If those screwball lovers Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner ever hooked up and had sex, they'd do it the way Brüno and his "pygmy" paramour do in "Brüno": with ACME slingshots, projectiles, champagne bottles and a customized Rube Goldberg device that appears to have been built with materials from Home Depot by George Clooney's character in "Burn After Reading." The matinee audience with whom I saw "Brüno," Sacha Baron Cohen's partially improvised Üniversal Pictures remake of RW Fassbinder's "The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant" (with a happy ending!), howled at the grossness, the perversity, the preposterousness of it -- the same way audiences laughed and groaned at the explicitly cartoony perv-sex in John Waters movies of the 1970s. "Brüno" is rather tame compared to "Pink Flamingoes" or "Female Trouble" -- in part because it's 2009 and not 1974, and the experience of "shock value" has changed considerably. Truth is, it's hard to be too terribly shocked by anything in the bland, artificial cocoon of the mall-tiplex, no matter what's playing.
Inevitably, in all comedy, the joke comes down to: What is the joke? I've had a grand old time reading bewildered critics -- amused, disgusted, even shocked -- try to puzzle out what Borat and Brüno (the characters and the movies) are really saying. The most entertaining explanations are by writers who don't necessarily know they're bewildered, or how much they're revealing about their own prejudices when they claim the movie is revealing the prejudices of the "real folks" on screen. (Hint: Even more so than in "Borat," the butt of the joke is the title character, not the "real people" with whom he interacts. Tricking people is not exactly the same as making fun of them -- and most of those who get punk'd react about the way you'd expect them to.)
So, Owen Gleiberman writes in Entertainment Weekly that "Brüno" is "movie is a toxic dart aimed at the spangly new heart of American hypocrisy: our fake-tolerant, fake-charitable, fake-liberated-yet-still-madly-closeted fame culture." Yes, Brüno himself clearly embodies those fake values. Gleiberman says:
The movie piles on gags about outré bedroom devices and butt bleaching, and when Brüno pays a visit to a psychic, he tries to bridge the spirit world by miming oral sex (and that's putting it mildly). The psychic's reaction isn't all that funny; mostly, he's just stoically embarrassed. But that's because Baron Cohen is really goofing on us, exploiting the audience's squeamish sexual anxiety only to explode it. Far more than in Borat, he holds a fun-house mirror up to our hidden prejudices, too.
What, then, are those hidden (?) prejudices and how does the movie reveal them -- if it does? First, let's compare the characters of Borat and Brüno, because they're not much alike at all. Borat presents himself as a naive foreigner who is trying to understand the ways of America, and he approaches many of his marks from an inferior position, seeking their help. He is a guest in our country and his initial naivete is endearing, which is why so many (unwisely) take him into their confidence. When he comes across as crude or backward, they feel rather protective of him. Until he rudely pushes them beyond the limits of their tolerance. The movie becomes a study in the limits of politeness, and how far we will go to avoid conflict -- especially when we're introduced to someone who initially seems so eager to please us. (Remember the flag-clad Borat at the rodeo and how far he has to push the crowd in order whip them into a near-lynch-mob frenzy? That -- like "Throw the Jew Down the Well" barroom singalong on "Da Ali G Show" -- was a scene about the behavior of groups in a party setting, not so much about bigotry or xenophobia. When bigotry is this overt, some in the "South Park"-era crowd can be seen making an attitude adjustment so they can take it ironically.)
Brüno is as clueless about how his behavior affects others as Borat, but he is arrogantly, imperiously unlikeable. He's a gay caricature, but even more crucially he's a Teutonic caricature (specifically Austrian, a countryman of Adolf Hitler and Arnold Schwarzenegger). Nobody is inclined to do Brüno any favors, because he's so obviously an asshole. And although he may demand assistance from others, he doesn't want to learn anything; he already knows everything.
People don't dislike Brüno because he's gay, but because he's abrasively unpleasant. If anything, his flamboyance makes him more tolerable. At least it's amusing and takes some of the edge off his bullying personality. And that's just it: Few, if any, of his "victims" have immediately homophobic reactions to him. He's such a garish cartoon of the mincing queen that he peremptorily disarms overt homophobia. Who has a chance to feel threatened or appalled by this fellow's sexuality while you're under full-scale assault from his ego at every turn? When he drops his pants to seduce Ron Paul, the 73-year-old politician is quite understandably offended. And when Paul describes Brüno as "queer" it's not an epithet, just an accurate but inadequate description. It's also not particularly funny, though Brüno's awkward, preposterous seduction techniques are good for a few laughs.
