This is a bit of a 'preview' more than review. Or maybe just a rant that needs to be elsewhere, though it certainly involves what I've SEEN as previews, reviews and promotion for the latest Cohen 'masterpiece'.
I will admit, SBC is maybe a borderline genius: He's managed to weld a career and make big bucks out of not only getting away with being offensive as all hell, but by making it so that people are hit with major peer pressure to not call him out on it. He does this by claiming there's some kind of message to his movies, about the absurdity of racism or in this latest case, homophobia. Therefore obviously people who don't appreciate them as such are humorless, oversensitive gits.
He's dredged up old vaudeville blackface routines basically, and then slapped onto them that he's doing it for society's good or to 'make people think'. While it's possible a minor percentage of people may in fact think during or after his movies, I don't seem to have seen all that much evidence that thinking was a wide-spread phenomena after Borat, and I doubt it will be after Bruno either. (I heard hundreds of people on college campus and around town quoting lines from Borat incessently. However none of these people were doing it with any trace of irony. In some cases it was of course merely the equivalent of nerds doing lines from Monty Python or the like. In other cases it seemed to be an actual reflection OF these peoples' intolerance and racism, where you know, talkin' like some stupid foreigner is a good way of making your real self look better/smarter/civilized.)
So yeah. Bruno. Cohen cherrypicks victims out of groups he believes will already be the most hostile to gays. He then acts like the most overblown and dangerous stereotype gay there is... he absolutely *caters* to their worst fears of what gays are like, after leading them into a situation via misrepresentation. He harrasses them off and on camera until they get angry, and then it's "OH LOOK! HAHAHAHA! HOMOPHOBICS GOTTA BE HATIN'! WHAT DORKS!". Meanwhile, he does absolutely nothing to apparently make Bruno any kind of... you know... redeeming character that one can/should empathize with. I found in some scenes I saw in the trailers that I felt a WHOLE lot sorrier for... the 'homophobes'. Like, hey, that black talk show audience where he says that he traded an iPod for an African orphan and named him the "traditional name" O.J.
...Obviously they must have merely been homophobic to have boo'd and not found that funny. Or they were racist. Or something.
Hell I'm not even fond of turning victimization into humor right off the bat. Extremely dangerous or psyche-hitting practical jokes are Not My Thing. An entire movie that consists of NOTHING but this, where real people- whether or not they're as homophobic as folks would claim- become partially the butts of jokes so that they can then go into their real lives and be harrassed for it, is not my idea of what the entertainment industry as a whole should be doing. I say partially the butts of the jokes, because in truth, Bruno himself remains the big butt of the jokes as well. I've seen reviews where the way he is so "mincingly feminine" and "obnoxiously flaming" are considered to be most of why "the movie is so funny". So.. it's not just the reactions of the homophobes. People are having a blast laughing at a 'gay guy'.
I'd suggest that people who are homophobic, unless they have a really analytical mind and good sense of irony will in fact, find that it's a film about how ****ed up gay people are. As opposed to how bad their reactions/feelings are.
...Which makes me worry about what might happen in theaters when these folks, who are going to make fun of the queers find themselves, you know, sitting next to a gay/lesbian couple who went because they thought it was supposed to be a film about how stupid homophobes are.
I'm boycotting the damn thing, and I am kind of calling for anyone else I know to do it as well.
And I'd like to suggest that those who when Cohen's latest movie is called a derailment of what it was meant to be, and nothing more than toilet humor and offensive stereotypes have the words leave their mouths that "you just aren't smart enough to get it" "you're just too easily offended" or "you have NO sense of humor" ponder for a moment on just how tolerant and empathic towards others this movie and its star have helped make them.
"neintales" wrote: