Sacha Baron Cohen is at his best when he's at his most political. Taken together, his three characters from Da Ali G Show constitute a body of work more like the work of a muckraking journalist than that of a comedian, work that reminds audiences of the vital place of comedy in our culture.
Baron Cohen has positioned himself as a man unafraid of speaking truth to power with his balls out, quite literally. Borat's cultural awkwardness brings out our geographical ignorance and prejudice towards those who are "not like us." Ali G's interviews with politicians and dignitaries serve as shocking testaments to how humorless, clueless, and out-of-touch our policy makers and elected officials are.
When we first met Bruno on Da Ali G Show, he seemed to be a combination of the two: his outrageous couture and unabashedly "out" behavior take Borat's act to a more threatening place where people express entrenched homophobic views, while his interviews do for vacuous celebrities and fashionistas what Ali G does for politicians.
This quality endows Bruno with the potential to be Baron Cohen's most provocative statement; unfortunately, however, Bruno limits its target to American homophobia, and while the events of the film do indeed expose prejudice toward homosexuals, they also reveal a fallacy at the heart of Baron Cohen's work: Baron Cohen has some prejudices of his own.
Baron Cohen and director Larry Charles believe that every white person in the South (or perhaps America at large) is a gay-hating redneck Jesus freak. The film serves mainly as an attempt to confirm their preconceived notions. Of course they find what they're looking for, just as anyone who goes looking in reality for evidence of stereotypes will if s/he looks hard enough ... Or if his/her prejudices are strong enough. We don't see anyone in the film contradict this stereotype or surprise Baron Cohen and Charles with his/her tolerance because Baron Cohen and Charles aren't interested in having their assumptions tested. That would complicate their simplistic worldview. Besides, they might add, that kind of stuff is not funny.
But actually, such an incident makes for perhaps the most hilarious moment of Borat. When Borat disrupts a southern woman's dinner party by bringing his feces to her in a plastic bag because he doesn't understand how to use a toilet, we laugh at the uncomfortable breach of etiquette, but we also are amazed by how hard the woman works to maintain her composure. What's funny is not that she's a small-minded bigot, but that she's a big-hearted woman bending over backwards to help make a guest feel welcome in her home. We leave that scene thinking more of that woman than we did at the start, and we still laugh our asses off.
For a film that claims to fight against prejudice, Bruno fights it with a prejudice of its own. Is this revelatory? Is this progressive? Or is it simply trading one kind of blind disdain for another, albeit a kind more politically correct and culturally hip?
Baron Cohen and Charles are, to paraphrase Woody Allen, "bigots for the left," and their comedy serves to reassure people who already agree with them that their dislike for the South, Christianity, and Conservatism are well-founded and not the stuff of prejudice or bigotry but rather fact. One could speculate that Baron Cohen and Charles may think it's impossible to be both liberal and prejudiced, or, to put it more bluntly, liberal and incorrect. Part of their invincibility on-screen comes from their outright fearlessness, but part of it also comes from a supreme sense of superiority.
Both Borat and Bruno reveal Larry Charles' and Sacha Baron Cohen's comedy to be deeply rooted in a cynical contempt for people. No one is above reproach for them; everyone is a total idiot, a total hypocrite, a total bigot, or all of the above. Everyone, that is, except for Baron Cohen and Charles. And while we might find their particular kind of contempt amusing, even hilarious, their intent and methods only differ from Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh with regards to politics, and that's not funny at all.
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William Bradley: Why the Big Fade for Bruno?
Why the big fade? It's actually not much of a mystery. Once you see the movie, the only mystery is why it wasn't predicted in the first place.
Sean L. McCarthy: "Bruno" And The Irony Of Satire
What happens when you're lampooning someone, or some segment of society, but in exposing their ridiculous notions, they only think you're promoting their cause?
I see it otherwise. He is a coward, as seen in Borat. His comedy rises from insecurities about his own country. It is easy to get Americans to act strange, with little coaxing, in front of a camera. Most of his vignettes are made to placate himself, a psychological displacement, to impose that which he sees in his own country upon Americans. He is not the first Briton to do it.
