I’ve always thought two things currently making the rounds in comedies and standup aren’t funny: gay jokes and the common use of the word “retard.” Both gay jokes and “retard” seem to be the last area where no one is standing up and demanding it stop – or at least not enough people are putting enough pressure on to make it stop (certainly they’ll never get the kind of press a handful of well-placed protesters got at CBS studios). It is all about to come to a head with the release of Bruno.
Both The Wrap and Hollywood-Elsewhere are looking at the potential backlash for Bruno. HE posted this video with the simple headline, “Minstrel Show?”
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aja110SNPo[/youtube]
The Wrap’s Dominic Patten reports that Sacha Baron Cohen and co did “significant reshoots” to temper the potential problem and added that the studio backing the film feels confident that viewers will see a movie that mocks homophobia. Yeah, I don’t know. Clearly, the whole gay thing means big laughs and big bucks from the target demo, where fart jokes reign supreme. It isn’t a film I will rush out to see, however, because those jokes just aren’t that funny. To me, it’s like black face in the way that it’s become dated to lampoon gay men and women.
69 Responses for "Not that Funny?"
From what I’ve heard, an audience member will have a pretty hard time identifying with any of Bruno’s victims, and that’s probably what the re-shoots were about: making sure that his victims’ uneasiness never seems rational or justified by Bruno’s caricature.
Anyway, let’s see the film first.
Thanks for posting this, Sasha.
A bigger problem is probably that Sacha Boren Cohat is not funny, period.
My first exposure to Sacha Baron Cohen was Da Ali G Show on HBO, and I have to say I always thought his Brüno caricature was a lot funnier than Borat or Ali G, either one. He’s so far from my own personal experience of a gay man — and any gay men I’ve ever known — it wasn’t possible for me to see him as mocking a realistic gay lifestyle at all.
Though at the same time in my life I was meeting a lot of expat gay club boys from more sophisticated cities in Europe who absolutely reveled in projecting a shockingly in-your-face gayness I’d never experienced. So I saw Bruno more like a Mike Myers’ Dieter of Sprockets with his touch-my-monkey affectations. Some of the German, Dutch and French gay men I’ve met living outside the US really do have an gleeful obliviousness to their own flamboyance — and they’re well aware how entertaining that can be in party situations.
The jokes and stereotypes about Jews that SBC played with in Borat make me a lot more uncomfortable than anything Brüno ever does. It’s Gay Pride month. Check out your local parade to see how concerned many gay people are about avoiding perpetuating a flaming public image. It’s an act lots of gay men can turn on and off.
Larry the Cable Guy is most popular among the type of people he parodies, right? I don’t find redneck humor very funny at all because it’s just so dumbassed but, for me, Brüno’s attitude and quotes are jam-packed with layers of sly wit.
Maybe I should be more worried how homophoibic might misinterpret Bruno’s comedy? — but, nah, homophobes are beyond help in my view.
[for anybody who's new around here, I'm gay. (...duh.) It's cool that we don't all see this issue the same way. I'm first to admit that my funny bone is tricky to tickle. I laughed exactly once during Tropic Thunder. But so? Is there any comedian on earth we'd all unanimously agree is funny?
Like I said to Sasha this morning, I'm not very thin-skinned about Brüno's sort of humor, since I've known several adorable guys who play that role intentionally as part of their party persona. It's folded into their "act" on the circuit. They cultivate that style. They play it up in the club scene to hilarious effect -- but most are capable of toning it way down in daylight. That's where Bruno takes it to a strange level -- he's always in full-flounce.]
It’s clear that Sacha Baron Cohen is a narcissist who needs attention and controversy anyway and anyhow. I have known people like this, and the best way to deal with them is to ignore them. In the grand scheme of things he’s a minor comic actor. I certainly won’t be seeing it.
I think it is very good that people have professed that we should wait until the movie comes out before passing judgement. I’m kind of betwixt and between here – I don’t think there is anything wrong with mocking homophobia – I thought the No on 8 scenes looks tremendously funny showing how idiotic some people are….but is it black face…
Jack Plotnick – who I think deserved an oscar nom for Girls will be Girls AND a best supporting actor nom – has said some of the most offensive things as his alter ego not leaving anyone in his wake….so when is it ok?
Oh, and Ryan, I am so there with you on Tropic Thunder – I just didn’t find it funny at all.
Ryan,
Bizarrely, as a proud gay man and avid reader of Awardsdaily for at least 3 years, it has never occourred to me that you were also gay.
My gaydar must be completely rubbish.
Like you, I know gay men in the UK, either from England or mainland Europe, who are able to turn on the Bruno type character at will in order to create an effect. In fact I lived with a guy for many years who was very much like that.
