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UPDATE: Hot Button 'Brüno' Humor, Part Zwei
If nothing else, the current Letterman-Palin controversy has shown that comedy cuts all ways. Now Sacha Baron Cohen's Brüno is on the hot seat for its hot button humor. The comedy was always going to push the proverbial envelope because Cohen is getting paid to play gay in an outrageous spoof of straight attitudes towards gays, and gay attitudes towards straights. Then again, mercilessness begets media attention which sells movie tickets. But is the price being paid too high? There's now a YouTube video (see below) making the rounds which features notables like Peter Paige (Queer As Folk), Nick Verreos (Project Runway), and Brian Graden (LOGO network founder) discussing their concerns about Brüno's impact on the LGBT community. (It was shot at an event honoring Milk screenwriter Dustin Lance Black.) Problem is, they haven't actually seen the film. And it's always unwise for interest groups to make judgments on a creative endeavor before they've actually experienced it. The New York Times the other day did a decent piece summing up the controversies surrounding Brüno. However, a source intimately involved in the Brüno production complains to me that it "completely misses the mark". That's because this insider provides me with some not before now known behind-the-scenes details for me about why the film has had, and probably should have, problems with the gay community:
"The film has not been screened for a large number of gays for a reason. Throughout the many private screenings [the filmmakers] have had, the reaction from gays has been almost uniformally one of alarm. It is not a scathing depiction of homophobia -- but a grotesque satire of homosexuality. Brüno is a sickening mixture of narcissism, fetishism and shallowness - and he is virtually the only gay representation in the movie. The 'homophobia' of the various straight men who he encounters and propositions, seems only natural when faced with such an odious sexual monster. Sacha, Jay and their writers did significant reshoots to try to temper the troubled reactions of the few gay people they invited to screenings. One 'out' comedy writer refused to help on the reshoots, because he found the content so disturbing.
The reshoots did not do much other than manage to get Elton John and a few other music celebs to participate in an ending that seemed to promote gay marriage. However, these musicians - including Chris Martin - continue to be concerned as they have not been shown the finished film. Can you imagine a comedian going around in black face in a movie, doing a stereotype of black Americans without ever once using a black collaborator or showing the film to a black audience? Gay men continue to be the last easy targets of the fratboy comedies so prevalent these days. And while Brüno pretends to be subversive, it is no different."
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Cohen’s “satire” basically embraces the worst stereotypes of different populations. And that’s what is so dangerous. He “eggs” it on by his so-called “satire” and makes the rest of us pick up the mess he leaves behind.
All this PC crap makes me sick. It is a freakin movie – Why does it have to make EVERYONE feel OK? The biggest problem with our counrty is that we are now a bunch of whiners who feel entitled to not have our feelings hurt. Boo Hoo…
BRUNO doesn’t make fun of gay people. It mocks homophobic people and sheds a new light on homophobia, just like BORAT showed us how ugly, idiotic and hateful racist people can be.
Although I haven’t seen Bruno yet, so this is just my guess.
Cohen is a “Shock Jock” comedian. All his programs and shows have been using stereotypes and comedy poking fun of everything and everyone. Bruno will be no different. It will shock and will entertain, the negative press will only help the film sell more tickets. It is Cohen’s “Shtick”, this is how he works. It will be funny but it is not meant to be taken personally. Borat was hilarious, if I did not lower my sensitivity I as a minority would have been very offended, but I knew going into the theater what Cohen’s comedic style was. Bruno will be over the top, it will be insensitive, it is a joke. Are gay people really like Bruno? Of course not. Let’s not take this so personally. But of course we will, we will be offended and we will play right into the hands of the corporate model and increase the ticket sales.
It’s a formula for success. It’s not like there have not been tons of shock jock films made about heterosexuals and there neurosis.
I disagree with the statement that gay men are the last easy targets of the fratboy comedies.
Asians are pretty funny too.
The hypocrisy is stunning to behold. Rural people/southern people and particularly Christians are ALWAYS portrayed by Hollywood in a cartoonish, insulting and bigoted manner, without a peep from these ‘concerned’ citizens. THESE, are in fact, the only stereotypes that are allowed to be reinforced by Hollywood.
