The Atlantic - Latest Comments in Bruno And Babs

Re: Bruno And Babs

c5karl — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 11:10:52 -0000

I share the discomfort with SBC's humor that many have expressed. I saw the Borat movie and laughed hard, but by the end of the movie I mostly stopped laughing, because I really didn't like watching people being humiliated.

This conversation gets me thinking about Alan Funt, who created this genre with the many iterations of the Candid Camera show that aired on and off for decades. I don't think it's just my nostalgia saying that Candid Camera was funnier than the modern Jamie Kennedy/Punk'd/SBC knockoffs, because the focus was never on the celebrity host and his disguises (Kennedy), cooler-than-you celebrity friends (Punk'd) or deliberate humiliation (SBC). The focus was on the gags and the reactions of the marks, and the shows were tightly edited to keep you laughing.

And you could completely enjoy Candid Camera, because it never made you cringe. If anything, you envied the "victims" of the pranks, because they were simply caught being human, and the show gave them an opportunity to prove they were good sports.

Even P.T. Barnum ultimately let you in on his "see the horse with his head where his tail ought to be" jokes. The mean-spiritedness of the new prank shows feels too much like Roman Coliseum to me. I really don't want to see people being eaten by lions.

Maybe all this sounds sappy and prudish for a 500 channel world, but if you haven't seen Candid Camera, it's worth seeking out on DVD. Not because it's safely dull as dishwater, but because it's genuinely funny, the way that the Marx Brothers or Buster Keaton always have been and always will be genuinely funny.

Re: Bruno And Babs

Acromion — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 10:56:20 -0000

"First of all, the terrorist interview. I think it's pretty fair to say that Bruno is just about the embodiment of American conservative ideas of what's wrong with liberals."

Or you could see it this way: Bruno is making fun of straight guys. He just doesn't get why the Israelis and the Palestinians are fighting when they have such bad facial hair.

Re: Bruno And Babs

Acromion — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 10:45:26 -0000

I'm gay and I LOVED Bruno. . . saw it 3 times already!

Yes SBC is playing in "gay face" or "pink face." Whatever. He gets it. Its high camp - a style of humor cultivated by gays.

From wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_(style)

Camp is over the top and bitchy. It revels in its tackiness. Its a way for gay people to poke fun at overly-serious heteros. If Bruno tried to make a serious political point from the film, it would no longer be campy.

Think of the scene when Bruno goes to interview the terrorist and says. "Girl, I'm gonna tell you something thats gonna make you REALLY mad and your gonna wanna shoot me for it. . . . Your hair is REALLY sun damaged!" In this scene, he deflates the militant, overly-aggressive straight guy by making fun of his hair. Brilliant!

Yes, Bruno's guerrilla tactics were unfair. I especially felt bad for Ron Paul. But the point was to dramatize the culture clash between gays and straights. He played on straight people's most bizzarre conceptions of gay sexuality. (I've actually had straight people seriously ask me if I put gerbils up my ass!!) Bruno just turned the tables and made it hilarious.

Some people have brought up the scene when Bruno harasses the well-meaning straight dudes in Alabama. Yeah it was unfair but so what! The joke wasn't that the straight hunter guys were homophobic. The joke was that they didn't get the joke.

What some people don't understand is that gay people have to listen to straight people talk about sex *all the time*. I think some straight people don't realize how much they talk about sex and how uncomfortable it makes gay people. For instance, when I'm with a group of straight dudes who don't know I'm gay and they start talking about pussy, I have to immediately start strategizing about how I'm going to handle it. My heart starts pounding and I start thinking: "OK FUCK ACT STRAIGHT." Most of the time it just isn't feasible to come out to them - especially if they are co-workers. (I never come out to people at work.) So I have to start inventing sex stories or talking about my "ex girlfriend" or whatever. It was great to see the tables turned. (BTW: Most of my friends are straight and they are cool with gays, in case you think I don't like straight guys.)

I guess the way I see it is that gay people are so used to being the butt of jokes that we have developed a defense for it. Bruno is brilliant because it just puts out every over the top stereotype and says: Go ahead laugh at the fag. We can take it. But I'm also gonna make fun of you for once!