However I worry that, as a straight man playing the extreme camp card purely for entertainment purposes, Baron Cohen will dilute the anti-bigotry message.
I will go and see the film, but at the moment I am not sure whether I will consider it to be safe satire or will actually be offended by it. My impressions on the trailer are pretty mixed (not offended, but not really laughing either).
Ben
I always thought Bruno was the funniest, most on point character on Ali G. Homophobia and the fashion industry, two worthy targets that Bruno pretty much nailed every time.
I’m a little concerned about putting Bruno outside of the interview format. It creates the need to contrive situations more. Could backfire both in message and comedically.
The point of Cohen’s humor is to reveal the flaws in people around him.
Borat is a kind of misogynist and anti-semitic id that encourages others to engage in similar behavior. It also reveals other people’s disdain for foreigners which are disguised in a veil of politeness. Some people like Borat because he is stupid and clueless but shares their own barbaric values and therefore fits their vision of an ideal foreigner, and we all laugh/cringe at that.
Bruno seems to be a provocateur, someone forces people to confront their attitude toward homosexuality. Underneath platitudes about “tolerance”, there are several people that hate homosexuals. That’s what Cohen’s humor is all about: stripping away conventional politeness to reveal deep flaws in society… but in a raunchy, fart/naked joke sort of way.
I thought Borat was hilarious but nearly as clever as Da Ali G Show and not nearly as clever as it or anyone else believed. In order for satire to be truly effective, you have to go after interesting targets. All they did in Borat was sneer at rednecks. Well, duh. Of course they’re a bunch of morons. The result was funny but was nothing more than Jackass for clever people. Plus, we have to acknowledge the fact that while most of us got the joke, there were plenty of jackasses who weren’t laughing at the racists but laughing with them.
Bruno will likely be more of the same. I’m sure I’ll enjoy it but I’ll still long for the halcyon days of Da Ali G Show.
This stand-up routine speaks to the problem of Sacha Baron Cohen’s humor:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K21e7po1Sro
Not that anybody on this board feels this way, but I find it interesting how some people out there think it is fine for comedians to say whatever they want regarding Sarah Palin and her kids; but when it comes to the gay community, that area should be off limits.
I’m going to go see this for the controversy surrounding the film. I thought Borat was pretty funny, but remember all those fans who kept quoting the film? That got annoying real fast. It will probably happen again. The only real damage I can see from this film would be stereotyping those who do not agree with the gay lifestyle, and comparing said group with the ignoramuses in the film. Its bound to happen.
hey Sam,
that’s not the greatest comparison to be making – people make fun of Sarah Palin and her family, because they are in the public eye, and the matriarch of that family regularly makes herself look like a bumbling fool. Plus the fact that she is a “politician” opens her up to public scrutiny and scorn – this has been and always will be the case with people in public service.
I think the argument within the gay community, in this case is that there is worry that this character could do damage to the strides we have made over the years to have people’s perception of us not be the flaming queens with the pink ascots and limp wrists. Rather than normal, sometimes conservative – all of us different group of people.
I won’t judge until having seen the movie, but on the outset, this looks like someone taking some uneducated fool and using their perception of homosexuality and turning it against them.
Exactly Sam! Mean-spirited humor is mean-spirited humor no matter who the target is. I have no problem going after Sarah Palin. Why? She’s a politician. But leave her kids out of it. They didn’t ask for the attention. Let’s be honest, there was a mean-spirited edge to Borat which directly spoke to the racists laughing with Borat in the Bed & Breakfast with the sweet old Jewish couple. Why bring them into the smearing?
“….mean-spirited edge to Borat which directly spoke to the racists laughing with Borat in the Bed & Breakfast with the sweet old Jewish couple. Why bring them into the smearing?….”
…could it be to show how sweet the couple was and expose how racists are mean-spirited? How cruel and brutal, casually brutal racism is?
……& if Sarah Palin’s kids don’t like the attention they should complain to their mother, their mother who dragged them into the spotlight and continues to. nobody was thinking about Willow Palin until her mom and dad propped her up as a fabricated “victim.”.. nobody even remembered there WAS a Willow. Her mother exploited her for her own self-inflating agenda. Nice.
if Bristol doesn’t like attention, she should stay home and take care if her kid instead of crisscrossing the country going on talk shows , collecting speaking fees at rallies, and preaching to everybody else about things she’s incapable of practicing in her own life.
if the Palins don’t want to be the butt of jokes, they should attempt to be less ridiculous.
Step One: Go back to Alaska, and stay there.
