Dictator a huge chunk of the
Great Dictator is a very surreal watch
today it consists of cute wacky hijinx
in the Jewish ghetto in the fictional
country of tomainia see concentration
camps were certainly a thing in 1940 and
it was a thing Americans knew about you
have any idea what you'd have to look
forward to a few stayed here nine
chances out of 10 we'd both wind up in a
concentration camp isn't that true Lily
I'm afraid major Strasser would insist
but the scope of it was not the scope we
know today the Great Dictator was made
in a time when Hitler's death machine
was only a possibility and not a
historical reality the Great Dictator is
unique not only in that it confronts
Hitler's ideology greed has poisoned
men's souls has barricaded the world
with hate has goose-stepped us into
misery and bloodshed but that it also
puts Hitler's biggest targets the Jews
at the forefront
his Excellency has just referred to the
Jewish people but Chaplin gives neither
Hitler nor the Nazis even the dignity of
being named the Hitler analogue adenoid
hynkel is not even given a language the
Great Dictator dictates in gibberish but
the Jews are given a name the Great
Dictator does not pussyfoot around about
who exactly adenoid hynkel intends to
exterminate the Jews are given a name
and an identity where Hitler is only
alluded to a less well known world war
ii era comedy following in Chaplin's
footsteps was Ernst Lubitsch's to be or
not to be which follows the exploits of
Jews and occupied Warsaw Mel Brooks
loved this movie so much that he remade
it in the 80s and that did not go over
as well as the producers or Blazing
Saddles while the Great Dictator was a
success it was not without controversy
with resistance against the film coming
from isolationist Americans and fascist
sympathizers despite the success of the
Great Dictator few in Hollywood dared
follow in Chaplin's footsteps by openly
addressing Hitler's ideology but this
did not go on to start a trend into
films that were terribly concerned with
the plight of the Jews in Germany and
the rest of Europe because Americans
weren't terribly sympathetic to the
plight of the Jews in 1942 put it in
perspective Americans are more receptive
to the idea of welcoming Syrian refugees
into America today than they where
Jewish refugees in 1939 there was a lot
of World War two themed media during and
after the war but not a whole lot
followed in Chaplin's footsteps
[Music]
in 1963 political theorist Hannah Arendt
herself a German Jew who fled the Reich
during Hitler's rise to power reported
on Adolf Eichmann's trial in Jerusalem
in a series of essays further New Yorker
called Eichmann in Jerusalem a report on
the banality of evil Eichmann who was on
trial for Nazi war crimes showed no
remorse and claimed no responsibility
for what he had taken pardon he was
remarkable for his unremarkable 'ti the
Israeli government sent no fewer than
six psychologists to examine Eichmann
none of whom found any trace of mental
illness Arendt essays discredited the
idea that Nazi criminals were
psychopathic or different from normal
people as Eichmann saw it he was just
doing his job
he not only obeyed orders he also obeyed
the law there was no place for
discussion
Eichmann proved that you do not have to
be a born-and-bred monster to do
monstrous things that anyone was capable
of this Arne's report in addition to a
wider cultural understanding in America
of the breadth and scope of Hitler's
atrocities began to cause a shift in the
American relationship with the mere idea
of war especially with the looming
threat in Vietnam where earlier films
about World War two seemed heroic and
necessary this shift began to see such
films omissions of Hitler's atrocities
as unpalatable there was a need to
reconcile the humanity of the Nazis with
their actions in order to continue
making media about them but the reality
that evil is really quite banal did not
make for compelling Hollywood cinema
according to Barlow the nature of evil
itself argues Hannah Arendt is thought
defying because thought tries to reach
some depth to go to the roots and the
moment it concerns itself with evil it
is frustrated because there is nothing
that is its banality in the two decades
following the end of the war a changing
understanding of Hitler's atrocities and
their relationship to the American
identity would shape the way that Nazis
were portrayed in film in regard to
depicting the German Nazi is seen by
American film and culture Aaron Barlow
outlines two phases an initial one
generated by the needs of
and a later one reacting to that earlier
version a major characteristic of that
later phase reacting to that earlier
phase was the attempt to grapple with
