Blazing Saddles
We need more movies with the soul of Blazing Saddles, though
The thing is Blazing Saddles was a product of its time. It was made when EVERYTHING was a western, every TV show, every story book, every movie. The U.S was hooked in a multi-decade western craze that spanned from the early 50s to the mid 70s.
Blazing Saddles took every trope, every aspect of all those westerns, every cliche and every historical inaccuracy (like omitting racism and how it generally sucked for almost everyone to live in those times.
Blazing Saddles deconstructed and tore apart every part of the western and directly, near single handedly caused interest in the western to die.
Now whenever there’s a western, they don’t tend to romanticise it, and those that survived with any cultural relevance were films like the dollars trilogy which, while embracing some of these tropes, didn’t shy from the violence, greed and heartlessness of those times.
Blazing Saddles couldn’t be made today because the cultural zeitgeist it was made in doesn’t exist anymore.
The Monty Python films.
They recently tried to censor the Loretta scene.
This was actually a big factor for me in “leaving the ‘Left’” - i.e. remembering back when it was the religious establishment trying to censor the films (and succeeding in many countries). And now it’s happening all over again but by the new “woke” establishment and LGBTQIA2S+ movement.
Hate to break it to you, but if complaints about one movie scene was all it took to get you to “leave” the left, then you were never really on the left to begin with.
It’s not just that though, but the general shift to identity politics - even in Britain you’ll see “leftist” groups doing things like silencing “white males” etc.
And also in many cases their proposals focus too much on the symptoms and/or end up with worse consequences, which is exactly what Marx was against. Like decriminalising theft below 300 euros which is common in many places now, but just leads to organised gangs exploiting it (just like lesser / no sentencing for teenagers, etc.). Likewise for pushing for rent control which usually just results in great unfairness in who is lucky enough to get the rent controlled properties - and then pass them down in their family, so you end up with unlucky working people paying far more in rent than much wealthier lucky families and pensioners.
I still usually vote for the centre-Left just due to being anti-religion and republican (anti-monarchy). But I wish there were more sensible economic and justice options too - like supporting the working class by shifting the tax burden to property owners and the wealthy (and taxing unproductive economic activity) over income and VAT, supporting the free market except for natural monopolies, etc.
You know the focus on identy and LGBTQ+ and all that comes from the right, correct?