Why the pink box, Nikki?
Oh COME on.
You can’t watch the movie without knowing that you’re watching a character. There’s never a moment that makes you believe that Bruno’s behavior is characteristic for a gay person.
The over-sensitivity in this country has to stop.
I get the concern, but something tells me that the people raising their voices now didn’t blink when Kazakhstan was troubled by “Borat.”
It’s all fun and games until someone “attacks” your identity.
Bruno appears to be pure, unadulterated homosexual stereotype concentrate. If we’ve learned anything from Borat or Ali G, this is Sacha Baron Cohen’s schtick. Are people actually surprised?
The Bruno character is a huge broad stereotype. To some people that would be funny. To me, it’s the gay equivalent of Amos and Andy 1930’s black face. Ignorant people who think they’ve never met a gay guy will say, “Yup, that’s what a gay man is like… stay away from those freaks!”
A lot of people don’t realize he’s being funny… a lot will think he’s just showing what all gay men are like. Bruno will generate millions of dollars from people who are going there just to laugh at a freak (just like they did years ago when watching black face).
Bruno isn’t what 99.9% of gay people are, but in a lot of people’s minds it’s yet another reason to think that freaky persona is who we all are. Bruno portrays gay people as dysfunctional and dangerous to society. No one gives ‘freaks’ equal rights.
I saw it and thought the first half was hilarious, but then it became increasingly offensive without any hint of a message. It became extremely uncomfortable. He’s just making fun of homosexuality, and allowing bigots to name call and threaten violence, which almost seems understandable because Bruno is so offensive himself. (and that is NOT right) In Borat you laughed at how stupid the character was ALONG with how stupid the bigots were being. But in Bruno I’m afraid the laughs are at the expense of his stereotypical portrayal of homosexuals. Also, it’s just not as funny as Borat. But don’t even get me started on the offensive frat boy humor of Judd Apatow and Todd Philips. Apparently Queerface is the new Blackface.
This cracks me up, gays come in all sizes, ages, colors and cultures. Of course the reaction will be varied. One size straight doesn’t apparently fit all but one size of gay does? Yikes, we are we so schizophrenic as a culture circa 2009.
The fact that many straights and gays laughed uproariously at The Hangover isn’t surprising. The fact that many straights and gays cringed at that same pack of hyenas isn’t surprising either. Different Strokes for Different Folks, or so it used to be anyway.
Manufactured Controversy = Boffo Box Office
The more the gays whine, the more SBC’s pockets line.
I’m sure most gays will find the movie to be a laugh riot, but the vocal minority who’ve seized an opportunity to be self-righteously indignant about something will create the false illusion of the entire “community” being in an uproar.
Can anybody take a fucking joke anymore? White guys are the only group left who can, evidently, because if you look at all modern marketing, the white guy is always the butt of jokes or they’re always being set straight by emasculating women or sapient blacks.
It disgusts me to live during a time when the silent majority that encompasses people of all stripes goes along with the demand of the sheltered few that all of humanity must be cut off from anything offensive, hurtful or inflammatory. The first amendment is slowly being asphyxiated before our eyes while we sit on our hands. This nonsense won’t be snuffed out until the corporations stand up to these opportunistic special-interests finger waggers and deprive them of their power by refusing to cave in to their demands for censorship, groveling or firings.
Let’s keep in mind the Jewish community expressed concern, again before seeing the movie, that while they got what he was doing they worried about how it would impact the Jewish community. This sounds like the same issue.
Maybe it’s funny, maybe not. I haven’t seen it. And if people get offended, OK. But when the makers, or their supporters, try to excuse it by whitewashing it with an alleged ‘message’ . . . *eh* Seems from what I’ve read about it is that the “homophobia” being “lampooned” is along the lines of a (straight) pig launching himself onto women as a “satire” of sexual harassment. High-larious!
There’s a revolution brewing in Iran, and people are concerned about a friggin’ movie character.