RE: Sarah Palin/David Letterman
No one really cares.
Give me honest discourse over “decency” any day.
limey – Yeah that was such a bullshit story. Why didnt she bitch at Leno as well for making a similar joke earlier?
Consistency people, I want it!
Despite his bad example, Sam’s actually kind of right. There are plenty of bad stereotypes out there that are displayed for viewing entertainment. Latinos, Asians and Blacks have all sorts of negative stereotypes of them played out by the media. Jews have been mocking themselves for our collective entertainment for decades.
To single out one stereotype because it applies to you and label it offensive completely out of the context have actually having seen the film is okay as long as you’re willing to label every stereotype offensive. And when you’ve done that, then I think you’re probably a boring person who people have to lie to get along with.
I’d rather someone offend me then explain themselves afterwards because generally speaking, it humanizes them more to me. If we’re all too afraid to air out our prejudices then they tend to stay ingrained in us.
Who gives a shit. If it’s funny, it’s funny…I can care less about who’s the butt of the joke. Everyone should be fair game when it comes to satire. And who cares about this Sarah Palin thing. A stupid late night host made of her, big surprise there, and that should be expected. I say make fun of everyone, that way nobody can be sensitive.
You know, I had not watched this youtube clip before I commented earlier this morning but I’ve taken time to play it now and one thing really bugs me. In the original article than appeared on The Wrap, the author says:
That’s a completely dishonest representation. The story makes it sound as if several gay celebrities just spontaneously came up with the “blackface” outrage on their own. It’s easy to see from the video that the interviewer is feeding each ‘celebrity’ he asks the same leading question: “some people are saying Bruno is gay blackface; don’t you agree?”
I could ask a dozen friends of mine, “Wasn’t Letterman sort of making a sharp point about Palin’s previously-knocked-up daughter being prone to getting knocked up, in spite of her Abstinence Only World Tour?” and most of them would go along with my slanted question. That doesn’t mean I can say, “Yeah all my friends told me they think it’s ok to make knocked-up jokes about somebody who’s inclined to get knocked up.”
=====
And excuse me, but “numerous celebrities”? I count 4 people interveiwed, and none of them are celebrities. Two I never heard of before, and the other looked vaguely familiar. I had to look him up, Peter Paige. He played Emmett Honeycutt on Showtime’s putrid and tawdry little rehash of the excellent UK series Queer As Folk. Yeah, this guy.
Peter Page played the least appealing and most stereotypical stock-character token sissy I’ve ever seen on TV. Same basic wardrobe sense as Bruno, except Peter Paige takes himself seriously as a role model? (His QAF character became a web porn starlet.)
Mike White I sort of knew was gay, but he never registers with me as anything other than a weak-willed simpleton in most of his roles. Jack Plotnick… um, who? These are the best “gay celebrities” they can find to interrogate and parade around as spokesmen?
Mike White has a certain degree of gay clout, I guess, so where are all his gay-friendly projects promoting a positive image of gay people?
Dozens of important straight actors are more actively involved creating complex and sympathetic gay characters than any of these featherweight “gay celebrities.” To me, the mincing interviewer in this video is way more embarrassing as a public image of gay people than Bruno’s silly antics.
I haven’t been too impressed with 80% of the Bruno trailer content. Too many scenes we’ve been shown seem flat and predictable. But I’ll see the movie and form my own impressions about the complete effect. I don’t need some red carpet ambush poll of D-List gay actors to rally around a catchphrase like “queerface.”
I always thought the point of those SBC caricatures was to expose people with prejudice, which is an interesting concept. I mean, he is Jewish so he can get away with mocking stereotypes about Jews but exposing those who are anti-Semitic, racist,etc while doing so is what makes his work different from possible ________phobia masqaraded as harmless jokes spouted by lovable characters that prevail in most movies. At least I see it that way.
As for gay-jokes and use of “retard”, I don`t think that PCness makes the world a better place either. By banning something, you just keep it out of sight where it`s blossoming more than it would if you let it be. You know, people like to do the forbidden thing. IMO, bigger problem is that there are not enough movies (or at all) with gay or mentally challenged characters and/or subject that counter-balance negative stereotype. I mean, when you look at most of the movies, sexual orientation isn`t relevant. Most of the time, love interest is shoehorned to be,what? Eye candy? proof our hero is straight? You can easily replace GF Jane with BF Joe or erase her altogether and it wouldn`t make a difference (OK, it would from studio POV because they are affraid it would result in boxoffice bomb but if you don`t try you won`t really know,no?).