the unthinkable evil encompassed by the
Holocaust what about the rest of the
world they did not know the intentions
of the Third Reich they did not hear the
words of Hitler's broadcast all over the
world but an increasingly complex
understanding of war war - moving away
from the machine of war and moving
towards the tragedy of the Holocaust
begin to dampen American desires to see
World War 2 portrayed on screen there's
just no real glory and conquest when you
know what those soldiers are going to
discover on the other side of those
woods so exit best years of our lives
and sands of Iwo Jima enter the Diary of
Anne Frank the pawnbroker and judgment
at Nuremburg who has the responsibility
of the world leader Winston Churchill
who said in an open letter to the London
Times in 1938 1938 your honor where
England to suffer national disaster I
should pray to God to send a man of the
strength of mind and will of another
Hitler are we not to find Winston
Churchill guilty part of the problem
with attempts to come to terms with the
unbelievable horrors of the Holocaust
also came to be an unwillingness to
delve too deeply into the commonality of
evil that shows real negotiation with
the American people's own culpability
where's the responsibility of those
American industrialists who helped
rebuild these elements aaron barlow
contends that americans began to push
away the questions raised turning the
perpetrators into unhuman villains into
parodies of villainy into something that
we can live with for it becomes
absolutely removed from us hollywood's
later approach would escalate to the
likes of Steven Spielberg adding literal
supernatural elements to a seemingly
supernatural evil in films like Raiders
of the Lost Ark we see this perhaps most
explicitly with Captain America and
Hydra where the Red Skull is posed as
making the Nazis look like the lesser
evil compared to Hydra even though from
their look to they're a cult inspiration
to their goals to their goofy salute
they're functionally identical to the
Nazis
[Music]
hang-glider also Holocaust Road
Holocaust but in the 1960s at the still
early stage in American identity
reconciling its relationship to the
Holocaust the horrors were still too
fresh for the kind of direct
representation we would see in the 90s
and 2000's with the likes of Schindler's
List
The Pianist gujja and life is beautiful
[Music]
finding a way to keep World War two
narratives relevant in sympathetic was
proving increasingly difficult in light
of the new cultural concerns and as the
war receded even further and further
into the past and possibilities for
spectacle reached their limit which is
to say nothing about that other cloud
hanging over the world at the time that
mushroom cloud
dr. Strangelove or how I learned to stop
worrying and love the bomb
according to pauline kael opened a new
movie era indeed Strangelove seems to be
where the switch flipped both in the
wider cultures relationship to its past
and to its doomed present in the film's
own subtitle how I learned to stop
worrying and love the bomb and boy you
had to stop worrying and love the bomb
in the 1960s just to live like today we
do not appreciate how close we came
several times to total nuclear war it's
kind of a miracle we still exist the
Nazi presence in Strangelove is more
subtext than text with the titular
Strangelove and implied former Nazi war
criminal who now works for the global
nuclear war machine the evil of the Nazi
is almost trivial when pitted against
Cold War era global nuclear annihilation
The effect of this was not to trivialize
Nazism but to give filmmakers new tools
with which to explore the horrors both
of their past their present and an
increasingly unlikely future and if dark
comedy and satire were used to come to
terms with the sword of Damocles hanging
over the head of every American and
Russian and will everyone during the
Cold War
then so too could dark comedy be used to
come to terms with and explore the
horrors of Hitler's right
Wow your Attenberg yeah
slaw oh my folks and stuff a school dog
had Andrew gross and Suzanne Rohr
described the problem of comedy tackling
heavy subject matters as a perception of
comedy being generally considered less
sophisticated read incapable than the
more so-called noble Chandra's such as
tragedy or conventional historical drama
part of what makes a societal taboo a
taboo is the presumption that it should
not be touched or discussed even by
higher arts much less lower arts like
comedy
alright days for time show these people
who have powers all about this of course
does not give comedy particularly black
comedy it's due credit black comedy is
sometimes the best means for challenging