But is Brüno really, as Gleiberman suggests, "holding up a fun-house mirror to our hidden prejudices" with his relentlessly over-the-top gags about blow jobs and anal penetration -- activities, it should be mentioned, that many heterosexual couples have been known to enjoy, too? (BTW, Oscar Wilde was reportedly not keen on buggery of any kind.) When Brüno raises the subject of "anal bleaching" with business associates or total strangers, isn't this just old-fashioned shock humor based on inappropriate behavior, injecting vulgarity into relatively formal social situations -- like Borat bringing a bag of poop to the dinner table during his etiquette lesson? Nobody's implying that Brüno is morally wrong to want his heiny to look as pretty as possible (it's merely the flipside of a bikini wax), just that they don't need to hear the details. He might just as well be talking about cosmetic hemorrhoid surgery (I'm sure there is such a thing in Brüno's world) or an intestinal polyp removal done in preparation for a colonoscopic fashion shoot.
Gleiberman notes that the embarrassed reaction of the psychic isn't particularly amusing, and I didn't find it so, either. What made me laugh were the obscenely imaginative details Brüno comes up with while pantomiming fellatio on an invisible ghost.
"And yet," writes Shawn Levy in The Oregonian,
for all the pleasure of that laughter, which is undeniable, there's a residue to "Bruno" that can leave you feeling dirty and unsure of yourself. Only the most PC audience could read "Borat" as an attack on Kazakh culture or heritage; most of the jabs were clearly against the xenophobic Americans the character encountered in Cohen's patented mockumentary ambush style.
But Bruno, perhaps because Cohen plays him so brilliantly, vividly personifies some of the most hateful stereotypes of homosexual manners and lifestyles in a way that Cohen, his co-writers and director Larry Charles don't have quite control of. Yes, the homophobic bigotry of a variety of those whom Bruno encounters is exposed nakedly and often humorously; but at the same time the film plainly asks the audience to laugh at Bruno's sexual tastes and flamboyant air. You could be amused by or with Ali G or Borat and be on firm footing, morally speaking; Bruno, whether by its creators' choices or lapses, affords you no such steady ground.
I'm honestly trying to remember an example of "homophobic bigotry" that was "exposed" in "Brüno," and nothing's coming to mind. Nor do I envision "Borat" -- whose main character is a parody of the nationalistic xenophobe ("Down with Uzbekistan!") -- as a scathing exposé of American parochialism, though Borat himself certainly provided a satirical caricature of that mindset. Yes, the movie encourages the audience to laugh at Brüno's outrageous speech and mannerisms... but does that make it homophobic? Seems to me that misses the point entirely. It reminds me of the great moment -- a throwaway, but one of the funniest in the film -- when Brüno disingenously praises the wonderful "African-Americans" he met during a stopover in Ghana to adopt a baby. No, a black woman corrects him, they were Africans. Uh-uh, Brüno says -- it's racist to call them that! If Brüno had been any less of a cartoon, if he had displayed any guilt or insecurities about his own sexuality, or if the movie had asked us to sympathize with him because he's gay, the movie could have been intolerably dishonest from a moral standpoint. As it is, Brüno is loud, he's proud, and he's absolutely insufferable. Accept (or, at least, acknowledge) him for who he is and get over it. Brüno is "good for the gays" because he is who he is, and he doesn't have to be a "sympathetic character" just because we still live in a world rife with homophobia. This particular movie doesn't "expose" anything that isn't already obvious, but I'm not convinced it's trying to.
Does "Brüno" "feel superior" to its subjects, as some reviewers have charged? Well, Brüno sure as hell does, but that's not the same thing. By its nature, "Brüno" relies less on the candid-camera reactions of its title character's unwitting "victims" than "Da Ali G Show" or "Borat" (which, despite some misrepresentations, wasn't all about ambush-comedy, either). Few of the set-pieces in "Brüno" (the fashion show crash, the Paula Abdul interview, the fake Richard Bey talk show, the interviews with stage parents, the hunting/camping trip, the Straight Dave wrestling match) couldn't have been just as funny if they were entirely scripted or improvised like a Christopher Guest movie (or Brüno's stunt with Eminem at the MTV Movie Awards). None of them require that people on camera be unaware that the egregiously fictitious Brüno is a fraudulent character -- and, as in "Borat," you can't always detect the extent of the other performers' complicity in the scene. Some of the intended "ambushees" get the joke anyway -- notably, for example, a large bald black man in the Bey audience who rocks with laughter at the ridiculous antics unfolding around him. Others who resist Brüno's sexual advances aren't necessarily revealing any anti-gay prejudices, they're just not comfortable with his inappropriate boundary-breaching. Imagine if Brüno were a straight man punking women. Some of what he does would be considered sexual harassment or even borderline assault.