Political correctness sucks.
(And Danielle is pretty much on the nose with her comment, too.)
What about the Austrians? How must they feel at being satirized in this fashion? They are a proud people and this must be hitting them hard.
Gay But Not Like Bruno-
Anybody dumb enough to see BRUNO as a true representation a gay person has to be suffering from serious retardation.
Uuummm, how soon we forget.
Robert Downey Jr was in black face for Tropic Thunder. Were there black collaborators on that film? Me thinks not. Sure, there was a “token” in the film as well to sort of be the balance, but he really wasn’t balanced, he was more of the same. At first glance, Black people were very nervous about what the black face could be representative of, however, upon seeing the film… the satire, the context, it turned out to be no big deal.
Jewish people were up in arms over the “comedy set during the holocaust” – Life is Beautiful. The movie came out, turned out to be a wonderful movie, and everyone calmed down.
Wait till the movie comes out people. Otherwise, you set yourselves u to look very foolish in the end.
“The Bruno character is a huge broad stereotype. To some people that would be funny. To me, it’s the gay equivalent of Amos and Andy 1930’s black face. Ignorant people who think they’ve never met a gay guy will say, ‘Yup, that’s what a gay man is like… stay away from those freaks!’” –Gay But Not Like Bruno
—–
I think the gays themselves have done a good enough of a job reinforcing these same stereotypes with their pride parades and their predominantly gay neighborhoods like Castro and Chelsea where they prance around in flamboyantly garish outfits.
So people in your community can do this during occasions of festivity and within their own milieu, but if a comic actor wants to do it for the creation of a FICTIONAL CHARACTER, that justifies stern repudiation and self-righteous moral outrage? This is a textbook example of a double standard.
People in the blue-state hayseed regions are always going to have grotesque caricatures of what gay people represent in their mind’s eye whether Bruno had been made or not. To suggest that the release of the film is going to engender a widespread reinforcement of homosexual animus is insulting to the intelligence of those outside these territories who have the sophistication to realize the stereotype of the over-the-top queer isn’t a blanket paradigm for the entire sect.
I want to preface this by saying I haven’t seen the movie yet (like most everyone else).
A quick look at the IMDB pages of some of the comedians featured in the YouTube video show their credits, often playing stereotypically gay characters. Pretty hypocritical if you ask me. Are we so PC now that only gay people can play gay people stereotypically? C’mon folks, it’s only a movie.
I get that now is an important time for the gay community. This movie will definitely reach a broad audience. SBC is playing a character so obviously a stereotype that the reactions of the “straights” will be where the social commentary comes from. I think the movie will open more minds than not.
To say that people in middle America who watch it aren’t sophisticated enough to get the joke is also insulting (I was raised in Ohio). Sure, there are homophobes who will find some validation, but a movie won’t change their opinion anyway. It’s the average undecided American caught in the middle of the gay rights debate who will see this movie, get the message, and join the LGBT community to fight for rights. At least that is my sincere hope.
Not all Christians are portrayed the way you’re describing, Danielle. Just judgmental, bigoted ones.
Gay But Not Like Bruno,
What do you think of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy? Or Perez Hilton? Or the weepy “Leave Britney Alone! guy? Or the “runway expert” on America’s Top Model? None of them are much like the gay people I know — and I used to work in the disco business! Should they be “discouraged” too?
I have not seen Bruno yet, but I imagine it shares some DNA with Borat. Borat was such an ass, but was accepted by bigots because of their deep Jew-hatred. Bruno is probably so over the top that no person could help but notice that he’s a caricature unless their homophobia runs so deep as to blind them. I look forward to this next expose of America.
“Can you imagine a comedian going around in black face in a movie, doing a stereotype of black Americans without ever once using a black collaborator or showing the film to a black audience?”
I hear that’s SBC’s next project.
When I was a kid, my Dad wouldn’t let me watch Three’s Company because it was about a straight guy pretending to be gay in order to live in sin with two attractive young women. That was in 1978. Fast forward to 2009, where gays are demanding the right to marry and Obama is extending benefits to federal workers’ gay partners. As you can well imagine, my Dad is now confined to a sanitarium.