harmful societal constructs and mores
according to Aaron Barlow comedy is most
persuasive which is perhaps to say
instructive when put in the morally
realistic context of tragic potential
thus much of what is called black humor
and its attendant obscenity derives from
the recognition that the truest fiction
requires fusion of the tragic and the
comic what do you think of mr. Hilton
policies well we don't like the same to
these ear bouncing tration bumps I gave
him my baby to kiss honey Bridget Barse
allows obscenity to succeed or at least
be dealt with in situations where
otherwise audiences would be offended
and even non-existent loves a piece of
shit when you're looking
it could be argued that farce was not
only inevitable but necessary in order
to prime audiences for dealing with more
realistic sombre portrayals and
Holocaust fiction when used smartly
comedy puts the unspeakable into
understandable symbols through absurdism
without dragging marginalized groups
through mud through farce the problems
that were arising within filmic
presentations of the Nazi problems
arising from new recognition that the
simplistic diversions into good and bad
that had been useful for the war effort
but that were of little real validity
could be sidestepped
prima facie evil the Nazi could always
be insulted and abused or turned around
the Nazi can lose without sympathy this
turn - first allowed world war ii film
to survive even as aspects of it that
now seemed troubling began to fade from
the genre
[Applause]
the late 1960s also saw a rise in films
that took a more farcical bent to
approaching Hitler's regime including
the Dirty Dozen Hogan's Heroes catch-22
and of course the producers
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
producers tells the story of Max
Bialystock played by Zero Mostel a
washed-up hack Broadway producer who
talks Leopold Bloom played by Gene
Wilder a mousy emasculated accountant
seeks comfort in his blanket into
creating an intentional Broadway flop in
order to write off the business losses
and steal the money from the financed
ears but when the worst show they can
find springtime for Hitler a gay romp
with Adolf and Eva through Bert's cotton
becomes an unexpected success the two
end up in prison one of the studio's
Brooks initially approached said that
they would make the producers if and
only if Brooks changed it to springtime
for Mussolini's Universal because they
said Hitler is too strong too menacing
how about springtime for most Cellini
given that most of a news depiction in
American media in comparison to Hitler
seem mostly to be about making fun of
fascism and being BFFs with Hitler while
not having to get our hands dirty with
that whole Holocaust thing and when we
talk about the producers now especially
as a defense of a joke about whatever
one facet of the gestation of the
producers is that it was actually pretty
controversial upon initial release time
has been kinder to the producers than
critics were in 1968 the Busby Berkeley
musical centerpiece springtime for
Hitler caused considerable offense
prompting numerous mostly Jewish
walkouts during the film's initial
release in Brooks's own words the Jews
were horrified I received resentful
letters of protest saying things like
how can you make jokes about Hitler the
man murdered six million Jews it was
only after Peter Sellers gave the film a
glowing public endorsement in variety
that the film gradually built up a cult
audience and Brooks eventually won an
Academy Award for Best Original
Screenplay for the producers but while
the joke in the film is that Bialystok
had found the most offensive musical
possible guaranteeing a flop in his mind
it's practically a love levitated this
won't run all week week kiddie display
he's got too close a pitch for Brooks's
use of Hitler as its subject was not
arbitrary in Brooks's own words of
course it is impossible to take revenge
for 6 million murdered Jews but by using
the medium of comedy we can try to rob
Hitler of his posthumous power and myth
Hitler must have had a magnetic
attractive force like a
rock star he used his voice to spellbind
umpteen thousands of listeners so it's
only fitting when comic actors make him
the limelight hog of world history we
take away from him the wholly
seriousness that always surrounded him
and protected him like a court on Brooks
later stated in an interview at 60
minutes there is only one way to get
even with Hitler you have to bring him
down with ridicule though the producers
was initially met with mixed reviews the
film has since become celebrated for the
way it ridicules fascism in the same
vein as Chaplin's the Great Dictator
particularly springtime for Hitler film
