Critics: Sacha Baron Cohen’s a ‘Genius’ Only When He Ridicules ‘Those’ People

by John Nolte


Bruno and “Gayby”

Oh, big city critics loved them some “Borat,” which spent 95% if its screen time manipulating, editing and boiling down average, working class, not-bothering-anyone Americans (and Romanian peasants) into the worst possible caricature imaginable. How they laughed and found genius and insight into the machinated savaging of everyday folks just minding their own business. But listen to some of them squeal and squawk now that the satire is turned on someone other than us. Here’s a sampling:

San Francisco Chronicle: 

Imagine if a white comedian went into the Deep South, disguised in a very convincing blackface and started acting like Stepin Fetchit.

Hollywood Reporter:  

Consequently, the character’s gayness reads false. Baron Cohen needs to spend more time in certain gay bars if he wants to learn how to do “flamboyant” and “fabulous.” It’s a ghost of the real thing.

The New Yorker: 

You can’t honestly defend your principled lampooning of homophobia when nine out of every ten images that you project onscreen comply with the most threadbare cartoons of gay behavior.

New York Post:

Not to get all PC on you, but the straight, outrageously dressed Baron Cohen camps it up in what has legitimately been criticized as swishy gay equivalent of blackface.

So here’s the lesson: Preying on unsuspecting everyday people, misleading them, manipulating them, pushing them until you get the reaction you desire and then editing them into something even worse, is a-okay. But… An obvious, over-the-top satire of gay men crosses the line.

As I said in my review, the only thing that mitigates the mean-spiritedness of “Bruno” is that, unlike “Borat,” everyone’s taking satiric fire. But now that the guffaws aren’t so one-sided, some aren’t guffawing so much. Worse, someone who isn’t gay lampooning flamboyantly gay men finds himself tarnished as a kind of “blackface” comedian. How interesting, when…

Everyday — on the big screen and small — we see Christians, Southerners, Republicans, Pro-lifers, Red Staters and the working class, ridiculed and savaged by actors who are none of those things. Where’s the cry of “blackface” then?

Baron Cohen is obviously a very talented actor, but there was nothing “brave,” “illuminating” or “ballsy” about “Borat.” Trashing the “great unwashed” is what’s known as a resume enhancer in Hollywood and Manhattan — about as “ballsy” as bringing beer to a frat party. ”Bruno,” on the other hand, actually is somewhat brave for risking charges of “insensitivity” (and worse) from the usual suspects.   

Maybe this is just the beginning for Baron Cohen, maybe he’s working his way towards something truly “fresh” and “brave” … something where he sends a Christian into a GLAAD meeting, a cowboy into a La Raza gathering… We’ll see what happens to a parked car with a “NObama” sticker at NYU or MSNBC, or to a screenwriter pitching a pro-Bush script at a Hollywood studio… Better yet, a Berkeley student with a Palin t-shirt, or a white South African running for elected office in a Democrat primary as an “African-American.”

Now that truly would be an ”illuminating” look at American prejudices, and one that required much less editing than “Borat” to make its subjects look bad. But maybe that’s just my prejudice talking.


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Posted Jul 10th 2009 at 2:18 pm in Entertainment, Media Criticism | 81 Comments