PAGING DOCTOR FAGGOT! PAGING DOCTOR FAGGOT!
Under the guise of being said by the group’s lovable idiot in THE HANGOVER, we laugh.
We laughed in FARGO when a housewife is kidnapped and falls down the stairs. A woman in peril is a hoot.
Does it engender a continuation of bigotry? Likely.
Does the over the top mincing homosexual prevalent in film and tv deserve some screen time? Perhaps. Does this characterization deserve the bulk of our national depiction of homosexuality? I think not.
He is funny, crude and not for everyone, unless you like money and a good career in Hollywood.
ugh! This is what happens ( and will continue to happen) with narrow-minded liberals running Hollywood.
Running the best export America has left into the ground.
Has anyone in America not met a gay man? I’d be quite surprised, in this day and age, if there’s anyone in this country who hasn’t known at least one. Heck, I grew up in rural Texas and knew two in high school. In college, again in Texas, there were plenty. Maybe I’ve just been lucky to have met so many gay men, but I doubt it. Everyone has known a gay man.
That’s why this criticism of Bruno is dead on arrival. This movie isn’t going to make anyone think, “Wow, I never realized gay men were like that” because they’ve known at least one gay man in their lives that bears no resemblance to the caricature portrayed in the movie. This is an exaggeration, just like Cohen’s other characters, and almost everyone has figured that out by now.
I don’t think there’s anything to worry about. If the great strides homosexuals have made in gaining popular acceptance can be washed away by one movie, then yes, pick a fight. Otherwise, shrug it off and do something productive, like Will & Grace: The Movie which I would actually go to see. (I’ve got a weird crush on Debra Messing.)
Oh chill the hell out. Jesus Christ. Anyone who hates gays is going to do so with or without this film. Borat didn’t cause that guy to shoot up a holocaust museum last week. Movies don’t teach hatred and anyone whose opinion matters should know what Sacha’s trying to do – make people laugh with a heavy dose of shock value.
Comedy movies portray caricatures… because they get laughs. Raising Arizona portrays Arizonans (sp?) as hayseeds and gun toting convenience store workers. And it’s funny. (just to use an obvious example)
Are these same gay people complaining also going to demand that Mel Brooks rewrite the last scene of Blazing Saddles? Because that’s pretty “offensive”.
Why do I get the feeling that the same people complaining about Bruno are the same ones who dress in bondage gear at a Gay Pride Parade? But, I’m just a mouth breather from Drudge, so what do I know?
This is very clearly caculated and intentional strategy to stir up controversy and manipulate media attention and free ink (or pixels, as the case may be).
Trust me, I know.
In Borat you laughed at how stupid the character was ALONG with how stupid the bigots were being. But in Bruno I’m afraid the laughs are at the expense of his stereotypical portrayal of homosexuals.
Isn’t this hypocritical? Isn’t “Borat” a stereotypical portrayal of foreigners or immigrants? Why is it OK to laugh at how stupid foreigners are but not at the overly flamboyant gay stereotypes?
And gay people have to realize that freedom of speech means sometimes having to deal with content that makes you squirm or roll your eyes. What do you want? Straight people to joke about gays but not too much, and only in the correct light that you approve? That’s the opposite of equality. If you’ve ever seen people who are truly friends, they can joke with each other about anything.
The gays are good people. Very clean and non-violent. A gay person has never tried to steal my wallet or hit my car and run. Those were the damn Mexicans.
Has everyone forgotten that there’s hours and hours of BRUNO footage already in the two ALI G seasons?? Anyone capable of operating their OnDemand system or Netflix-ing a DVD can tell you that Bruno is safe, harmless fun. The only victim: ignorant, hateful rednecks… and that’s fine.
A stroll down Santa Monica Blvd. during any of the recent rallys will tell you Cohen is not that far off from the extreme personna of a gay man.
Most people forget that Bruno is not a cable show anymore. and That it will not only be see on the US and by US “red necks” but by the world!!!