historian Robert rhymer celebrates
springtime as a triumph of anti-fascist
satire Susan goober interprets this
parody of fascism as racial camp mocking
the shoddy theatricality of fascism both
Gubar and rhymer side with Brooks in
their interpretation of the springtime
number that ridicule of Nazi propaganda
methods does Rob Hitler of some of his
posthumous power but again this praise
of the producers is not universal film
historian Petro Rao takes a much colder
view on the producers in addition to
finding many of the comedic elements
thoughtless and hypocritical like what
did these people expect in a musical
called springtime for Hitler she
particularly takes issue with Brooks's
appropriation of fascist imagery there's
one frame during the springtime for
Hitler number wherein the dancers moved
to form a swastika on the stage a direct
reference to Leni Riefenstahl doing the
same in Nazi propaganda Rell argues that
the tools of fascist theatricality are
not shoddy as Brooks describes and are
rather highly effective propaganda tools
that's why they worked merely recreating
the tools of fascism in a heightened
cartoonish state is not enough to create
satisfying satire and in that way
Brooks's use of Hitler can feel almost
incidental really making a play about
the most offensive thing imaginable
could have been about anything since the
butt of the joke is really ble stuck in
bloom under estimating the audience not
Hitler himself so the question then
becomes where does satire cross the line
from being a valid transgressive art
that challenges harmful societal
constructs to to subtle and perhaps in
danger of people missing the point
entirely
and that's the problem there isn't a
line
is a journey into money nodes of money
there is an episode of Malcolm
Gladwell's podcast revisionist history
which is called the satire paradox which
with apologies I will borrow from a
great deal here oh you shut your mouth
for no kamae wad the episode begins with
a discussion on Harry Enfield a
well-known comedian in Britain and also
an avowed leftist who hated Margaret
Thatcher no Nigel no bad dog died job in
field on his partner Paul Whitehouse
dreamt up a character to embody
Thatcher's England and it sort of just
became this availing really where we
just go loads of money about everything
you know his name was loads of money he
was a construction worker catapulted to
sudden delirious wealth by the eighties
building boom so we sort of did it the
other way which is just to go look at me
aren't I great isn't money great
everything else is rubbish only money is
good but the lesson in field took from
the whole thing was despite the clear
derision with which loads of money was
framed
people only took it as it was intended
if they already were aligned within
field politically you know I mean it's
great fun to do but generally you know
it's just about questioning what's there
because we're allowed to question what's
there so we do but it doesn't ever
change anyone's mind same with Stephen
Colbert the real Colbert has never made
a secret of the fact that he holds
liberal political views in real life
everybody's been saying has America lost
its mind and the answer is evidently
back off buddy
we got 300 million guns and we're kind
of stressed right now but conservative
viewers of The Colbert Report don't see
his character the same way liberal
viewers - yes obviously The Colbert of
The Colbert Report was a character but
where the left-leaning viewers he's a
character to be mocked I'm sorry I've
never been a fan of books I don't trust
them the conservative leaning viewers
he's a funny man speaking truth to power
I think I would have made a fabulous
press secretary I have nothing but
contempt for these people so essentially
they saw what they wanted to see so the
big takeaway here of this study was that
this is what we would call motivated
cognition or biased perception
see also Tina Fey's Sarah Palin I can
see Russia from my house this character
might have been made by and for liberals
but Phelan was just so darn likable that
conservatives who supported Palin were
endeared to it to Tina Fey even went on
to make an episode of 30 rock about this
very paradox okay working on the in
universe shows parody of a dangerously
inept political candidate ends up making
him more endearing because it's making
him likable he's actually very mean
but with tracy Jordan playing he's a
lovable buffoon they're just talking
about how funny Tracy is and Faye's
character Liz Lemon is faced with the
dilemma of what to do with this but
these are all examples of deliberate
satire the issue gets even more thorny
when you look at representations that is
not satire American History X is a great