(Brüno's attempts to bond with redneck hunting buddies through "Sex and the City" references 'round the campfire reminded me of the opening of "Reservoir Dogs," in which Mr. Brown offers an explication of a Madonna song to a bunch of tough-guy bank robbers. I was not surprised that one of the unhappy campers got really, really mad at Brüno for repeatedly waking him during the night and trying to climb into his tent naked. I was more surprised back in 1992 that Messrs. White, Orange, Blonde and Pink didn't pop a cap in Mr. Brown for all that obsessive blather about another piece of gay iconography.)
Much talk has centered on the alleged homophobia of the TV talk show audience and the wrestling crowd in the movie's two biggest set-pieces. But who's being naive here? Does anybody really take the spectators' cheering, booing, screaming, head-shaking, finger-wagging behavior at face value? Do you think Springer audiences and WWE wrestling fans don't understand the participatory nature of these events, and what their role is supposed to be? Of course they do. They're fully aware of the dual nature of the proceedings -- that they are both "real" and "fake" at the same time -- and that the onstage conflicts provide a framework for improvised performances not unlike the comedy you'd see at The Groundlings or Second City. Above all, the audiences know what's expected of them -- when to boo, when to cheer, when to express arena-sized outrage like fans at any sporting event.
These crowds have been primed to rise to the occasion. So of course they express all kinds of shock, right on cue, when Brüno says he traded his iPod for a baby; or when Brüno appears in the preposterous guise of a white-trash wrestler called "Straight Dave," who professes to be bullish on heterosexuality and then starts making out with his opponent. What would you expect? I don't believe for a moment that the movie intends to rip the lid off the festering homophobia of heartland America. (Think about it: How could either of these staged performances be said to do that?) It's just a matter of creating comedy by overturning expectations.
The talk show audience is primed for a show about a nice gay man who adopts a poor kid from Africa and brings him to America for a better life -- then finds out the "dad" is despicable in every way -- none of them having specifically to do with his homosexuality, though his unapologetic gayness may amp up their outrage. The wrestling crowd cheers the main attraction's schtick, which is his macho heterosexuality (how many wrestlers since Gorgeous George have likewise played up their effeminacy?). He's built up as the face, and then feels the expected heel heat when the kind of wrestling he provides is more suited to a gay sex show than a WWE-style event.
Basically, I think Brüno is a variation on the character of the heel in wrestling. Though not explicitly a "villain," he has virtually no redeeming or appealing characteristics (all he wants is celebrity) apart from his outlandishness. As Wikipedia describes heel characters, they "are often portrayed as behaving in an immoral manner, breaking rules or otherwise taking advantage of their opponents outside the bounds of the rules of the match. Others do not (or rarely) break rules, but exhibit unlikeable personality traits."
Brüno, you heel. You're a naughty, naughty boy. But still fabulous.
P.S. Did I mention I thought "Brüno" was fairly amusing? It's no "Borat," but how could it be?
ADDENDUM: A little sample of the Richard Bey talk show scene. Notice how the audience overacts for the camera (they know how to get on TV!) and how the complicit Bey helps to set up Brüno's "shocking" one-liners:
And now... Babs reviews "Brüno" on "The View" and says it will turn you homophobic. This has got to go on the DVD. I lost count of the number of things she saw that aren't in the movie, but her best clueless line is: "I don't like making fun of little people." By which she means, you know, non-celebrities. Babs IS Brüno!
Oh how it joys me, an unabashed fan of professional wrestling, to see you throwing around words like "heel", "heat", and "face". And I like the shout-out to Shawn Levy, the film critic from my neck of the woods...he doesn't nearly get the praise he deserves as being one of the best.
Good essay, Jim. I could go on and on about how intelligent most of us wrestling fans actually are, but that would probably just bore people.
Nice piece, Jim. I agree that Brüno doesn't expose THAT MUCH homophobia (the audience in the Bey show does immediately groan when they learn Brüno is gay, before they know what a jerk he is), but I do think that Brüno is sort of a manifestation of a homophobic fantasy. In particular, the collection of bizarre sex acts you mention, slingshot and all, which Brüno describes as the activity of a normal, humdrum couple, represents a sort of extreme fantasy of how many anti-gay people envision the homosexual lifestyle.
*People don't dislike Brüno because he's gay, but because he's abrasively unpleasant. *
I think this is a crucial point. I also don't think it's _entirely_ accurate, but it cuts to the heart of why people have been mistaken to view this as a film about homophobia. Bruno is, simply put, an a-hole (bleached or unbleached) and he's such a ridiculous caricature that I don't think he can be seen in way as representing (or undermining) a gay stereotype. He's not a person, he's a cartoon character, and he doesn't represent anybody other than himself - and that person happens to be a complete jerk.
There is, however, some degree to which the film tests societal acceptance of open gay sexuality. Imagine if, in the final scene, two women began to make out in the ring. The men in the audience would probably be cheering them on rather than turning into an angry mob. Likewise, the use of the word "Gayby" outrages a (fake?) audience but if the kid was wearing a shirt that read "Butch" or "Tough Guy" or something else associated with virile heterosexuality, nobody would have been upset.
I was disappointed with the movie. It has several funny lines, but not really any funny scenes except for Ron Paul. It's so extreme that after about 10 minutes it ceases to be shocking and becomes rather dull. As you say, it's very tame compared to something like Pink Flamingos, a film that inverted the social power dynamic with Babs as an idol for all. It reminded me of "Postal," Dr. Uwe Boll's limp, tedious attempt at provocation. Dr. Boll simply checked off a list of offensive things (shoot children,check; run over a baby, check) to do and wound up making them all seem rather ordinary and not the slightest bit offensive.
Bruno is better than Postal, but it's a far cry from Borat which I liked but didn't love.
JE: I was thinking about the layers of perversity in "Pink Flamingos" -- a movie that's 37 years old now. It features a sex scene between a scrawny long-haired guy with a few missing teeth and a 300-pound man in drag who's playing his mother. As they used to say at MGM: That's Shock-U-Tainment!
I see your point about "Gayby," but, again, I think that's more about something else, having to do with the sexualization of children. It's fascinating to consider, though. If the baby wore a "Mandingo" shirt (or "Once You Go Black You Never Go Back") that would be something else again -- violating a different set of racial, heterosexual taboos. I don't even see what's supposedly offensive about "Gayby," though -- it's so mild, especially in comparison to what else is in the movie. It could simply mean that little OJ has a gay dad... but, of course, since Bruno uses him as bait to troll for men, I guess it does have more inappropriate connotations. What if the Gayby was a girl? Or if a straight parent had a boy with a "Hung" or "Boy Toy" t-shirt, or a girl with a "Daddy's Little Whore" or "Jail Bait Farm Team" t-shirt? OK, I admit I can imagine movie situations in which all those could strike me as quite funny -- and I think they're all more offensive than "Gayby."
Excellent. I've been frustrated by the critical reaction to Bruno, though I guess I found the title character a bit more tolerable than you, e.g. Who can truly deny that the love story with Lutz is kind of sweet, and that the family that comes into being at the end, with young OJ, is as close to normal as any family needs to be? (I use the word "normal" because GLAAD seems to be insisting on such discourse in their comments that privilege gay marriage over gay sex.)
Indeed, critics who use the word "cringe-worthy" when they mean "funny" are saying something about themselves. Are they disgusted by the gay sex in the film, or unable to differentiate between what is simply good fun and what is absurd theater?
While I agree (Sorry!) that Bruno is a heel in the wrestling sense, I do think that, often as not, the "real people" are in fact the butt of the joke. I also can think of a few examples of the homophobic bigotry that you profess not to have noticed. For example, the descriptions you give of the wrestling scene and the talk show scene aren't quite accurate, as far as I remember.
In the talk show scene, Bruno does justify the reaction of the audience - he clearly shouldn't be raising a child - but their first bit of booing and hissing comes in the beginning, before any of his craziness is revealed, when he professes that he hopes one day to meet the man of his dreams.
In the wrestling scene, I can buy that there is an element of role-playing in the crowd's reaction, but many of the things they are shouting are quite hateful. I also clearly remember a shot of a woman crying at the horror of what she is witnessing.
For an easy example of homophobic bigotry, look no further than the "God Hates Fags" group that Bruno and his lover confront when they are handcuffed together in their S&M gear.
Also, if the joke is on Bruno, why does the camera hold for a full minute on the frozen expressions of the hunters after Bruno lets it slip that he's gay?
I guess I just don't see your Bruno-as-heel reading and the standard joke's-on-the-"real people" reading as mutually exclusive. Bruno is ridiculous while also exposing the ridiculousness of many of the people with whom he interacts. Two more examples: the vapid PR duo and the terrible stage parents who are willing to give their babies liposuction.
JE: I don't think they're mutually exclusive, either -- but I've seen very little discussion about how the character is presented, so I wanted to concentrate on that. I didn't remember that the talk show audience turning on Bruno so easily. I do remember a big fat white guy looking like he was crying when "Straight Dave" and Lutz get down and dirty -- and maybe that's an expression of homophobia, but I thought the guy was just confused and disappointed (this wasn't the show he'd been promised) and I admit I kind of felt sorry for him. But, you know, if you promised a bunch of gay men a gay sex show and then gave them WWE-style wrestling, I'll bet that crowd would get pretty violent, too! I didn't say there wasn't any homophobia on display in the movie; just that I don't think the movie "reveals" anything that isn't already in plain sight.