In many countries it is illegal to be gay and people get killed. Children get bullied everyday in school when they happen to be affeminate.
That is one of the reasons ghettos exist, so that people can feel good and not afraid to be themselves.
I can only imagine what bruno will do to gay children everywhere.
Also, stop comparing white rural folks being stereotyped with gay people. White people have rights and don’t get killed or raped or beat up for being ignorant or red necks. There is a big different here.
It is a sensitive issue and it all comes down to tolerance and respect. My fear is this film won’t promote either. and yes, it’s a comedy, but it’s also big business and with that comes responsibility.
I have never seen Bruno the TV version, but I have seen the movie. Basically, it’s just an over-the-top, flaming stereotype put in various predictable candid camera moments to get a reaction. I don’t see the gay community loving this film, because it basically makes fun of both gays and homophobics at the same time. And I could easily see people cringing at Bruno not because he’s gay as much as he’s just in-you-face-obnoxious 24-7.
I’m going with the term “Gay-face” instead. It just has a better ring to it.
“And gay people have to realize that freedom of speech means sometimes having to deal with content that makes you squirm or roll your eyes. What do you want? Straight people to joke about gays but not too much, and only in the correct light that you approve? That’s the opposite of equality.”
+1,000,000.
The video comments (”dangerous!”, “Concerned!”, “in poor taste!”) by, um, celebrities? Or, d-elebrities? Who annoints these people to hold forth on, um, ANYTHING? Besides nodding their head in self-congratulatory, ‘I’m on the right side’ fashion (though, with only the exception of NicQueerEye, they’re all dressed & groomed horribly ie., that ridiculous yellow Charo dress the nodding blond chick cannot pull off … and what’s up with the blue eye shadow on the balding comedian? or Peter Paige with his gap tooth: can he not afford good dentistry?), they say absolutely nothing.
I find it curious that all this faux contretemps are played out against a backdrop featuring the totally irrelevant Lorrie Jean.
If anyone in this insanely illiterate sounding group truly had some balls, one of them would have turned around and called Lorrie Jean out for her awful handling of Prop 8.
As a “leader,” Lorrie Jean completely failed the LGBT community and has yet to be held accoutable and dismissed and/or shoved from her high perch (or, crush it with her enormous fat ass) down to the ground with former Advocate editronix, Queen Judy Weider.
NIckki, you are a pretty smart cookie so it’s kind of surprising to see you so gobsmacked, without questioning if this “controversy” might actually be a diversion … from Lorrie Jean’s failure. It’s far easier to focus on Sasha Cohen – who is, actually considered funny by people who actually PAY for movies (vs. pretentiously, “refrain from comment” on rough cuts while implying, none too subtlely oooh that blue eye shadow again, the movie sucks) – as in any way contributing to a complex political issue that has been appropriated by Lorrie Jean et al after the fact of their failure to actually, um, GET THE FUCKING AMENDMENT DEFEATED.
Oh, yeah, small detail there. Need I repeat it again? Lorrie Jean failed. The LA Gay & Lesbian Center’s “leadership” failed. With $40+ million bucks at her/their disposal and oodles of advance time, her leadership singlehandedly did more to set back whatever “movement” Miss Yellow Blouse is ditzily refers to.
The notion of this monolithic gay/queer community, prone to outside victimization by “the media” is so fucking outdated esp. in the face of OUTFest (the largest – yes, the largest film festival) and tv channels and American Idols and etc. At some point, sooner than later, the LGBT communities needs leadership – not 60’s relics like the failure Lorrie Jean and her sycophants at the LA G&LCenter – with VISION and political savvy.
I think, at this point, the gay/queer communitie S (plural) has enough political power and visibility to withstand what is clearly a satire.
The fact is – if you’ve actually SEEN the movie – Cohen’s Bruno is hilarious. People who hate the gays will hate them after; people who are or love them, won’t. Movies hardly have the power to convert (unless a ticket to Bruno also comes with genital shocks common to reparative therapy) massive number of people’s opinion.
i think it is dangerous and should be banned. any criticism against gay people should be outlawed and those who offend should be rounded up and retrained in re-education training camps located in the mohave desert.
free speech is fine until it offends me and anyone who thinks like me. i also think that until further notice, president obama should be named president fro life until all of his policies are implemented and take hold.
i would also recommend trials, like those a nuerenberg, for those republicans and hateful rightwingers who will not comply with progressive ideas and lifestyles.
gays are not to be made fun of. we should be a protected class, and our art and curiosities subsidized.
burn in hell, sasha.
Change the argument from gay male to Catholic priest and the complaints or support is the same. Some gay male will be just like the Bruno character. The same as a perv Catholic priest also has truth in it also. If every movie must show whatever group in the best light, with no bad or odd, BORING.
Nice that people are outraged now, but when Borat was released, no one called it on being a racist pile of shit. I guess we all care about gays more than Kazakhs.
I’m so sick of the Black face comparison. It’s NOT the same. Having seen Bruno last month before it received its R rating, I can honestly say its not making fun of gay people. It’s making fun of intolerant people, namely folks that live in The Bible Belt!
It’s a funny movie. People need to lighten the f#@k up.
I’m waiting for Sacha Baron Cohen’s next film – surely it’ll be about an obnoxious Jew who goes around pissing people off with his antics. Just as he trotted out the same concept (obnoxious foreigner, obnoxious queen) in his last two movies. Then watch as the potsmokers laugh in their beanbags until they vomit.
How can homosexuals say they have a problem with the Bruno homosexual stereotype when this stereotype is itself played upon in the camp identity of many gay people?
It seems like Cohen is satirising both homophobes and homosexuals here – by identifying too much with the homophobic fantasy supplement. By bringing this outrageous gay fantasy completely to the fore rather than as the homophobic subtext he destroys the fantasmic distance homophobes depend on for their discriminatory attitudes. Without this distance, the figure becomes completely ridiculous and loses its substantial identity, the homophobic attitudes themselves completely dependent on fantasy.
At the same time, Bruno reveals the minimal difference that homosexuals themselves have towards this fantasy figure when they self-consciously satirise it with the camp identity. The character of Bruno is nothing but the fantasy figure both homophobes and homosexuals adopt a distance towards. The traditional camp identity is revealed as not camp enough. Thus the film is problematic because it should be problematic – it reveals the minimal difference both these two opposing groups share.
Also, if you have a problem with Bruno, I cannot see why you don’t have a problem with Borat too.
Cry me a friggin’ river! I am so sick and tired of my fella queers raging on about a comedy routine and “how it stereotypes gays”. And yet, you prance around in leather, in full drag regalia, ad infinitum and expect the respect of the heterosexual community when you “dress up”. Stop being so politically correct and look in the mirror some time so close that it scares you and see yourselves with others eyes for a change. Then you can scream Stereotype all you want! Until you change from within and treat yourselves with respect and others within the community, then there might be more acceptance rather than finger pointing.
Was this linked on Drudge?
Why so many angry wing-nuts freaking out about the incredibly judicial and measured statements made by public figures who were put on the spot about an incredibly personal and emotional issue?
Who is that interviewer? Leading questions, talking off mike, not shutting up and letting his subjects talk.
I think that before you are allowed to use the “hand mike with a little logo box around it” you should be required to get some training.
Wow. Based on these comments there are a lot of angry men out there. My comments regarded whether the Cohen was making a mess that would need to be cleaned up.
Based upon these comments by angry (straight?) men about the gay community causing their own problems, it seems there is plenty of mess already.
Why do straight guys get bent out of shape (forgive the pun) when gays express concern about how they are portrayed?
Hmmmmmmmmmm…..
“A lot of people don’t realize he’s being funny”
Please cite your source.
As a slightly overweight, about to start balding, swing voter, not as bright as I think I am, overeducated white guy with a middle management job in a blue collar environment, it is about time those gay guys know what it is like to be made fun of.
