Status Anxiety

11 July 2009

As funny as Bruno undoubtedly is, Baron-Cohen’s film is fundamentally dishonest

But this isn’t the biggest shortcoming of the film. The real problem with Bruno is that it is fundamentally dishonest. Take the above scene. A quick Wikipedia search reveals that The Richard Bey Show hasn’t been on the air since 1996. The filmmakers have had to create an entirely fictional talk show in order to stage this scene and yet it is presented as a real television programme. If the show is fake, how can we be sure that audience members are genuine? Are some of them, in fact, actors pretending to be ‘homophobes’? And if that’s the case, Baron-Cohen isn’t ‘shedding light’ on the ‘intolerance and ignorance’ of African-Americans, so much as saddling them with racial stereotypes.

As far as I could tell, the Richard Bey studio audience was the real McCoy, but there are several other scenes in the film in which the supposedly real people being taken in by Baron-Cohen are actors. For instance, there’s a scene in which Bruno is asking a stage mother a series of provocative questions in order to determine how far she’s prepared to go to get her baby cast in a film. If it turns out her 30lb baby is ‘too fat’ for the role, would she be prepared to put him on a diet so that he loses 10lb in the course of a week? Yes, she says. And if he hasn’t lost the full 10lbs, would she be prepared to give her baby liposuction? Once again, the answer’s yes. That can’t possibly be true — what mother would countenance such treatment of her baby? — yet the scene depends for its humour on the audience believing the mother is real. Once it dawns on you that the mother is being played by an actress, the laughter dies in your throat. More importantly, it loses its satirical point: we’re witnessing an actress playing a cultural stereotype created by Baron-Cohen and his co-writers to confirm their prejudices about what stage mothers are like.

In my estimation, at least a third of the scenes in Bruno are stunted up in this way. It is not the people on camera who are being gulled, but the people in the cinema. I don’t wish to sound like a prude, but it is objectionable that Baron-Cohen is essentially lying to us. And this dishonesty is a much more basic and straightforward moral defect than any of the shortcomings — intolerance, homophobia, etc — that Baron-Cohen supposedly draws attention to in the film.

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John McKee

July 9th, 2009 12:33pm Report this comment

Thanks for putting my unease about this man's humour into words, Toby. Hadn't actually put much thought to it before, but there's a big difference between agent provocateur stunts to expose and ridicule real bigotry (racism, xenophobia, antisemitism etc) as he did in Borat and entrenching dangerous common misconceptions like 'them queer folks is after my kids'.

silke

July 10th, 2009 9:44pm Report this comment

please do not be afraid to sound like a prude!
It was OK in the Sixties and Seventies to rebel against all those stupid rules but now the pendulum has swung way to far in the direction of anything goes - as a sound balance is probably unachievable the time of the courageous prude has come and I for one salute everybody who dares - up to now I have only found Miss Manners of the Washington Post as a role model - weren't it nice if the British took the lead

Crystal Bullet

July 11th, 2009 8:20pm Report this comment

Is Bruno provoking an unintended conflict? How can we measure it? Politics governs for society what people can or cannot do. Currently politics decides scientists cannot clone humans or artists take erotic pictures of naked children. Thousands of such controls exist if you look for them from a historical perspective. Huxley’s research behind “The Doors of Perception” would not be possible today with the controls on hallucinogenic substance abuse.

The process which governs the acceptable often takes decades to change. We rely on watershed moments to indicate what the new rules are. Those subsequently breaking them can expect harsh treatment because a groundswell of opinion exists to support vilification of the transgressor. The Ross-Brand affair in October 2008 was such a watershed moment.

Does Bruno break these new rules? Superficially the treatment of race and sexuality in this film might seem contentious. However the use of TV reality playfulness makes it impossible to judge what the politics of the message is. What is shocking is the pornographic element. The Ross-Brand affair was fought out over a radio show. By nature only the language was offensive. Visually some of the scenes in Bruno were “disgusting”. Does it provoke debate on race and sexuality? Or in the mood of “harsh times” should it be vilified for being pornographic regardless of intent?

Ben

July 20th, 2009 9:23pm Report this comment

I think you've got it exactly backwards, Toby. When the woman in question agreed to have liposuction performed on her baby, everyone in the cimema I was attending pretty much stopped laughing - but not because it had dawned on them that she was an actress, as you are suggesting... I think they stopped laughing because they were worried that she wasn't an actress. I don't claim to know for sure whether she was or not - and neither can you, really - but I'd wager that she was for real. I think you are underestimating the depth of the sickness - in both American and British cultures - that stems from obsession with celebrity.

Furthermore, the entire premise that your article is based on is not supported with evidence. How do you know that a third of them were actors? Source, or GTFO!

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