What I mean by the joke being on Bruno is that he sees himself as a victim, when he's really the aggressor in most situations. In most (not all) scenes, his cluelessness about why he is arousing hostility is what's funny. In the hunting/camping scene, his doomed efforts at heterosexual bonding (I wish I could remember how he pronounces "vaginas") are hilarious (and a little poignant) because it's so transparent that he can't pull them off. As obnoxious as he is, we'd rather he be himself than try to be someone he's not. Remember, too this comes after the interview with the "straightening" counselor -- a much funnier and more uncomfortable version of which appeared in Larry Charles otherwise wretchedly simpleminded collaboration with Bill Maher, "Religulous". The "God Hates Fags" bit was a natural: That guy, Fred Phelps, and his "Baptist" followers (www.godhatesfags.com -- I kid you not) have been notorious nutballs for years -- even picketing the funerals of American servicemen and -women killed in Iraq and Afghanistan because they also say "God Hates the USA." You don't need Bruno to take them down, but I'm glad he did.
Nicely thought-out review, and I've been following the "Is Bruno bad for gay people" argument with some interest. I'm gay, I found it inoffensive (as such), and apart from being less consistently funny than Borat, I'm content to let the matter rest there.
But I think G.S. is on to something by singling out Lutz, who emerges as the film's only sympathetic character. The audacity of the wrestling scene has less to do with Baron Cohen setting up an audience full of dupes, and more to do with his setting up dissonance between two readings of the scene: the 'heel' version that the arena audience sees, and the somewhat sweet narrative closure for Lutz that the film's audience sees. I don't think it necessarily accomplishes anything politically, but it makes for a pleasantly complex and dissonant finale.
If there is a statement against homophobia in the film, it actually comes through some of the least 'forced' scenes: e.g. Bruno's meetings with ex-gay counselors, where Baron Cohen says relatively little and lets the self-styled counselors hang themselves with their own ropes.
JE: Yes! Lutz is the more conventional version of the Marlene character in Fassbinder's "Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant." "Bruno" gives them a happy ending. Fassbinder (surprise!) doesn't.
Bruno's hilarious pronunciation of the word "vagina" is "vah-gee-nah". Great stuff. Also, I thought that the telling scene where the "second stage gay converter" practically admitted that sexual orientation can not be changed, only suppressed, was pretty brilliant.
Given how much you loved "Borat", I had been patiently waiting for you to chime in about "Bruno". I enjoyed the whole article, but this early passage particularly resonates with me:
"...or how much they're revealing about their own prejudices when they claim the movie is revealing the prejudices of the "real folks" on screen."
Some critics have asserted that Cohen's characters exist to expose the prejudice of "real folk". I even recall Cohen alluding to this idea in interviews for "Borat" (I may be wrong on that). And this idea has trickled down to the average hipster moviegoer. But it's always struck me as being completely opposite of what I saw on the screen. Almost everyone who comes in contact with one of Cohen's concoctions treats him with a dignity and patience normally reserved for saints. Here is a karate instructor entertaining a man pretending to attack him with three dildos, and he seems to take it in stride. Bruno's agent is obviously frustrated with the antics, but he plays ball. The hunters never utter one epithet despite the fact that Bruno is goading them in his own passive-aggressive way. They only get really mad when Bruno crosses a line that would have sent almost anyone over the edge. The swingers are obviously not pleased at Bruno's intrusive behavior, but they treat him as a source of annoyance rather than an object of derision.
If anything, Cohen has found an unlikely way to display how graceful the American people can generally be. They are understanding even when they plainly do not understand.
On a side note, I did find it harder to enjoy Bruno. As you've mentioned, it's not his sexuality that bothers me, but that he's a complete jerk. When people were forced to deal with Borat and Ali G, it was with someone who seemed, at least, to want to be good. Bruno harasses some of his "victims", and I just found it much too uncomfortable - in an unfunny way.
There were a few moments that shouldn't have surprised me, but did none the less. When Bruno asks a young woman if a certain unborn baby should be kept or aborted, I just about died at her blithe answer. And the small host of parents interviewed for the photo shoot - WOW. I don't have children, and I don't know much about babies, but that a grown, adult woman would even remotely consider having her thirty pound child lose ten pounds is way beyond me. These might be some of the very few moments that actually do reveal something very disturbing about American culture.
What the Bruno character really reminded me of is something I heard Stephen Colbert say (out of character) in an interview once. He said that he didn’t want people to see his creation as a jerk, so he consciously tries to make him into a well meaning idiot who doesn’t understand what he’s talking about because he gets all of his information from far right news sources. I think that’s what’s going on with Bruno as well. He’s not really a jerk per se, it’s just that he’s probably never read a book that wasn’t some sort of fashion/celebrity tabloid and its sort of brainwashed him. That’s why he can’t perceive Hitler as anything other than Austria’s biggest celebrity, he can’t tell the difference between fame and infamy.
