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The Controversy Continues: Is ’Bruno’ Good or Bad for Gays?by Kilian MelloyFriday Jul 17, 2009 The film critics have weighed in and judged Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest faux-reality film, "Bruno," to be a lesser project than 2006’s similarly executed "Borat," which also targeted the unsuspecting with an outrageous, Cohen-created character.
In the case of "Bruno," the titular character is a gay fashionista sent into social exile after causing a scandal at a catwalk event. Seeking to find new fame in various countries, including America, Bruno gets in the faces of everyone he meets, including some real people who supposedly don’t know what’s really going on, and the host and studio audience of a fictitious TV talk show.
Cohen seeks to exploit anti-gay prejudice for his jokes, turning ridicule onto homophobes; but the film’s antics have some GLBT leaders worried that audiences, much like the people in the movie itself, won’t clue into the joke, but will come away thinking that Bruno the extravagantly over-stated character is actually representative of everyday gay Joes.
In an essay that originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times and was carried by The Detroit News on July 17, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation’s Rashad Robinson wrote, "In ’Bruno,’ the satire often loses sight of the way gay people are treated in real life."
Robinson compares "Bruno" not to "Borat," but to a Paul Rudd move called "I Love You, Man." In that comedym notes Robinson, "Paul Rudd’s character, Peter, deflects a pass from another man... with grace, modeling how an adult would and should react to crossed signals."
By contrast, "Bruno" goes for the vulgar and the crass; what Robinson called the "Ewwwww" reaction.
But the audience in the theater often had a very loud and very different reaction: "Ewwwww."
"Yes, some of [’Bruno’] is aimed at mocking anti-gay attitudes," writes Robinson, "and the film often hits its mark.
"But far too much of it, intentionally or not, ends up hitting gay people instead."
One scene Robinson focuses on is the film’s conclusion, evidently a scene that took the live audience--a bar full of Arksansas natives--by such surprise that a near-riot was the result.
Notes Robinson, "In the film’s finale, a disguised Bruno takes part in a no-holds-barred cage match in Arkansas (a state that in November voted to effectively ban gay people from becoming adoptive or foster parents).
"The situation is a set-up, and in the middle of the fight, Bruno begins to rip the clothes off his opponent and kiss him.
"The audience for the cage match, which is not in on the joke, goes berserk, screaming epithets and hurling objects--including a chair--at the two men."
Paranthetically, Robinson added, "The film’s production notes say that the confrontation ’lasted many hours’ and required 40 police officers ’to rescue the cast and crew and quell the angry mob.’"
Continues Robinson, "Whatever this scene may reveal, it is disturbing on a number of levels given the pervasive violence gay people often face.
"Late last year, the FBI reported that anti-gay hate crimes have been on the rise since 2005.
"Last month, the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs reported that violent hate crimes against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people increased 24 percent in 2007 and additional 2 percent in 2008."
Robinson also addresses the film’s take on celebrity adoptions, in which Bruno takes delivery of an African baby, only to tote the infant along to what appears to be an episode of gay group sex in a hot tub.
"In too many places, scenes like these are not going to turn homophobia back on itself," Robinson writes.
"They aren’t going to help gay people who are struggling to overcome and overturn the unjust treatment and the deeply ingrained hostility they face on a daily basis.
"And they aren’t going to help lesbian and gay parents in places like Arkansas who must struggle to safeguard their families in the face of laws designed to put them at risk."
Another critic of the film is Jon Mejia, who organizes an annual gay parade in Seattle, Washington.
A July 16 blog entry at Seattle Pi.com quoted Mejia as saying, ""It’s a fag gag. Great. I get it.
"But unless this guy says he supports human rights, including LGBT rights, then he is simply doing gay blackface."
The blog posted the content of a press release Mejia had sent out about the movie.
Read the release, "Seattle Out and Proud (SOaP) board member and media spokesperson Jon Mejia roundly condemned the new Sacha Baron Cohen film, ’Bruno’ for continuing to perpetuate ugly stereotypes about the LGBT community.
"When asked why the strong negative reaction to the film Mejia answered, ’Mel Brooks said that "Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die."
’This film left me feeling as if I had fallen into an open sewer,’" the release continued.
"’Let me put it this way, if you thought Al Jolson singing Mammy while in blackface makeup was good entertainment, you probably will enjoy this movie.
’As a gay man, I found it revolting.’"
The release went on to quote Mejia as saying, "While our community is fighting the civil rights battle of our time, Sacha Baron Cohen is making a bundle of money lampooning the LBGT community.
"I challenge him to publically [sic] state his unequivocal support for LGBT equality and to use some of his ill gotten gains by donating to organizations that fight for our community to have the benefits and rights every heterosexual in America enjoys."
But not everyone feels the same way about the movie. In a July 17 column for The Buffalo News, Jeff Simon wrote, "So I’m watching Sacha Baron Cohen in his box office-conquering ’Bruno’ and laughing.
