Mel Brooks, The Producers and the Ethics of Satire about N@zis

Mel Brooks has repeatedly said that the reason he mocks Hitler so much is because he thinks Hitler hated being mocked, and he hopes Hitler is in hell somewhere hearing people laugh at him and at his ideas.

Our high school had to take out all references to race when putting on a production of Hairspray. It was so ridiculous because no one understood that the whole point of the musical was to say racism is bad, not good. It just became a show about someone wanting to dance.

You can't make a Mel Brooks like movie today Taika Waititi : "Hold my drink"

American History X creators: "Nazis bad yes?" Neo-Nazis: "Instructions unclear, being thrown out of the tattoo parlour"

I love "you know, Morons" line just because you can tell the laugh following it was entirely genuine and unexpected.

Many excellent points. My favorite part is when Lindsey shows how neo-nazis love the movies/media/songs intended to demonstrate how bad that life is/was, but none of them are singing "Springtime for Hitler".

20 years from now, the common refrain will be "Everything is too PC, you couldn't make a movie like Jojo Rabbit today!"

"Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize." - Tom Lehrer

"Stormtroopers? Those aren't Stormtroo - oh, right." - My Inner Monologue

"comedy is the quickest to age and the most likely to age poorly" you said it sister

People comparing their own crap offensive jokes to Mel Brooks is a bit like when pseudo-scientists compare themselves to Galileo. Galileo wasn't great BECAUSE his views were rejected... he was great because his views were correct. And Mel Brooks isn't great BECAUSE his comedy was offensive... he is great because he's really fucking funny!

It's like George Carlin once said, "I believe you can joke about anything. It all depends on how you construct the joke - what the exaggeration is.

I still think Blazing Saddles is Brook's best movie, because of how sharp and biting his satire is in it. At no point is Bart the butt of the joke, even when he camps it up Minstrel style, or goes "Where all the white women at", the joke is about everyone else, and how Bart cleverly uses that prejudice they have to strike back against the racism. That gets lost so much when the edgelords make racist jokes, because they don't punch up, towards the racists (I.E., how the towns people react to Bart holding himself hostage), but punch down and makes the minority the entire joke (I.E, "dat blak man sur tawk funney") I do kind of wish you'd gone into the "punching up VS down" aspect of Brook's comedy a bit more specifically, instead of going off the assumption that it is a concept the audience already knows.

"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!"

I honestly don't know what I'm more impressed with, the depth of this analysis or the fact that you somehow managed to make a Phantom of the Opera reference.

I'm not gonna lie: I clicked on this thinking it said Mel Gibson and thought "this is gonna be scary." But as soon as I realized it was Mel Brooks I went, "Okay, now I'm confused. Better listen."

Thank you for remembering to mention the Jewish tradition of folklore and humor at the expense of oppressive, anti-Semitic regimes. It's something that gets glossed over a lot when talking about the nature of Mel Brooks' comedy, and it's a genre and history that makes the comedy/weapon connection much clearer than most modern satire.

Critiquing internet edge-lords on YouTube? That takes ovaries. Kudos.

“Satire needs to be making a statement about the thing it’s satirizing, or else it’s bad satire.” This pretty much describes a certain critic who will not be named from a certain channel which will not be named.

"Also, Holocaust? What Holocaust?" Her choice of Red Skull's expression when that line is delivered is perfect.