Jim, if you haven't already seen it, I urge you to have a look at the South Park episode "The Death Camp of Tolerance", which is an astute (and damn funny) summation of your point.
It is a much more timely endeavor to explore and expose to what extent our PC-saturated society is willing to go continue to brand itself as Tolerant. In our efforts to right the wrongs of history, we create the hybrid wrong of the double standard. Consider why racism continues to be tolerated, even encouraged, when coming from non-whites (Sotomayor, anyone?).
Bruno's caricature is not far removed from the "common" representation of homosexuality that we are expected to embrace, lest we risk being labeled intolerant. To make it easier to swallow, it is presented as an "empowered" manifestation of a previously oppressed segment of society.
The Flamboyant Gay stereotype tends to resonate because it so easily fits into the Visible Minority mold, that sacred cow of the left. It is more difficult to exploit politically someone who by all appearances may as well be straight.
I agree pretty much with your reading of Bruno as a character and the means and intentions behind the comedy in the film, but as for the Richard Bley audience, before they brought out "O.J" and the audience completely turned on him, there was loud booing when Bruno said he was just looking for the right guy, adding after the booing that he could have any man here. Arrogant, yes, but at that point it's essentially homophobia to boo that.
I agree though that it's very funny, not nearly as good as Borat, but the key distinction, which you made as well, is people tolerated Borat for longer because though he was a nationalistic, mysoginistic, smelly, smelly man, his assholish was more accepted and sympothized with.
I really enjoyed this piece, Jim, very well thought out. I think in the end Bruno really does hold up a fun house mirror to expose the audience's societal prejudices. As I was walking out of the theater, I heard two African-American women talking about how they thought the movie was not as funny as Borat because it had too much "F*g sh*t." Amazingly, the anti-Semitic Borat or the racial ignorance of Bruno did not offend them but the in-your-face sexuality of Bruno clearly had them flustered.
I think this is an example of the societal attitude Bruno makes fun of. As long as homosexuality is hidden and people are not forcefully exposed to it then most can tolerate it. But as soon as GLBT groups advocate for gay marriage and start Gay Pride parades, people become flustered because they have to confront their sexuality and prejudices. Bruno confronts these people on an even more extreme level by making himself into a caricature of all the things that make these people uncomfortable. That is why this movie worked for me and why I found it so funny and completely inoffensive. Antisemitism is not a hot-button topic right now but homophobia is and Bruno pushes this button masterfully by confronting ignorance with his conspicuous sexuality.
I do remember a big fat white guy looking like he was crying when "Straight Dave" and Lutz get down and dirty -- and maybe that's an expression of homophobia, but I thought the guy was just confused and disappointed (this wasn't the show he'd been promised) and I admit I kind of felt sorry for him.
Personally, that bit alone was almost worth the price of admission for me. I can't say I felt sorry for him at all. For starters, he was given the show he was promised: an anti-gay rant followed by two men rolling around on the wrestling mat grappling with each other. Second, he's a grown man. Didn't his mommy and daddy ever tell him that (gasp) life isn't fair? And last of all, he could have done what many of the others in that arena did as soon as it became apparent that they've all been set up: leave! Why didn't he just get himself as far away from that as possible and demand his money back (if he paid to begin with)?
But he, and a few dozen others chose stay. Not so much, I think, because they were playing the part of the rowdy wreslting fan, but that they resented being set up. They knew they were played for suckers. And that's something that's pretty much universal for anybody lacking a sense of humor regardless of race, creed, or sexual orientation. We don't like being made the fool. Those rioting yahoos knew they had been baited and trapped by their own homophobia.
So, yeah, I agree that the reaction would have been pretty much the same in the alternate scenario you suggested had an arena full of gay men were tricked into seeing, say, Fred Phelps giving one of his sermons. Although it wouldn't have been nearly as funny.
Actually, the "tricking gay people into seeing a Fred Phelps sermon" gag I suggested in my earlier post wouldn't have been at all funny. Bad example. How about a James Haggard sermon?
This review and most of the comments do a good job of illustrating my problem with this movie, which is that it really doesn't know what it wants to be about. Whether or not it was intended as an indictment of homophobia, the end result is nothing of the kind. It's simply a series of guerrilla-style gags without a punchline, the only purpose of which is to make people as uncomfortable as possible. Where's the comedy in that?
There were a few truly funny moments. The whole baby sequence, for instance, is easily the high point of the film. On the other hand, it kind of just made me want to watch The Office, which often does similar humor but with greater subtlety and elegance, and greater intelligence. Take, for instance, the line brought up in this review, the one about "Africans". This is funny, but not nearly as funny as a similar exchange in The Office, when Michael Scott starts talking about "colored greens" (Stanley: "That's collard greens." Michael: "What?" Stanley: "They're called collard greens." Michael: "That doesn't make any sense. You don't call them 'collared people.' That's offensive.")
