probing buffoonery

Today Sacha Baron Cohen’s hotly anticipated Borat follow-up, Bruno, lands in American theaters, based on Baron Cohen’s gay Austrian fashionista character, originally conceived alongside Borat on Da Ali G Show. 

Bruno feels like one of those films that’s been coming down the pipe for a good long while, largely due to the headlines and jumbo paydays it generated when first greenlit, and partly because – in making the film – Baron Cohen found his hidden-camera gags frequently splashed across newspapers across the country.  For better or worse, his popularity has become its own impediment: he no longer has the anonymity necessary to carry off these characters.  No matter, after this final of the three films, Baron Cohen plans to pack away his beloved trio of buffoons, reputedly forever.

Regardless, reviews for the film have been positive, for the most part.  I’m a huge fan of Da Ali G Show, and have been since seeing the bulk of the episodes on HBO.  Without question, I think the movie looks hysterical, and plan to see it.  Most of all, though, I find Sacha Baron Cohen to be a phenomenally talented comic actor, reminiscent of a young Peter Sellers.  I’ll be enormously curious to see what dynamic and exciting directions his career takes once he retires his trademark characters.

I preface the following comments with that heap of praise for good reason, though.  Watching trailers for Bruno, and following the slow burn of controversy that’s accompanied the film’s release, I can’t help but find a large amount of fascination in the undercurrents of confusion the film’s release has awoken.  There are so many layers of complex, overlapping, ever-changing cultural sensitivity in American society; it’s hard to know whether to laugh at the prancing gay stereotype, or be righteously and genuinely appalled by it. 

I suppose the fundamental question is this: are we so evolved now in our attitudes toward gays and lesbians that we can laugh at the jokes again?  More importantly, is Baron Cohen deconstructing old attitudes of sexual paranoia, or perpetuating them?  I really don’t know the answer.  I’m merely offering up the question.     

And yes, I get that Bruno’s supposed to be outrageous and outlandish.  I get that it’s designed to offend.  If I’m not horrified, they haven’t accomplished their purpose.  I get all of that.  Still, offending your audience isn’t hard, especially when dabbling in the lewd and scatological, and especially when trading in very old cultural jokes and archetypes.  That doesn’t mean that Bruno’s shtick is without value, though – quite the contrary.  Baron Cohen’s material is always funny.

But the Bruno character and the film’s all-but-inevitable huge opening weekend grosses demonstrate that – despite all their recent civil rights victories – gays remain a safe subject for mockery in our pop culture.  There’s stigma to it, but a meek, subtle, slow-developing one. 

So let’s shift context a little.  Imagine if Baron Cohen dressed in blackface and performed a minstrel show, chomping watermelons and dancing.  How would that be received?  Even with a veneer of satire, the stereotyping would be gross, unacceptable, right?

I guess that’s the part that gives me pause: the creators of the film employ these same dusty old gay jokes in the service of what’s often vindicated as being pure, even groundbreaking “satire.”  It’s this part that makes me bristle a bit.  Is Bruno really satire?  Was Borat?  The gag – for those that are in on it, which is the few, I think, rather than the bulk, which is part of my concern – is that Baron Cohen’s characters elicit bigoted reactions from ordinary everyday Americans, revealing our pent-up prejudice.  The problem is, when you watch the films, unlike the show, there’s very little of that going on.  The majority of the laughs come from the antics of the characters themselves. 

And when surrounding witnesses react, the effect ends up coming off something like this: we identify in some way with their reactions, because the characters confronting them – Bruno, Borat, Ali G – are breaching social mores in deeply transgressive ways, in ways sure to offend, regardless of prejudice.  Think of our hero lugging his bag of feces to the supper table in Borat.  Again, it’s funny as hell, but is it satire?  If the filmmakers have to stretch and strain in such ways, does this still qualify as deep, incisive, culturally revelatory stuff?  We don’t come out of the films reflecting on American culture and its xenophobias; we come out giggling about the eccentric, silly characters and their foul behavior.  Sure, Bruno is hilarious, and it pokes fun at our culture, but is it reaching for the level of commentary that satire requires?

I think that’s the nub of the issue for me.  Too often low-brow humor masquerades as satire, when it’s not, when the makers are trying to put an arty, urbane gloss on their feat.  By no means am I saying Bruno shouldn’t have been made, nor am I discouraging anyone from seeing it.  As I said before, I plan to see it myself.  But I do have a troubled feeling somehow, not a huge glacier of concern, just a small nagging sense.  If we call Bruno satire, we’re undermining the power of genuine satire, cheapening the word itself and the intent of such efforts, and given the swirl of controversy over gay marriage, Prop 8 and the like, perhaps doing it at our moment of greatest need.