example of the satire paradox or
something that is not satire the text of
the film is explicitly anti-fascist a
cautionary tale that unmistakably
condemns white supremacy but you know
what group loves the imagery in American
History X neo-nazis neo Nazis love the
imagery in this movie the text shows neo
Nazism and white supremacy is bad but
isn't it also kind of badass isn't it
kind of cool the way he's framed isn't
Edward Norton a badass when he's an
uncooked neo-nazi alpha and then there's
Hans Landa from inglourious basterds who
has become more of a symbol for fun and
charm and charisma than of evil and you
might argue that that's the point
but how valuable is that point if what
people remember most about the movie is
how fun the evil Nazi was audiences
might have lost the thread of the
intended point and then there's tomorrow
belongs to me a chilling moment from the
film version of Cabaret
Morrow belongs to me which has recently
been adopted by some white nationalists
as an anthem but do you know what hasn't
so we have explicitly anti-fascist
dramas where the text has been
appropriated by white supremacists but
in this case the comedy which
satirically praises Hitler has not which
lends credence to Brooks's notion that
highlighting the absurdism of fascist
theatricality actually does rob hitler
of his posthumous power but just because
you can't help what the world will do
with your representation be it satirical
or non satirical it doesn't mean that
satire is free from criticism satire
needs intent
it needs logic it needs to be making a
statement about the thing it is
satirizing or else it's bad satire
[Music]
Brooks describes this as satire of the
shoddy theatrics of fascism to rouse
credit the theatrical techniques of
fascism were highly effective but they
were also extremely fragile which is why
the police state maintains such a
stranglehold on the press you weren't
allowed to ridicule fascism in Nazi
Germany because its theatricality at its
core could not survive ridicule this is
what hyper nationalism looks like women
dressed as pretzels and beer this is
what Nazi theatricality looks like tap
dancing stormtroopers and marching and
swastika formation that image is lifted
directly from Nazi propaganda and it
doesn't take a lot of modification to
make it look ridiculous see this
particular scene is all about Linz the
Nazi vision and the producers is a text
written by a literal Nazi produced
through a Jewish lens for a Gentile
audience
the story the framing and who is telling
the story is all relevant so this isn't
just Hitler for Hitler's sake this is
heightened theatricality that
unmistakably showcases the absurdity of
ethno-nationalism which is why white
nationalists tend not to like it in the
way that they like American History X
you can't make it not absurd
we had lesbian Hitler's we had you name
it they were Hitler's in all shapes and
sizes
so the idea that Brooks wanted to make a
musical out of the most offensive thing
and just kind of picked Nazis at random
is false Brooks had something to say
about the Nazis about the way they
viewed themselves and the way they
presented themselves to the world but
this also rubs up against that satire
paradox
perhaps the intended target of the
satire goes missed by a large portion of
the audience and you know I kind of
missed the days when it was like taken
as a given by most people that a joke at
the expense of Hitler isn't the same as
a joke at the expense of millions of
murdered Jews but yeah the times they
are a-changin and i guess this is a
discussion that needs to be had Heil
Trump Heil our people hail victory given
the rise of far-right movements fascism
and neo Nazism in the last two years all
over the Western world much debate has
arisen as to the ethical concerns of
laughing at the devil as Brooks has done
do films like The Producers robbed nazis
of their power or do they create an
atmosphere that encourages audience not
to take a serious issue seriously
it is fallacious to say that the answer
to that question is either-or it's a
little of column a and a little of
column B the seriousness of the
Holocaust was not lost on Brooks and
according to Brooks all comedy must have
limits and intent in the Spiegel
interview Brooks says Roberto Benigni
comedy life is beautiful really annoyed
me a crazy film that even attempted to
find comedy in a concentration camp it
showed the barracks in which Jews were
kept like cattle and it makes jokes
about it the philosophy of the film is
people can get over anything no they
can't they can't get over a
concentration camp so where does Brooks
draw the line in 1974 I produced the
Western parody Blazing Saddles
he continues in which the n-word was