Come to think of it, I had the same thought while watching Borat: The Office does it better. Comedy requires a measure of truth, but I see no truth to Cohen's brand of comedy. Watching Bruno made me feel like the kid in the film Afterschool, desperately searching for truth amid an onslaught of phony and disingenuous video images.
Brett is correct about the audience booing Brüno the moment he mentions being gay, before they know what a jerk he is. I mentioned the same moment in my earlier comment.
JE: I wish I could see that scene again. Some of the provocations are racial. (Funny that a middle-aged white man hosts a show with an entirely African-American audience; did they select this crowd on purpose?) In the clip I just added (above) they don't have much reaction to "Gayby" -- despite goading from Bey. I'm beginning to wonder if this fake talk show had flashing "OUTRAGE" signs to goose up the audience response instead of the usual "APPLAUSE" signs.
Bruno and Borat are funnier versions of the Harold & Kumar movies. The humor is stupid and raunchy, but the movies throw in allusions to political/social controversies as to make the pretentious unashamed they they laugh.
Bruno's a lowbrow movie for people who think they're highbrow. There isn't anything wrong with a dumb, funny, raunchy comedy. But to try and get anything more out of it is a fool's errand.
I don't believe Baron Cohen's point is to confront homophobia in America. His MO is essentially shock followed by filming the reaction. Borat was funny on two levels--the shock of what the title character said and did and the reaction of his hapless victims. I felt Bruno fell flat wherein the shock was occasionally funny, mostly just shocking, and the reaction of the victims was, with a few exceptions, unfunny.
At any rate, pushing a social agenda was a distant second in terms of Baron Cohen's priority in both films. I don't doubt that he's deliberately operating at low brow and high brow levels, but the greater emphasis is definitely on the low brow. For example, the scene I will never forget from Borat--no matter how hard I try--was when he was wrestling with Azamat. I admit that I laughed to the point of nearly blacking out, but I don't recall that scene confronting any anti-semitic issues.
I find it odd that critics might think Cohen "exposes" anything. These people are paid to write about movies and seem to believe that Cohen's "victims" were just the first average Americans he happened to run into on that day's shoot?
I'd imagine they'd vet a ton of "victims", specifically choose certain ones, prod and prod those people for the reaction they want, and STILL came up with hundreds of hours of dud footage. How does this process expose anything?
JE: I'm with you -- I don't think the movie "exposes" anything that isn't already obvious. Also, from watching the movie itself we can't always be quite certain who is "in" on the gag or to what extent, and I'm not sure it matters. Christopher Guest sets up scenes and then shoots lots of footage of his (well-trained, exceptionally talented) actors improvising. Later, he cuts down the footage into a feature length film. (Most Hollywood feature shoots wind up with a minute or two of footage a day that will make it into the final cut. Guest once told me he gets hours of great stuff every day -- and it's all different!) I know SBC has used this "candid camera" approach since Ali G days, but, as I wrote above, I don't see why 95 percent of his stuff wouldn't work just as well -- or better -- in improvised form.
Well now, the way I read Borat was that he was taking the stereotypes out to their logical extremes to show how silly they were. Maybe that's what the guys mean.
Hey Jim, I don't recall there being "...a machine that teaches you how to perform oral sex", in Bruno. Maybe we should view Bruno as a Rorschach Test for one's own sexual orientation and fantasies.
JE: I didn't remember that, either. Nor the "close-ups of anal sex" Babs mentions. And I didn't recognize her claim that the movie "purports to make people who are homophobic no more." An odd construction, but still. I'm also wondering about the idea that the movie was "making fun" of the "campers." Yes, Bruno plays practical jokes on them (in the manner of "Candid Camera" or "Jackass" or "America's Funniest Home Videos"), but is it "making fun" of them? Does anyone find them morally reprehensible because they don't want to think of themselves as cast members of "Sex in the City," or that they don't want to let (naked) Bruno into a one-man tent when he wakes them up in the middle of the night? Who can really blame them? It's Bruno who's playing the idiot.
Stepping in in Babs' defense (wow, I never thought I'd say that), I thought it was pretty obvious - with the finger quotes and whatnot - that she meant Baron Cohen and his crew see the ordinary people as "little people." Every time she used it after that was in this context. And I do think that "Bruno" and "Borat" are both pretty condescending to some of their "little people." Borat is nice to the black prostitute, but if he wasn't in character I'm not sure I believe Baron Cohen would have anything to do with her. And if the ordinary people's reactions in Bruno are more or less simply polite and uncomfortable, where's the comic tension? I thought it was a misfire, that's all.
JE: I didn't take Babs' remarks that way because she uses the term "little people" twice before somebody asks her what she means by it. However, as I mentioned, she certainly does share that attitude toward, uh, "civilians" with Bruno.