Re: Bruno And Babs

Ben H. — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 10:01:22 -0000

I agree completely. Any celebrity with a certain amount of clout, he lets in on the joke. And on the Ali G show, I was always incrediby disappointed when he'd interview someone like Pat Buchannan and be alarmingly apolitical, doing more to make himself appear ignorant than his foil. There were a couple really good segments in the TV show, this one in particular http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnnh4Z5vSsM&feature=related in which he exposes the arbitrary (at best and corrupt at worst) nature of fashion criticism. However, the more time I've spent in journalism the more I feel uncomfortable with his tactics, particularly when they are used on "ordinary people."

Re: Bruno And Babs

rosessupposes — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 23:57:18 -0000

@brucds and TNC, check out the New Yorker review by Anthony Lane that says something very similar. http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/cinema/2009/07/20/090720crci_cinema_lane

Lane goes further:

"This kind of inquiry, fairly typical of the film, is in every sense below the belt. First, it suggests that Baron Cohen, having sneaked his way into a discussion, seldom has the nerve to keep his side of the bargain, preferring to cut things short with a gibe. Second, his comfort zone of comic reference, predicated on the discomfort of others, begins at the waistline and ends at the kneecaps. In his relentless, unmistakably Anglo-Freudian insistence on the genital and the anal, Baron Cohen takes the double entendre and strips it to a single one, placing in full view what used to be a smirking aside. Forget satire; this guy doesn’t want to scorch the earth anymore. He just wants to swing his dick."

...

"“Brüno” ends appallingly, with a musical montage of Sting, Bono, Elton John, and other well-meaners assisting mein Host in a sing-along. Here’s the deal, apparently: if celebrities aren’t famous enough for your liking (Ron Paul, Paula Abdul), or seem insufficiently schooled in irony, you make vicious sport of them, but if they’re A-listers, insanely keen to be in on the joke, they can join your congregation."

Re: Bruno And Babs

Kylopod — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 22:20:16 -0000

Speaking as someone who hasn't seen "Bruno" yet--

There are many things I've liked about Cohen's Borat routine, but one is that he has the audacity to do it at all. Since the days of "All in the Family," admittedly a more daring show than Cohen's, humor about garden-variety bigotry has remained fairly rare. You're much more likely to see humor at the expense of guilty white liberals. Even today, in our supposed age of excesses, most comedians avoid this kind of thing, and it feels like a breath of fresh air when someone actually tackles it.

The "Borat" movie did not, I should add, target only red-staters. I thought one of the most hilariously revealing moments in the film occurred when the etiquette coach tried to shrug off Borat's vile, disgusting behavior as due to "cultural differences."

Yet humor of this sort is a reminder that old-fashioned bigotry is not dead, despite the attempts by so many to ignore or deny its continued existence. Just a few weeks after Cohen in his Borat guise told Alan Colmes that Jews killed the dinosaurs, a couple of Congressman were caught spreading a memo around claiming that Darwin's theory of evolution was a Jewish plot. Old-fashioned right-wing anti-Semitism is one form of bigotry that a lot of people like to forget is still around. It's been drowned out by neocons and pseudo-philo-Semitic Christian fundamentalists.

In that sense, it's similar to what made "All in the Family" so continuously relevant, the feeling that Archie was simply speaking aloud what a lot of white people think but lack the courage to say openly.

Re: Bruno And Babs

charlieblaze — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 19:52:16 -0000

I think that the reason that "Bruno" is too much for Walters, is becase it takes all of the unspoken stereotypes and assumptions and throws it in the faces of viewers. The movie did have cringe-inducing moments (and I've seen J-horror films), but it was intentional to make people realize that no average gay person actually would act like the stereotype character. With Borat, it was about poking fun at American ethnocentrism. So many Americans do feel that a lot of other countries are backward and not as civilized as we are, and Cohen alludes to that by saying that his character came to America to learn from us. So, he put a mirror to America so that we can see some of our stereotypes reflected back.

"Bruno" was about our stereotypes about homosexuality and sex. The most interesting moment in the film (sorry to those that haven't seen it) comes when he's interacting with the swingers. Some of the most commonly arguments that I've heard against homosexuality is that it violates the sanctity of marriage and is unnatural. Yet, trading married partners for sex is not something that people go out and protest against. Even some species of animals mate for life, and some people just don't. I think the film nailed it for that scene. I'm not saying that Bruno was a cinematic masterpiece or anything like that, but if you stop and critically think about it, you'll get some new perspective. I think Walters may need to do that.

