Film review - Bruno

The joke's on who?

This belies my own credo of extreme broadmindedness when it comes to comedic mores, but I have always privately believed that Andy Kaufman's fatal brain cancer may have actually been sublimated bad karma. As inveterate a provocateur as he was, I doubt anyone could inure themselves sufficiently to the frothing fits of red state-rage directed his way at those faux wrestling matches he put on. On some sub-cellular level, at least, he had to  have been effected. Kaufman was a brilliant hoaxster, a man who layered his private jokes so thick you had to wonder if he'd lost the ability to unpeel them enough to re-inhabit his original skin. Still, I wonder if his act was primarily impelled by the compulsion to live out a recurring nightmare.

I doubt Sacha Baron Cohen, a much less abstract performer, will ever walk as close to that edge. But there are  similarities. Both men use television to turn the unwitting into straight men. Kaufman victimized the audience, never in on the joke until a bit ran its course, if then. Baron Cohen uses a "Candid Camera" approach, hoodwinking his interviewees in what is essentially an elaborate practical joke. The commonality, though, is the assumption that the imposition of a TV camera turns any event into a safe haven. Over the years, so much over-the-airwaves material has been sanitized and stripped of anything spontaneous that few can imagine a scenario in which someone with his hands on the means of production will actually color outside the lines. Because on TV, all occurrences have been vetted and pre-drained of vitality. You can't say "shit" on broadcast television, and if a wardrobe malfunction does occur, ample means exist to make sure it never happens again.

So when Kaufman went on "Saturday Night Live" posing as a meek and talentless foreigner who has mastered only the thinnest of material, the initial audience reaction was extreme discomfort, but mixed with exhilaration. Here's someone who has slipped through the copious filters—he can't actually do anything, and what's more, he doesn't know he can't do anything. Maybe he'll even say "shit!"

Similarly, when Baron Cohen in the guise of Ali G, Borat,or Bruno interviews someone, the interviewee can't imagine anything  amiss, because the knowledge that they're on television has a mesmerizing, debilitating effect. As in Stanley Milgram's famous experiment on obedience to authority, people will sit through or participate in the darndest things, as long as it's going out to a mass audience. So in one of Bruno's interviews from "Da Ali G Show," he asks E!'s Leon Hall to rate various celebs as hot or not by using terms like "in the ghetto" or "on the train to Auschwitz," and Hall doesn't bat an eye as he complies. Television, in these instances, is the equivalent to Milgram's men in white lab coats.

Bruno the movie—which I found to be about 70% hilarious, 25% flat, and 5% disgusting—mostly makes use of a different strategy, the one Kaufman employed in his pro-wrestling phase. Kaufman waded into the heart of redneck territory to match holds with wrestling icons and goad the audience with taunts of "I'm from Hollywood!"or by instructing them via video how to use soap and toilet paper. Like Bruno, Kaufman's intent was to inflame the crowd by materializing as the bogeyman of their reactionary fantasies. Their worst fears confirmed about how they are viewed by "liberals," the "media elite" or "Hollywood," their visceral outrage then provides the punchline to Kaufman's drawn-out bit. (CONTINUED)

Comments

[Marc]

Hey Jon, great commentary. I haven't seen the film, but I heartily concur with everything you say 100%. As an American, it's my God-given right to loudly express full throated opinion on things I know absolutely nothing about. The majority of those fighting health care reform are perfect examples of my brethren.

Mostly, I agree with you completely because I also have no idea who Lady Ga Ga is. I was afraid I was the only one...

[Molly McCall]

Bravo, Jon! Great review. I actually had never thought of Kaufman and Baron Cohen together like that, but it's so obvious now that you say it!