It`s just that this business needs to realize times have changed, gays are big demo and they want to see quality movies with quality gay characters (and openly gay actors getting equal opportunity to do quality work, become stars,etc). Once you start rolling it an masse, not just an odd Oscar bait, others will accept it. And when it turns profitable, you know the rest.
this is what I was referring to in regards to Jack Plotnick – you haven’t seen or heard of Girls Will Be Girls, Ryan? If not, I suggest you rent it – it is a great campy guilty pleasure – Jack Plotnick’s alter ego is a drag queen named Evie; who is a boozy, un p-c wretch of a human being who says things like:
“Have I had an abortion?! Honey, I’ve had more children pulled out of me than a burning orphanage!”
Too much? Yes! Offensive? Definitely, to some. Hilarious? Absolutley….
so where does he come off saying that what Sacha Baron Cohen is doing is dangerous….
since were all coming out on this board
i will too
i am 26, gay male, and so ready for Bruno.
Not much offends me, and I think the film will be hilarious.
I think its aim is to show how homophobic some people can be, while at the same time showing how crazy some of the gay community can be (and yes i can vouch for that too).
I think it will be a fun time.
haha! I’ve heard variations of that joke for years, filmboymichael. I’ll check out Girls Will Be Girls sometime — on your recommendation. I trust your opinion considerably more than I do Plotnick’s.
nope, watching this video (which really seems to be the primary hook for the whole hoopla) it looks like several guys with Bruno-esque traits of their own were out to have a proud afternoon honoring Dustin Lance Black, and got blindsided by a controversy none of them had even considered until cornered.
And I say “out for a proud afternoon” with a bit of a snarl, when we see quotes in The Wrap article like this:
Way to promote a positive image and project confidence and pride in who you are, Miss Gay.Member.of.Hollywood.Who.Declines.to.be.Indentified. Gurlfren, stay home if you’re ashamed to be seen with those of us who don’t cower in the shadows.
“it looks like several guys with Bruno-esque traits of their own were out to have a proud afternoon honoring Dustin Lance Black, and got blindsided by a controversy none of them had even given much thought to until cornered.”
are you referring to Bruno or a certain sex scandal that erupted late last week!?
I jest with a wink….but I love the way you worded that – sounds like something I would say….after a vodka or two!
Personally, I think the point of this film is not to exploit homosexuality, but rather to expose how people feel about homosexuality. I think Cohen did a phenomenal job at doing that sort of thing in Borat.
I think the only danger in this movie is that people are generally dumb, the point of the movie will go right over their head, and it WILL be viewed as a minstrel show of sorts. Which I think is sad. Cohen has a very good idea, but only intellectuals (who seem to have no problem with homosexuality anyway) will get it.
Still, I want to see this movie because these days, it is a necessity to expose homophobia in this country. And I’m waiting for Cohen to do that.
“are you referring to Bruno or a certain sex scandal that erupted late last week!?”
aiiee!
I swear to Cher, that is so not what I meant. Those photos slipped my mind entirely, yikes.
But yeah, since you brought it up, where’s the outrage about the sleazy aroma Perez Hilton often exudes? I confess to having a train-wreck-fascination with His Pinkness, but what he did last week was pretty despicable.
you bring up a good point, Ryan, is it just that people tend to ignore him? I, personally can’t stand his site – I think he’s an extremely off putting human being and another example of a non celebrity in hollywood – gone are the days of Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons – now we get Perez Hilton and Harvey Levin – gross
FUCK POLTICAL CORRECTNESS!
I repeat…
FUCK POLITICAL CORRECTNESS!
People like the author of this article are the reason we have idiotic groups protesting something like Tropic Thunder just because it uses the word “retard.” And are you kids moronic? Bruno is MAKING FUN OF homophobia, not promoting it.
I’m unsure about whether I’ll be offended by this or find it funny. I get the idea and applaud the sentiment, but don’t know if I’ll enjoy sitting amongst an audience who will laugh as much at the gay stereotype jokes as they do the bigots’ comments. I imagine someone from Kazakhstan might feel the same way about Borat.
Eh, I wouldn`t call DLB sextape a scandal. He`s openly gay having sex with his then bf, he has hot body and is well-hung. What`s scandalous again? if he was famous homophob or a star in the closet caught on tape in a clinch with another guy, that would be a scandal,I guess. if he had a peanut instead of that snake that would save Indiana Jones from drowning in the mud , that would be embarrassing but not really scandalous (I mean, he`s a writer, you don`t expect him to pack a rocket like Ron Jeremy). And if he had flab instead of those rock-solid abs, that would be embarrassing again, but scandal? hardly. I don`t think this will sink his career. Quite the contrary, his fandom must`ve sky rocketed. At least good 70-80% of Perez talkback gushes about DLB`s hotness. So…
I don’t think there will be a backlash at all, as on the date it opens every gay person in America will be on vacation on Fire Island.