Re: Bruno And Babs

LCrawfty — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 18:12:20 -0000

You havent seen the movie, it appears that you haven't seen "Da Ali G Show", how do you know then that it sounds about right?

Re: Bruno And Babs

Anna S. — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 18:11:10 -0000

I think 'minstrel show' is exactly right, insofar as SBC takes tropes that are explicitly that -- tropes -- and strings them together into a character that represents no real queer person, but only a stereotype of what queer people are like (again, I speak as a person who hasn't actually seen the film, only the promos and reactions to it, hence my 'insofar').

The 'not in our house' difference between Bruno and a pride parade or leather week is an excellent distinction, and for me helps solidify several things I'd been thinking about gay stereotypes in media, but had so far not had success articulating. I grew up in the deepest of the deep South (Columbia, SC, essentially). Here, pride parades (even if we don't leave Main St. and stick to the most public and well-publicized-prior-to-the-event routes) are never completely in our house. It's not really 'our neighborhoods', even if it's the most queer-friendly neighborhoods in town. There's always a certain level of discomfort and imposition into spaces that don't want us, because there is no safe space here. The safest space for queer people in Columbia, SC (and we do have a sizeable queer population here; larger than the queer population of nearby Ashville, NC which is known as the San Francisco of the South. We're just by and large quieter and/or more closeted) is not a 'safe space' as straight people would define the term. Safe here means people who would go to the mattress for your right to keep your secret, or who will give you a couch when your family kicks you out.

But EVEN THEN, I think you're right. Even the most out-there parade isn't the same level of personal-space invasion that crawling into someone else's tent represents. So while the film's audience chooses to step into that sphere, its dupes and subjects really don't. That's not an excuse for homophobia, but it is an excuse for being deeply uncomfortable with the person in question when they impose unexpectedly on your space. I understand the value of being out and proud, but I also understand that when you impose on someone's space (especially in the invasive way that SBC uses) they have a legitimate reason to feel uncomfortable.

So in essence, YES. Your comment helped me clarify for my own mind what I'd been thinking and feeling for a while.

Re: Bruno And Babs

Colin Bartlett — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 17:55:17 -0000

"Sort of like I am when I walk into an adult book store and think, "Why are there women in porn? That's just not right."

I know EXCACTLY what you mean!

Re: Bruno And Babs

Colin Bartlett — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 17:42:10 -0000

I apologize if I gave that impression; it wasn't my intent. I guess what I was going for was context. The leather, feathers, glitter, and skin of the pride parade to me is not supposed to be an implication that this is how we would always live, if only we had the social leniency. It's a festival. As any drag queen will tell you, it's all in the timing. A Mardis Gras Indian can be part of a long standing, fun, and beautiful tradition in context, but notsomuch at Seder. If people are going to a pride parade or a folsom street fair and get offended at what they see, it's frankly their responsibility for going in the first place. However, if you take the Pride Parade and set it up in someone else's living room or campsite, you are just as responsible for the outcome as a party of displaced Mardis Gras revelers would be.

I'm not so liberal as to accept that public sex, gimp gear and dancing penises are a part of someone's "lifestyle" that everyone else has to respect. If someone reacts negatively to being subjected to that in a context in which they had no reason to expect it, then I think they have a right to that reaction.

Re: Bruno And Babs

Stacy — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 17:23:11 -0000

Sorn,

I would encourage you to rent season 1 or season 2 of the HBO show before you rent Borat. It's a bit funnier, and more raw as to what he was trying to do.

Re: Bruno And Babs

exitr — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 16:51:52 -0000

Haven't seen the movie, but I saw "Borat" & read several reviews of this one. I think the minstrelsy reference is interesting & sounds about right. If this movie "makes" anyone homophobic, it'll be by reinforcing the same stereotypes it pretends to mock, not by flaunting Brüno's "gayness."

Minstrelsy can have subversive effects, but I'm not sure that's really what we're getting with SBC in gayface.

Re: Bruno And Babs

LCrawfty — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 16:33:43 -0000

I`m being a stickler but both you and another person both cite him as crawling into Mike's tent, which he did not do. If you're going to complain about him doing something, please get what he did correct. Why would they audience have to be told it was a prank? Doesnt telling the audience don't worry because its all fake just make them feel better about finding it disgusting in the first place? Also, the point of the movie isnt to satirize every stereotype of gaydom, he was specifically portraying an oversexed, shallow, celebrity obsessed, ignorant, and racist gay person to expose the stupidity of both homophobes and celebrity culture. You're entitled to your feelings about it as a gay person, but reading this I get the impression you're saying that certain types of gay people and gay sexuality should just be limited to gay communities which seems to be against much of the idea of gay liberation in the first place.