"And, between laughs, I say to myself, ’Well, that’s probably it. Mainstream American homophobia has now been quite effectively marginalized at the movies, the way mainstream American racism was decades earlier.’"
Explained the columnist, "You had to have a ’Blazing Saddles’ before you had a Barack Obama.
"And ’Bruno,’ as much as anything I’ve ever seen, laughs the older and more traditional forms of sexual prejudice right off the screen."
Added Simon, "The old mainstream homophobia is on its last legs, and it seems to me it’s dying quickly, rather than slowly."
Whatever the ultimate reaction of American audiences might turn out to be, in the U.K. at least one pundit allows that the film enraged him because it failed to poke fun at fashion and sought to stigmatize homophobia instead--although, according to a July 17 article in the Daily Mail by Toby Young, the "homophobes" in question are the ordinary people for whom the viewer should feel sorry.
"Bruno starts with Baron Cohen playing exactly the kind of gay, narcissistic TV presenter that I encountered all too often in New York," writes Young.
"But instead of taking aim at some of the big fashion names--designer Karl Lagerfeld or American Vogue editor Anna Wintour--he confines himself to nonentities at the bottom of the status ladder."
Adds Young, "What had promised to be a witty exposé of the rich and famous turns into a crude attempt to ridicule ordinary people for not being politically correct enough in their attitude towards gay men."
Notes Young of the fictional talk show audience, "In fact, Baron Cohen doesn’t ’shed light’ on the homophobia of the TV audience so much as provoke them into a homophobic reaction--and he keeps pushing until they finally snap.
"Once you strip away the supposedly high-minded intentions, the scene begins to seem uncomfortably snobbish, not to say racist," Young goes on to posit.
"An educated, metropolitan audience is being invited to laugh at poor, ignorant people for not having the wherewithal to conceal their disgust when being confronted by someone who looks like a pederast."
Young questions the very purpose of the movie, asking, "Is this ’satire’?
"I have always thought of satire as one of the few weapons the powerless can wield against the powerful--a way of bringing the high and mighty back down to earth.
"By that definition," Young declares, "Bruno is the exact opposite of satire. Baron Cohen is encouraging the sophisticated, liberal elite to look down on those in a lower-income bracket."
Young also took issue with the movie’s use of actors in place of truly "man-on-the-street" people who are punked by Cohen.
"Once it dawns on you that more than 50 per cent of the ’real-life’ characters are actors, the laughter dies in your throat," Young writes.
"It is not the people on camera who are being gulled, but the people in the cinema, and such dishonesty is a much more basic moral defect than any of the intolerance, bigotry, homophobia Baron Cohen ’exposes’ in the film."
Adds Young, "The truth is that Bruno isn’t real satire. Rather, it is a huge wet kiss to Hollywood’s elitist snobs, reassuring them that their PC values are right and that ordinary people, who don’t share their ’enlightened’ attitude, deserve nothing but contempt."
At least one gay commentator disagrees, ranking "Bruno" as a masterpiece of satire.
This publication’s Editor-in-Chief Steve Weinstein wrote in a July 15 column, "On blogs like JoeMyGod, Towleroad and Queerty, this film is causing a debate not seen at least since last November’s election, and very likely not for a long time before that.
"What’s interesting is that so many people who don’t like it haven’t seen it. Because when people see it, they usually calm down.
"They may not like the film," Weinstein continued, "but for aesthetic or entertainment reasons, not because of fears it will engender violence and more hatred."
Weinstein found the movie hilarious. "Well, I not only liked it--I started laughing at the opening Universal logo with the umlaut above the ’U’ and pretty much didn’t stop until the closing credits rolled," he wrote, adding, "I thought it was a subversive masterpiece, a triumphant cri de coeur against homophobia."
Declared Weinstein, "Sasha Baron Cohen stands in a great tradition of satirists who push the envelope, a distinguished list that includes Aristophanes, Rabelais, Jonathan Swift, Voltaire and Mark Twain.
"Like them, he’s not polite or ’nice’; his brand of humor is gross, disgusting and in your face.
"So were all those cool dead white guys I just mentioned."
Weinstein also cited Jewish filmmaker Mel Brooks and "Springtime for Hitler" from "The Producers," and went on to write, "And then there’s David Chappelle, who’s done more to fight racism in this country than anyone since Martin Luther King with his un-p.c. brand of humor."
As for those pesky, know-it-all liberals, Weinstein suggested that "Bruno" was actually targeting them, too, in its subversive way.
"A movie like this is useful in exposing the fault lines between our real allies and the parlor symps who like us as long as we’re well dressed and keep our queer eyes on fine food, clothes and grooming--and keep the family jewels locked up inside our snug 2Xists," Weinstein opined.
Kilian Melloy reviews media, conducts interviews, and writes commentary for EDGEBoston, where he also serves as Assistant Arts Editor.
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