Erm, Bambi, what are you talking about exactly….
you have made a mountain out of some gentle ribbing made by myself and Ryan Adams….what was scandalous about the photos and tape was not his nakedness – and yes, he has a great body and an adequate package (let’s not go overboard), but the fact that he is an advocate for safe sex and he appeared to not be practicing what he preaches….I won’t comment on how I feel about that, I have my own opinions….
I never once said that this will sink his career – and I don’t really think people even consider that this is running along the same vein as, say paris hilton or kim kardashian – “celebs” who seemingly self release their own sex tapes for publicity – an oscar winner doesn’t need that kind of publicity for career advancement…..
I think one of the things I love about Bruno is that (on the show, at least) he would target the popular homophobes of the world but also lampoon and skewer aspects of the “gay” world, such as fashion.
The “Train to Auschwitz” skit with the fashion designers critiquing people’s clothing was so on-point I loved it.
I love poking fun at every stereotype I can find. As a gay man, I don’t see why gays should be left out of this. There are just as many ridiculous gay people out there as any other minority group and they need some ribbing just as much as anyone.
I’m not one to get easily offended – although I think the “that’s so gay” and “faggot” insults bother me. But mainly because it’s just SO easy to make a joke like that. It’s not even nuanced, it’s laziness. And I don’t appreciate laziness in my comedy.
why are there so many faggots in hollywood? jeeze. gay jokes are funny. being a faggot isn’t normal.
I didn’t make any judgment about the photos in my comment, bambi. I’m sort of repelled that Perez has no boundaries, even when it comes to discretion about one of the gay communitiy’s genuine heroes.
That said, obviously I couldn’t click to the photos fast enough when I heard about them, and was happy to see plenty to be proud of. I downloaded them in case they were taken down, and they reside on my key-chain flash-drive, warmly protected in my front pocket at all times.
As filmboymichael says, the ’scandal’ was mainly that Perez’s attitude is so tasteless. I was glad to see most of his readers give him a good smack-down, and had mostly gushing admiration for DLB. I feel that these guys have been together a while, and assume they’re smart enough to have both been tested, so the lack of condoms doesn’t bother me. That’s no more my business than the photos themselves.
Hot couple, and for his boyfriend those photos must give a whole new meaning to “Once you go Black, you never go back.”
(‘adequate package’ is about what I thought, too, filmboymichael. I guess we’ve been lucky in our own personal experiences.)
“ryan. you do realize he’s making fun of homophobes right?”
I absolutely realize that. Read my comments and you’ll see I think this is blown out of proportion, and what I’ve seen so far doesn’t offend me at all.
But the point of Sasha’s post is that we can’t assume actual homophobes will know the joke’s on them — the same way that there must be lots of racists in complete agreement with Borat’s freakish attitudes about women and Jews. So for some, it might reinforce their ingrained stereotypes.
I can’t worry about 50 million hopeless idiots. I don’t know how much of the movie I’ll find funny, but I’ll probably see it at home to avoid feeling weird vibes in the theater. If it’s funny, I know it’ll be funnier if I see it in an environment among people who take it the same way I do. (er… so to speak.)
Perez is super-tasteless, I agree. I mean, his intro to those pix was “Oh, how could anyone do this to a friend?” and then he just posted them. Way to prove “better” than DLB`s ex-bf who breached the privacy. I`m glad the whole thing is backfiring on him.
Didn`t mean any harm, sorry. It`s just that sextapes and celltapes and what not are so business-as-usual now that I don`t find them a news or scandal or whatever.
Good satire can easily get confused with what it is satirizing.
Ryan, to go off what you said earlier about the interviewer feeding the loaded question to get the answer he wanted to hear, I totally agree, and it’s for that reason I question the video and validity of the claims. Who exactly is saying that the Bruno character is like black face? I’d suspect it’s the interviewer himself, using the old tool of putting his own opinion out there without it being his own opinion by saying “Some people are saying _____” He doesn’t attribute the accusation to anyone but “some people.”
If you are a gay person at what is presumably a gay event, and a gay black man puts a microphone in your face and says something that makes you assume your gay peers in Hollywood are feeling that Bruno is harming the gay community by being as bad as blackface once was for black Americans, what do you really expect them to say?
I have a strong feeling that if the question was simply, “What do you think of the movie/character Bruno coming out soon?” the answers would have been completely different, and very likely positive.
I do think actual homophobes may not get the joke, and assume Bruno himself is what’s supposed to be the punchline when he is merely the setup for those around him. But really, if they are homophobic, this is not the movie for them, and some serious and caring portrayal of homosexual life wouldn’t change their mind either. Look at Brokeback Mountain and the reception that movie received. I still have friends who are supposedly fine with gay people and refuse to see it because they claim it’ll make them feel uncomfortable.
Yes, I suppose we have been lucky….giggle.
“Good luck is another name for tenacity of purpose.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1860
(Emerson is rumored to have had a gay infatuation with Nathaniel Hawthorne — who had a relationship with Herman Melville — but there’s no photographic evidence.)
GET A SENSE OF HUMOR PEOPLE!
This movie and character is NOT dangerous.
Its supposed to be a satire.
And its SUPPOSED to expose homphobia.
just wait to see the movie and CHRIST lighten up!
I don’t think a lot of people realize that for most comedians nothing is out of line. Anything has the possibility to be fun no matter how subversive or timely it is if its in the hand of a talented comedian.
I’m glad there are comedians who push the limits. I’m also glad that there are people concerned about other people’s feelings.
The most interesting part of this issue it that the producers of the film have listened to those concerns and made an attempt to show their alliance by adding scenes to clarify the intent and end on a note in support of gay marriage.
Buttons get pushed. People react. Attitudes adjust.
Mien kugelsack ez svollen wiz satisfaction.
BTW: gays are an easy target. There’s SO MUCH to make fun of!
Sacha Baron Cohen is not my kind of humor. I couldn’t sit through Borat and I won’t bother with Bruno. But at the same time, I can appreciate the intent of both characters: to show the embarrassing prejudices ingrained in society.
Those who have been out for awhile and live in an environment where homosexuality is a non-issue can easily pass this off as being harmless. But out in suburban America and other traditionally-conservative parts of the country, even with such a satirical concept it will only work against the livelihood of young gay men in these parts of society. Where apathy reigns (and we all know it does in vast stretches of the country) the satire generally isn’t altogether appreciated. It won’t incite hatred or anything, but when young straight men throw around lines and scenes from the movie, they’ll more often than not be those of the central character. In that sense, Cohen is a minstrel without intending to be necessarily.
Before young men really have a substantial amount of independence, there just isn’t much support for gay men from the male side of society. This is the kind of movie targeted at men and it only really perpetuates that, at best, gays are wacky and funny and at worst offensive and at odds with everyone but their own kind. Growing up surrounded by that mentality is seriously unhealthy and makes a big impact on their maturity.
This movie alone isn’t responsible for it, but I don’t think it is really helping the case of gays to be accepted by straight, macho-obsessed Americans.
I honestly didn’t think DLB deserved that Oscar…waiting for Rahulio to call me a homophobe.
Wandering off-topic but only slightly — does everybody remember that last Big Bruno Brouhaha reported by Sharon Waxman and The Wrap? We punched holes that scandalous “news” too.
Oh. My. GOD!! Not an NC-17!? Whatever will Sacha Baron Cohen do! Short and instantaneous answer: fix it.
No way in hell was this movie being released as NC-17, and Waxman was being severely disingenuous by asking if it was humanly possible to “clean it up” before Summer. My guess is that the clean-up took a couple of hours.
Not sure why The Wrap wants to turn everything Sacha Baron Cohen does into some culture-wrecking social crisis, but it’s just a bit silly to the rest of us grown-ups.
Ryan, the answer is because they want people to read them. Like the scandalous Palin-Letterman affair. In the end both Palin and Letterman won, people were roped in. Breaking News and Scandal! catch people’s eyes. How else could Fox news, CNN, and MSNBC sell everybody news: there must be controversy. We’re in a world of overselling and overstating.
People should learn to not take these things so seriously. It is satire. I have a younger sister with down syndrome yet I don’t take personal offense to the use of the word retarded. Is it sane to label something negative because one portion of a demographic is offended by it?
I believe that ultimately someone either has to accept that everything is fair game or nothing is. Aristotle aligned himself with the idea that comedy may be detrimental to society as a whole but I find it hard to believe that many people are willing to support an abolishment of comedy.
Comedy is always going to make fun of something, some one, or some group. Beyond that Bruno makes fun of ridiculous right wingers more then anything from what I can gather.
And if for some reason somebody walks away from Borat some how anti-homosexual, if someone is dumb enough to take their political cues from a prank movie then I don’t think there was much intellectual hope for them in the first place.
As yet another gay man, I too think this movie threads a fine line between satire and mockery.. And I believe that will be lost on the bigot viewer and the uneducated and ignorant popcorn audience, hence, while I will probably enjoy it, it will end up fueling right wing idiots and their hatred agendas.