Re: Bruno And Babs

MAJeff — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 16:04:44 -0000

As for the homophobic/ammo thing, I think more to the point of the Babs angle, it may be the ammo you're not looking for that is at issue (i.e. that people who don't want to admit how uncomfortable they are with homosexuality, who want to believe that they are of a more progressive, evolved POV will be confronted by what makes them most uncomfortable). Do you know what I mean?

Like Babs herself apparently was during the movie? Part of her statement about the sex scene was to the effect of "I really don't want to force my beautiful mind to think about how two men actually 'do it.'" I'm sure there are a lot of tolerant straights who are still sort of squicked out by the thought of gay folks doing it. Sort of like I am when I walk into an adult book store and think, "Why are there women in porn? That's just not right."

Re: Bruno And Babs

BreakerBaker — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 15:53:52 -0000

Count me as agreeing with you on Sasha Baron Cohen. I actually liked these characters when they were on the smaller format Da Ali G Show, but the moment he brought Borat to the larger audience (and therefore his targets to wider ridicule) I found the whole thing just plain mean and distasteful.

I have a feeling that I would find Bruno the same way.

Re: Bruno And Babs

Stacy — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 15:51:31 -0000

That's funny, TNC. I didn't intentionally clip off that next sentence, but maybe I did it subconsiously, knowing it would help my point.

Re: Bruno And Babs

MAJeff — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 15:44:19 -0000

This is exactly my problem with some of the hysterical reactions I've read from more than a few self-labeled "normal" gay and lesbian folks.

Re: Bruno And Babs

Doctor Cleveland — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 15:43:26 -0000

The Buchanan line made me laugh.

Re: Bruno And Babs

Sorn — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 15:11:22 -0000

It just seems so wrong. Like I said I'll give him another look through and rent Borat tonight, but it seems like a nice safe way for well-meaning people to laugh at and even embrace stereotypes in a way that has no negative connotations.

Re: Bruno And Babs

LCrawfty — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 15:03:34 -0000

@ sans culottes, he didn't crawl in the guys tent, he opened the flap and talked to him while standing outside, thats kind of rude because it was late at night, but its not really bullying. Also, his explanation that a bear ate all of his clothes is just funny, you can't take him seriously with that explanation. There is a real difference between being kind of irritating or rude, and bullying people. I would say what Bill O`Reilly does to his guests is bullying.

Re: Bruno And Babs

Ta-Nehisi Coates — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 15:02:28 -0000

Aw, you can't clip that next sentence--"the kind of ammo you were looking for anyway." The point is that the homophobe is always looking for anything that will justify his beliefs. Not so much that Bruno is egregious.

Re: Bruno And Babs

Eva14 — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 14:53:50 -0000

True enough. I'm not sure why, but this discussion brought back a memory from my shitty fast food job in high school. Sometimes, when I was the only girl working in the back, one of the guys would crank NWA's The Art of Sucking Dick and then just sit back to watch my reaction. My being wildly uncomfortable didn't mean I hated straight guys or wasn't straight myself - at worst, you could call my reaction prudish I suppose. In-your-face sexuality, sexual language, etc. isn't something we're necessarily accustomed to.

That being said, I do think there's more gay panic than plain old prudishness at work in the reactions SBC gets as Bruno.

Re: Bruno And Babs

sans-culottes — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 14:41:30 -0000

@LCrawfty:

It is low-grade bullying to pretend to be a gay man, and then take off your clothes and crawl into a straight man's tent in the middle of the night, even if the mark is homophobic. I would have reacted in exactly the same way he did. Perhaps that proves Walters' point.

Re: Bruno And Babs

LCrawfty — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 14:36:01 -0000

Ali G is mocking the fetishization of crime, violence, and sexism in hip hop culture of the late 90's and early 00's. He is mocking the way that privileged middle class kids think their lifestyle is in any way similar to the lifestyle that genuinely poor people live. He is mocking people who hold up ignorance as a badge of honor.