Britain is more racist, more anti-semitic, than America. It has its hicks and rubes and prudes too. The one insecurity he plays out I don't understand is his attacks on American "high class" etiquette types. Britain certainly has its share, and its snobs undoubtedly exceed America's. Perhaps he feels he cannot attack British of this type because it would lose him entree to friends and society.
If he did his routine among the British public, that would be brave.
I have no idea where you get the idea that Britain is "more racist, more anti-semitic" than America. Having grown up over there and lived in a number of different countries since then before moving to North America, I see no real evidence to back that statement up.
When I went down South I was floored. I had heard the "n" word said disparagingly by a white person maybe a handful of times in my life...suddenly I was hearing it in casual conversation on an almost daily basis. I saw police officers stopping black people and harassing them for the crime of walking outside at night. There a few cases of minorities getting beat up, and MANY cases of establishments for minorities being vandalized or defaced.
But on the other hand..,there were plenty of tolerant people too. I never hurt for friends, and the multi cultural organizations never hurt for members. There WERE KKK and Neo Nazi rallies in nearby areas...but the crowds PROTESTING these groups were ten times larger than the crowds attending, and there were plenty of white people there.
Also, in later years I went to the midwest and northwest, to places like Montata and South Dakota it was WAY worse than it had been in the South. People forget that the most prominant racist and militant right wing groups are in the Northwest, not in the South.
I've yet to hear any stories of gangs of liberals lynching anyone, or beating anyone to death and leaving them on a fence as a warning for all to see, or pulling someone for miles on dirt roads chained from the bumper of a pickup truck.
In my 41+ years, from what I've seen, there is a violent line that gets crossed more often by bigots on the Right than by bigots on the Left.
I do agree, though, that the conservative Right crosses the line of violence far, far more than progressive Liberals, and that violence is usually astounding in its ferocity. My intent was never to minimize that sort of violence.
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Sadly, it's also quite difficult sometimes to be a well educated liberal and feminist living IN the South - as you seem to have experienced within your own family. All the best to you.
Calling the woman was a racist because she didn't want that particular woman at her dinner party is exactly the sort of liberal prejudice you are talking about. The hostess opens her home to him, he brings in a person who is totally out of place there, and her being dismayed is "prejudice"? If I invite you to my house and you show up with a couple of large, unruly dogs, does my dismay mean I hate dogs?
The things Bruno does to people as a homosexual would be just as unacceptable if he weren't. If I refuse to let a man I just met give me a big, wet kiss, buI don't let strange women do that either. If somebody presents himself as a stereotype homosexual, and I don't like him, it might be because I don't like people who pretend to be gay.
Granted, 'Borat' and 'Bruno' aren't for everyone but at least watch them before commenting so strongly.
If you think the southern bible belt is so "tolerant" and deserving, why don't you test that theory and go there yourself, and act like Bruno. Once you get insulted, taunted, and beaten, maybe you will be less aghast at the "unfairness" of showing the southern christian haters for what they are.
How many places are these christian southerners afraid to go and be themselves? Fearing that mobs of gays will beat them up? Uhhh, like no place!
And, yes, btw, there is a growing population here in the South that is, in fact, tolerant and deserving of attitudes far more understanding than yours. And, frankly, it surprises me that you live in a Southern state if you hate Southerners so much.
Certainly, there are bigots and racists in the South, but there are bigots and racists everywhere. Also, there are wonderful, giving Christians in the South who don't push their beliefs on everyone with whom they come in contact. It's true that stereotypes are borne out of reality, but I would hope that many people (especially those who "try to be flexible") would be more open to the fact that not all Southerners are stupid, backward, homophobic, and racist. Many of us fight every day to change perceptions like those as well as attitudes that lead to those perceptions.
Also, the same woman who was so big-hearted about the poop-in-a-bag lost her heart when confronted with Borat's dinner date--a black prostitute. Quelle horreur!
BTW, do you believe the fashionistas Bruno started the film with were southern Christians? This film skewered pretty much everybody.