Face it. The average american cinema viewer has an IQ of a chimp, and this will only increase the “Oh Thats SO gay” jokes that have been floating around for the last 3 years now, which I’ve always found offensive and just ridiculous.
T.
PS: Milk’s original screenplay Oscar was one of the best awards choice last season.
Political correctness can sometimes irritate me too, but on balance it is hard to fault as a means of changing societal norms. Its humorless earnestness and rigid over-correction makes it harder for all of us to fall back on lazy thinking and social expression habits. Once the transition from less intolerance/sensitivity to greater acceptance/thoughtfulness occurs then the related PCness naturally falls away. I never get why people become so incensed with PCness when there are so many more unquestionably egregious things in the world to get wound up about – like the very ones the PCness is designed to address.
But satire also plays an important and valuable role in societal attitude change. It takes different strokes for different folks. The targets of Sacha Baron Cohen’s brand are so obvious that anyone unable to recognize the fact is a lost cause anyway. I don’t get the assumption that a bigot who has his/her prejudice reinforced by the movie is going to be any more of a bigot coming out as they were going in.
Ryan’s gay?! I didn’t know that. Boy, am I in the dark.
I’m waiting for the youtube interviews of outraged and concerned Austrians rising up against Bruno. Or maybe Madonna and Jolie should boycott the film.
I’m sorry but eventually it gets to the point where you have to just realize: Sacha Baron Coen is a comedic actor/writer who is making a satiric comedy that addresses homophopia in America. It’s a MOVIE.
Yes, he may be portraying an extreme stereotype of a homosexual, but he is doing so in a comedy satire movie. Will he offend, probably. But the fact is, by complaining about his motives all everyone here is doing is feeding the fire of Bruno’s press and public awareness, thus inevitably causing more people to pay attention to the movie, and in the end basically creating the potential for this film to be a financial success. I mean, just by saying that you are going to boycott this movie and talking about being concerned about Coen’s presentation of the character, everyone doing so is causing more public curiosity and interest in Bruno. People will show up in droves thinking: “Hmm, I want to see what all this fuss is about”
So, for those on here, and I know it isnt everyone, who are complaining based on speculation: Please Stop.
Watch the movie, and if you are still so offended by it, then you can create a stink, even though that stink will attract more people to the source.
It’s funny that the same people who saw, loved and quoted Borat with their freinds are also the same ones who are complaining about coen mocking a minority, just as he SATARIZED immigrants and foreigners in Borat. We as a species are just inherently hypocritical I guess.
I for one, thoroughly enjoyed Borat and own it on DVD. While it may have been offensive, I can still define the line between reality and the fiction of a movie on a screen. My sexual orientation holds no place in my filmgoing habits and as such I will be seeing Bruno, and I will be open to anything and everything that appears on screen.
Tyler j. Pratt of The Oscar Hut
http://www.theoscarhut.blogspot.com
I haven’t seen the film, so I’ll have to base some of my thoughts how I felt about Borat. It’s possible I’ll change my mind after I’ve seen Bruno. Anyway, if it’s anything like Borat, then I think some of the film’s intent will be lost on people.
The point SBC’s humor is really to make fun of the bigots among us. He points out the absurdity or anti-semitism, racism, homophobia, and sexism. Although, personally, I think the man’s humor is crude, his material is really targeted at the more sophisticated members of the audience. The idiots will watch the film and probably laugh at the gay jokes, because in their minds making fun of gay people is just hilarious. But what the bigoted idiots won’t realize is that the film is making fun of them. The intelligent members of the audience will realize that there’s a lot more going on.
Tropic Thunder, for me, was like this as well. On the surface, it seems like an excuse to put a guy in blackface. But really, the point of doing that was to show how absurd racist people are. A stupid viewer would just laugh their ass off at the black jokes without really realizing that the film was making fun of racists.
It’s possible that Bruno turns out to be incredibly offensive. I had mixed feelings about Borat. Even though it made fun of anti-semitism hearing some of the anti-semitic stuff said out loud, made me feel queasy. So, I don’t think people should try to shut down the people who see the film and are offended. What’s offensive to one person isn’t offensive to another, and vice versa.
“Even though it made fun of anti-semitism hearing some of the anti-semitic stuff said out loud, made me feel queasy.”
isn`t that the point? I doubt that he made those jokes without hoping that people would feel uncomfortable about it. One can laugh and feel unconfortable at the same time. Like, it`s fun in this movie context, that he is satirizing things at all, but it`s still unconfortable thinking about real people saying such thing totally seriously (like that bigot supreme who shot the guard and people at Holocaust Museum). You can laugh at the stupidity and be unconfortable where such stupidity leads. Hard to explain since I don`t have the eloquency of other posters here.
I expect same thing from Bruno – make people laugh at stupid homophobs and still feel uneasy about it because of the real-life bigotry.
Ryan, so you’re actually gay?
ha, I thought my fascination with ‘Full Frontal Franco’ and other naughty nuances I’ve let slip would’ve tipped my hand to everybody by now.
Have had major relationships with girls too. Just not lately.
oh, k. I haven’t read every post on here so I didn’t know. I’ve been busy on the forums from here, it’s full of bitchy-ness.
bambi, I understand that’s the point, I was just making an observation. Sorry, sometimes I ramble and my thoughts aren’t clear.
Like you pointed out, there’s a duality to SBC’s work, but I don’t think the audience always understands that while they’re supposed to be laughing, they’re also supposed to feel uncomfortable. I think a lot of people just think you’re either supposed to laugh OR be uncomfortable, rather than both.
Well, to be perfectly honest, I’ve hit my limit on people getting offended. I think it’s a waste of time. No one likes everyone. For people to have to pretend that they do is ridiculous and I think we’ve been living through at least one decade of utter falseness. No one says what they really think. Everyone wants to be accepted by everyone else. And it makes us all the same boring fat person. If people can’t take jokes or a few nasty words here and there, they need to just stay home and watch Oprah.
Bruno looks like it’s going to be hilarious. My favorite part of Borat was the running of the Jew. If anyone wants to dislike me because of my tastes then it saves me a lot of time trying to figure out who the morons are.
The problem I do have with this drummed up kind of controversy about movies is when the movie doesn’t deserve it. I had heard since forever that ‘Cruising’ was the worst movie ever because it was so anti-gay only the worst people on earth could like it. Well, last year I went through an Al Pacino phase and I saw that the library had it, so I watched it. I ended up really liking the movie.
I’m not gay. I wasn’t around during that time. But I can’t imagine that people really thought the movie was as bad as it’s rep. I think they thought that people who weren’t gay who saw the movie were going to think that every gay person was a homicidal maniac. But honestly, that’s being prejudiced toward non-gay moviegoers. It’s assuming that if a person, who didn’t know any gay people, saw the movie they would be stupid enough to assume that the killer in the movie represented every gay person. That’s totally asinine. But it sounds like people still think that somewhere there are people who are going to view all gay people (since they don’t know any ?) as Bruno. Almost 30 years on, it’s the same fear. No one is going to decide how they feel about a person or group of people based on a fictional character. They’re going to decide by what they see in the real world on a day to day basis.
So my advice would be, go see Bruno and be nice to your straights.
That`s a great observation,SaltireFlower!
Any work of cinema that intends to pose challenging questions, irrespective of genre, won’t be made if there is the fear that members of the audience take what they see literally and they believe it informs whatever prejudices they might have.
As someone mentioned it’s a no-win situation because look at how BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, despite it’s intent, was received in some quarters where the notion of two ‘manly’ men (cowboys) in love with each other was ridiculed by some. If one is homophobic already NOTHING will change that limited mindset or make it worse (which is the supposed issue with BRUNO).
Enough with the hand-wringing puritanism. Please stop demanding control over speech. Any and all minorities are perfectly capable of:
weathering satire and ridicule. It’s usually well-deserved and bracing anyway.
We ain’t so precious and fragile that we need some speech police modulating just exactly how jokes are told. Further, we can’t be responsible for the clueless idiots who don’t “get” it. They never do and they never will. If they (or we) can’t take a joke, well, you know what to do with them.
As far as what it will do or NOT do for gays: aren’t you overthinking this just a bit? People who hate gays hate them now, will hate them after Bruno, will hate them with or without Bruno and can’t be persuaded by PC manipulation.
Swishy fashion victim gays are common enough. God knows I’ve been making fun of them ever since I can remember. Easy target.
“…some members of the audience take what they see literally and they believe it informs whatever prejudices they might have.”
and with perfectly predictable timing, Ray Butler swaggers in to prove your point, Chris.
lol. For last few weeks I have been living under my cozy little rock, so Dustin Lance Black photos are news to me. And I have never visited Perez Hilton site.
I don’t care about the important issues (like Iran elections) but I sure hate to miss on juicy stuff.
Go DLB!
“There’s been great comparisons of Bruno to blackface.”
Really? great comparisons? This is the first I’ve heard of the comparisons, mostly because they are ridiculous.
It’s a joke.
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