used constantly Uganda sir can't you see
that that man is a dick but I would
never have thought of the idea of
showing how a black was lynched it's
only funny when he escapes getting sent
to the gallows and there's been a lot of
debate as to whether or not Brooks is
liberal use of the n-word and Blazing
Saddles is helpful or harmful and I'm
not going to go into that today but the
point here is Brooks believes that not
all comedic targets are created equal
everybody comedy is by its very nature
transgressive and borders and norms do
need to be challenged even surrounding
such sensitive topics as the Holocaust
but in order to be effective that
transgression must be used carefully and
within the offense Barr is also much
higher now unlike with the original film
which caused a flurry of controversy
when the Broadway show and subsequently
the adaptation of the musical got
released these barely got an indifferent
shrug on the issue of depiction of Nazis
by this point even moms don't find it
edgy we're in a post South Park world
a post family guy world a post downfall
meme world there's a chief
so perhaps Hitler is too powerless and
when people express concerns about
literal Nazis or Nazi adjacent useful
idiots to be white is to be a striver a
crusader it is our inheritance and it
belongs to us the response has become
why do you have to call everyone you
disagree with a Nazi but this Cartman
ization of Nazism is also a sign of
changing times just like the producers
was a sign of changing times in 1967 and
I'm not even saying that that's a bad
thing but it is having an effect on the
way that we treat our history media like
South Park reinforces a worldview where
nothing really matters and everything is
fair game and South Park has
historically gotten away with this
because the message and intent is clear
but South Park's imitators seem not to
understand why South Park gets away with
transgressive humor with relatively
little blowback and they don't how is
your representation framed is it
romantic
or is it derisive or is it comedic and
most importantly at whose expense is the
joke all humor is based on some form of
transgression even a pie in the face is
a very tiny tiny societal transgression
I'm not saying don't transgress and I'm
not saying societal mores and constructs
don't need to be challenged however if
you are going to make a joke at the
expense of a historically shadowkhan
group that is not your own you need to
accept also that there might be
consequences and people might not think
you're funny number one there is no such
thing as equal opportunity offensive
because not all groups exist on equal
footing maybe one day probably never but
right now we are nowhere near that
brooke cited the near lynching of Barton
Blazing Saddles is a line he would not
cross there is nothing fun
about the image of a black man being
lynched and Brooks owns the fact that he
a white Jewish comedian has no business
depicting the image of a black man being
lynched used for comedy number two
Brooks is not down with Gentiles
appropriating Jewish suffering and
genocide let alone shocking for shocking
sake and ridiculing Hitler's
theatricality is not the same thing as
making a joke about Jewish genocide it's
just not Mel Brooks is a 91 year old man
he spends a lot of time these days going
on tour and jumping around on stage
doing interviews talking about what a
great guy Gene Wilder was and I hope he
keeps doing that such a wonderful part
of my life you know I hope he spends his
twilight years reflecting on his
successes and doesn't find out that a
very large portion of the Gentile
internet is using him as a defense for
why Gentiles making anti-semitic jokes
is really okay because all satire is
created equal look at the producers even
if you only call it satire after the
fact because your joke didn't land so
yeah you can totally joke about whatever
for the time being free speech is the
law of the land but if you're looking
for a defense for your edge 'lord satire
maybe the Jewish man who served in
Germany during World War 2 who has
publicly spoken out against media that
trivializes the suffering of the
Holocaust who has stated several times
that there are lines that should not be
crossed out of respect for oppressed
groups who has maintained that comedy is
a weapon and even owing the fact that
you will fuck up its target should be
considered with caution and care and
never with the intent of upholding
unjust power structures rather than
dismantling them maybe this guy this guy
is not your best defense
everything
[Music]
I'm a German Ethel Merman don't
announcing border the New World
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