Brilliant dissection of the critical, and politically correct, party line,deftly presented as a movie review.
I can't say whether or not Babs actually does look on regular people that way, I'm only saying that the first time she says "little people" she puts her hands up in what looks like a quoting gesture and makes a clicking noise with her mouth that, to me, implied that she was using the term she thought appropriately represented the filmmakers' attitudes. I don't think someone who's been around as long as Babs would refer to regular citizens as "little people" on television, in front of an audience.
JE: I watched the clip again and you're right. I didn't understand what she was doing with her hands the first time I saw it, but I think that probably is what she means. Maybe she just couldn't think of a better term at the time.
Jim, thought you would enjoy/find interesting the following praise for Bruno from a conservative reviewer's POV:
http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/mflynn/2009/07/16/bulls-eye-bruno-hits-hollywood-hard/
I would also echo the (pleasant) surprise that you treat wrestling with a degree of knowledge and understanding. Virtually every "mainstream" piece on wrestling that I've ever seen has been filled with odd assumptions and crass generalities. Wrestling's greatest critics are almost always people who know little to nothing about it, so this article is a nice change of pace.
As far as the movie itself, I don't think trying to divine it's point of view is really worth it. Bruno is something of a Rorschach test. Look at how Walters reacts, it's got nothing to do with the movie. The film allows US to show who WE are, it doesn't tell us these things.
JE: I got a remedial education on wrestling from my friend Dave McCoy at MSN Movies after we saw "The Wrestler." I had covered a World Tag-Team Wrestling event at Seattle's Kingdome back in 1985 or 1986 and learned a lot then, too.
It's not exactly on the topic, but as a fan of 'Da Ali G Show', I miss the skillful contrast of SBC's portrayals of his characters. By the second season he'd become so good at inhabiting them that it took quite a bit of convincing to get first time viewers to believe all three were the same performer, and the style of each character's segment was very clearly differentiated as well. But 'Bruno' felt more or less like the same movie as 'Borat' to me, certainly as far as the loose narrative tying each one's scenes together, and though I thought both had some truly hilarious bits, I don't feel like either filled the time all that well. I'm sure it's very hard to turn a ten minute piece into a feature length film, and they were infinitely better than the entirely fictional Ali G movie, so I'm not questioning the choice to stick with the same basic format as the show, and being unsure which of the creative forces behind the films is more responsible for their near-identical feel, I don't know who's to blame. There was at least one scene early in Bruno in which SBC seemed briefly to slip into the Ali G accent, and a few times into Ali G's speech patterns. Some of the scenes in the movies are near-exact copies in many ways of bits from the show, most notably in 'Bruno' the karate instructor bit is (in my opinion) less funny than a very similar Borat scene featuring the line "How do I defend against the Jew claw?" If you enjoyed the movies at all and haven't seen the show, it's well worth the time. The list of notable interviewees is particularly impressive, and in some cases SBC as Ali G has even convinced them to perform a short rap which appears at the end of the episode.
I think I agree with what you said, but I think there may be more making fun of homophobia, rather than exposing homophobia in the "real characters" of the movie. To me the scene that made me laugh the most was "Martial Arts Master" scene, which kind of exemplifies this. In that scene, Bruno exploits the opportunity, saying, "what if I'm lying on the ground face down" etc., and then they demonstrate it with Bruno gladly getting on top and even getting his hands on the guys underwear simulating pulling it down. Then Bruno brings out the dildos as weapons. The homophobic joke here again is that all gay men are sex-crazed maniacs that go around knocking out their victims with dildos so they can rape them. This also is kind adding onto the sex-crazed mania scene, which you described as Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote having sex. That scene, too, I think was making fun of the homophobic mindset that all gay guys are just sex-crazed maniacs, rather than people expressing their love. So, I think the homophobia is more directed toward outside of the screen.
Just saw it, and while I did laugh, I wouldn't want to have to review it. Wildly uneven: Borat established the concept that there was a television crew following him, but here the cinematography begins with a polished look as if it were a straight fictional comedy before going into vérité mode, the trip to the Middle East coming out of nowhere (and very familiar from other films), then the vérité mode breaks with openly staged bits.
Shawn Levy makes another point in his review: "I fear even more, if you enter the film with a closed mind, you might have it welded permanently shut. Which doesn't, in sum, seem to be the point of comedy or satire."
I'm not sure if any real homophobes would dream of seeing this film, but then I saw several kids under the age of 12 attending with their families in my theater (there was a specially placed security guard at the door of the theater to check the tickets of all those attending this film). I'm not sure if the kids enjoyed it, but there were no shocked walk outs by parents. It seems that the film might be simply approached as a Gross & Grosser type film by the general public.
Honestly I felt like I had seen the film before: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVv4A0r3wxU