Viva la Bruno

By Heather Huntington on July 1st, 2009

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Several years ago, when my husband and I were first dating, he and his roommates at the time were very into watching this British comedian on the Internet. His name was Sacha Baron Cohen, and while I hadn’t heard of him or seen him on TV, he was all the rage with the MIT urban planners in Porter Square.

Fast forward a few years and it seems there is virtually no one who hasn’t heard of Mr. Baron Cohen and his impressive antics–and with good reason. To date, Borat has made over $261.5 million worldwide, and his new movie, Bruno, is poised to stage a repeat performance.

As Borat, Baron Cohen was a hairy, hapless ‘Kazakhstani’ who played on our cultural prejudices about Middle Easterners and rural rubery. Now, as Bruno, he embodies a fatuous, flamboyant gay Austrian. These characters are, to be sure, caricatures. But you only have to see his now blonde- topped, otherwise completely waxed nude form splashed across one magazine cover once to be reminded of Baron Cohen’s stunningly balls-out commitment to his art.

What is it about Baron Cohen that people love so much? I have a few theories. His characters present the unique combination of the blue, gross-out humor of a fat man dangling his balls in someone’s face with a fairly intellectual level of social commentary brought out by his target’s reactions. As a result, Baron Cohen can appeal to multiple audiences for very different reasons all at the same time.

For me, it is always hard watching people get embarrassed by someone else on camera; it makes me squirm and change the channel. But with Baron Cohen, more often than not his characters don’t just take advantage of unsuspecting subjects – they expose these people for their real, and ugly prejudices, which makes me feel like they deserve what they get. With the Bruno character in particular, Baron Cohen puts himself at risk – playing on the gay stereotypes that so often have been known to be greeted with physical violence from homophobes. Which makes me admire–and root for–him all the more.

But what’s most amazing at this point is that he can find any subjects at all. Not only would you imagine people would be more on guard after the success of Borat, but more importantly the Bruno character (as well as Borat and the moronic rapper, Ali G) were part of his original Da Ali G Show. In short, these characters are and have been around, visible, and drawing a sizeable following for years. How he finds enough people unaware enough to react as they do never ceases to amaze me. But he does, and Ich liebe it.