I haven’t watched a sitcom – written by staffs of gay guys, according to TV Guide – that hasn’t made fun of me in over 15 years.
The diff is:
Prop 8 has shown that we’re not quite there yet. Not ready to laugh about the satire while sitting next to the guy who voted “Yes”. He knows that he’s laughing about himself? Easy for him to laugh now, ain’t it? He has the power to decide over the folx who are oh so amusing.
Aside from that – am I the only one who’s tired of the over-representation of flamers in the media, including TV? The problem I see is that they come to represent the community for many people who don’t know any better. Minor storylines on Brothers & Sisters or Desperate Housewives (story, what story?) don’t make up for the in-your-face flamers’ airtime.
It’s lame, it’s boring, it’s so over. No money for Brüno and his offensive marketing from me. SBC’s 15 minutes ought to be over soon, I hope.
Cohen has become the young and hip Howard Stern. All hail the new king of all media and his relentless publicity campaign. Sirius-ly, did you see Howard wearing his Phil Spector Wig when he appeared on Letterman? Get real, when they start thinking they look good like that it’s over.
Go out one night in West Hollywood and you’ll see where Cohen could have easily created this character in minutes. This is my community too, and even I know we shouldn’t be mad at him for this. Tons of gay men act like this whether you like it or not. If you don’t want characters like this to be portrayed, then tell the gay men who are exactly like this to stop.
I wish I could join the SBCohen band wagon but his comedy seems incredibly cheap since he’s the only one in on the joke. Can SBCohen be funny when he’s not putting himself above the people he holds in contempt? Basically everyone but himself. His characterizations are funny, it’s where his talent shines. The content of his films don’t leave me angry or outraged – just cold.
You should encourage your friends and family to see this movie. But, at the same time you should educate them that a movie like this has consequences, weather good or bad. For the longest time I didn’t think I was gay because I didn’t want to sleep around, or watch Project Runway (or give a hoot about fashion), I didn’t talk with a lisp, I wasn’t self-centered, I was an intelligent man who did not walk with a swish. For all intensive purposes I was ’straight’. So, I didn’t acknowledge any of my feelings towards men. It was media that had me convinced I wasn’t gay. This was when I was 15. My first time ever seeing a gay man not acting ‘gay’ was on a youtube video a few years ago. It was then and only then that I knew I was gay. I knew that you didn’t have to sleep with different guys all the time, or talk with a lisp, or care about fashion. I could be me and gay at the same time. It was a revelation! But, it only occurred to me because of media affirming the fact that you don’t have to act ‘gay’ to be Gay. It is because of this personal experience that I am weary of this movie. There may be a kid out there who was in my position, and instead of seeing a regular guy dealing with homophobia, he sees a flamboyant, obnoxious, selfish, fashion obsessed, lesser intelligent person. Think about it. Is this really more than just a comedy? If the filmmakers were trying to expose homophobia, wouldn’t they have added a disclaimer stating that ‘this character is an extreme stereotype and does not represent any portion of the gay community’ BECAUSE they know how homophobia is? Just a thought. Encourage people to see this movie, that way they can make up their own minds about this. Just as I will see this movie before I present anything 100% *any opinion expressed herein is only my personal thoughts and does not represent in any way, shape, or form any actual, solidified opinions of the movie in its entirety. As, I have not yet seen this film at its total running length.
Bruno was the first movie I have ever seen that I was actually embarrassed to be watching. My boyfriend and I had waited months to see it, but by the end we were both so nervous just being in the theatre together we hesitated when getting up to leave. I found the movie to be viciously offensive and I felt that it was so grossly pornographic that for the first time in my life I feel that not only is there a reason for the MPAA Rating system, but it was far too lax in the rating of this film.
The character Bruno would be lost in crowds at many Gay Pride Parade, because he is no more over the top than many participants there.
I’ll respect so-called gay offense due to Bruno’s portrayal, when drag queens cease depicting women in less than flattering and glowing portrayals. Cut the PC crap, understand that free speech must not be acceptable speech, and get a grip. You trivialize yourselves by taking offense.