It's never a good idea to underestimate Sacha Baron Cohen. More than just provoking laughs, Baron Cohen's aim is to push prevailing social attitudes forward through aggressive comic confrontation, targeting the unwitting (or witting, as the case may be) participants in his sketches, the audience in theaters and himself all at once. So while his new film Brüno, upon first viewing, is likely to feel disappointing and shallow to fans of his work, it's definitely worth mulling its attempt to use humor to bludgeon our sexual mores to death.
The widely varied reviews of Brüno, both professional and on message boards, include a mix of approbation and outrage for the film's treatment of sexuality. The critical mass of professionals and plebes alike fails to answer the "big" question definitively: is it a brilliant Swiftian satire, a crude "gayface" slapstick-fest, or something in between? Is Brüno a punch in the face to American homophobia or does it perpetuate homophobic stereotypes in the name of satirizing them?
The answer is both, and neither. Baron Cohen purposefully puts the onus on the audience, challenging us to examine our role in the joke. Are we actually laughing at Brüno's out-there gayness or are we laughing at others' crude reactions to said gayness, or (most likely) both? Certainly Brüno's outlandish libido, which encompasses every freakish permutation of kinky sex imaginable, is meant to poke fun at ridiculous fears of gay sex, but it also manages to tap into those fears as well. So as we cringe or groan upon witnessing Brüno's predelictions and then laugh at those who are affronted by him (to wit: a group of randy hetero swingers who love kinky male-female sex but are weirded out by Brüno) we are mocking ourselves. It's seriously meta, an attempt at a kind of mass exorcism of our own homophobic demons. And although by the movie's end demons may still linger, the film is a fascinating mess.
In the movie's weaker first half, when Austrian TV host Brüno's outsize ego (and an unfortunate incident with velcro on a local fashion runway) send him to Hollywood to seek stardom, the joke is on him and his vapid pursuit of fame at all costs. His narcissistic inability to see his own lack of talent and his ruthlessness towards his lovelorn assistant turn him repulsive.
During a sequence in which he adopts an African child whom he treats as an accessory, Baron Cohen walks very close to the line: in a particularly tricky scene, Brüno presents his adopted child to an African-American TV audience, and their appalled reaction to his sexuality in and of itself is then undercut by their rightfully appalled reaction to his poor parenting skills. This scene takes a stereotype about homophobic African-Americans and a stereotype about gay parents being corrupting influences and basically pits them against each other. It's clever and bold, but during moments like these one wonders just how far over its audience's head some of Brüno's message will fly. Viewers may leave that scene with the same smug stereotypes they had going in, and it's this first half of the movie that's likely to bring out the audience's own homophobia as it pushes the boundaries of "good taste" to their limit.
Then the movie switches gears, halfway through, and Brüno launches himself into the heart of masculine America to turn "straight," thinking it's the ticket to fame. Suddenly, it's easier to side with him. Even an obnoxious, insensitive egotist like Brüno has a right to be himself, we begin to think, as he rhapsodizes about the stars in the sky and Sex in the City on a macho hunting trip, or puts a striped scarf over his army fatigues to "break up" the pattern. Watching him try and fail to conform to gender stereotypes, and watching the hate-filled stares his effete mannerisms elicit, is both painful and painfully funny. A scene in which Brüno mournfully shoves pie in his mouth at a local diner and the patrons' grimaces in response recalls an iconic scene from Easy Rider in which the locals at a diner mediate violence against the long-haired hippies in their midst. When Brüno finally realizes his love for his assistant and tries to marry him, only to be denied by a bigoted priest, it's powerful. Suddenly we identify strongly with this blowhard we just hooted at--he becomes a symbol for something at the heart of our national struggle to widen the net of liberty and acceptance.
The weird juxtaposition of Baron Cohen's two targets, celebrity and intolerance, was intended. We were meant to be disgusted by Brüno's shameless pursuit of the former and then sympathetic to his experience of the latter. The questions that juxtaposition poses are: Even if a person from a stigmatized group conforms to the worst, most callous, stereotypes, shouldn't they still have the freedom to be themselves? Are we only interested in openness to minorities who conform to a dominant ideal? How far will our so-called liberal values go when our deeply-ingrained prejudice is awakened? It's a fair point. In our age of "tolerance," where even politicians who pass anti-gay legislation claim to have no problem at all with their LGBT neighbors, Baron Cohen is exposing the primal disgust lurking beneath the thin veil of acceptance, the fear that a gay (read: gay sex) agenda will follow the protection of gay civil rights and marriage equality. Certainly that was the intended point of Brüno's awkward attempted seduction of Ron Paul.
The reason some of these intentions may not sink in, though, is that Brüno is a mixed bag artistically, neither as sharp nor as prescient as Borat. Coming at the end of the Bush era, Borat tapped into America's newfound self-loathing, our need to vent against "the ugly American." It also eerily prefigured the frightening racism, sexism and homophobia that would be caught on countless cable news clips and YouTube videos during the 2008 election. Brüno was launched into production riding on Borat's fame and critical embrace, long before the first flutterings of a full-blown national resurgence of a movement for gay rights, a movement spurred on by the hateful Proposition 8. Thanks to that national dialogue Brüno's humor now feels a little dated: the soul-searching Baron Cohen advocates has already been going on quite in the hearts of many Americans, including governors signing same-sex marriage laws. On the other hand, those activists bruised from recent culture war battles may be less inclined to go along with the joke: they already know plenty about homophobia, thanks very much.
Beyond the zeitgeist, though, some of the movie's failings are
less deep: there's the fact that the pioneering shock value of Borat is old hat. Brüno almost feels like Borat lite, broader, more disparate and
wackier, possibly staged in parts. Then there's the issues with the character
himself, always third fiddle to Baron's masterpieces Ali G and Borat. Those
first two characters are both idiots who espouse prejudice galore. They both
test people's willingness to accept ignorance and bigotry when they arise from
"the youth" or a "foreigner" who may not know better. But
Brüno, who originally targeted the fashion world and not much more, was never
as subtle or interesting a concoction. He worked best as a wispy hanger-on, as when, wide-eyed, he told a fashion
designer that a collection was "hard-edged" and also
"soft," "dark" and also "light" and elicited
knowing nods in response to his absurd assertions. Was he meant to hold up a
feature-length film burrowing deep into the American psyche?
From Apatow "bromances" to movies like "I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry" there's a new trend of straight white dudes exploiting homophobic humor while denouncing homophobia, and many say Brüno fits right in with the trend. But Brüno's intentions are certainly to be much more than that, and it's both riskier and more challenging to the status quo than those tamer comedies. There's no question that Sacha Baron Cohen has gotten more Americans talking about the nature of and proper response to homophobia than any other single recent artistic work (even Brokeback or Milk, both far better films which reached fewer people.) If there has to be an artistic edge, Baron Cohen is a good person to be on it. I hope he goes back to the drawing board for a good long time and comes up with a new way to shock us out of our sensibilities. I can't wait to see his take on feminism.
Other thoughtful takes on Brüno:
