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The Brünos Who Surround Us
If all Brüno were was a satire on the obsession with fame and celebrity, it would not be enough to hold your attention for very long. But the desire to be famous is also a desire to satisfy your appetites with impunity, to elevate selfishness into a moral principle. The universal desire to be famous is a social problem. Brüno himself is a selfish pig.
Perhaps some straight critics can’t bring themselves to admit that a flamboyantly gay man can at the same time be morally repellent. But Brüno is not repellent because he is flamboyantly gay. He is a flamboyantly gay man who happens to be repellent.
No one, straight or gay, could possibly admire or like a man who goes to Africa to adopt a black baby because he thinks it will make him as famous as Angelina and Madonna. (You remember them: the Women Who Mistook an Infant for a Louis Vuitton bag.) No one could even tolerate a man who names his adopted baby O.J. and then proceeds to exploit the child on television, and who makes a pilot film for a new TV series starring himself in which he has his penis saying his name to the camera.
Unlike Borat, in which the insanely obtuse Kazakhstanian exposed the fear and parochialism of powerless people, Brüno shows the dignity of similar people when confronted with the outrageous narcissism of its satirical hero/antihero. The black women in the audience of the talk show on which Brüno appears to casually discuss his appalling plans to exploit little O.J. rise to eloquence when they angrily shout him down. The ordinary, crushed-looking people in the focus group who watch Brüno’s pilot episode with the talking penis saying “Brüno” become beautiful when they leave the premises in disgust.
Why, the movie seems to be saying, do we not respond in the same way to the excesses of ego all around us? Are we not surrounded by talking penises (to use the polite term) every minute of the day, who are in essence simply saying their name over and over again?
True to Cohen’s Swiftian complexity, Brüno is not simply morally repulsive. He is also, as he must be, the gay man as truthteller, provocateur, vulnerable misfit. The scenes where Brüno encounters Christian gay converters, spends the night in the woods with redneck hunters, and undergoes National Guard training skirt, as it were, Borat territory by exposing the primal terror of confronting an alien sexuality.
Yet there is a softness in some of these moments that Borat lacked. The scene in which leather-clad Brüno and the three camouflage-clad hunters sit silently around a campfire under a nighttime sky filled with stars goes beyond satire into a kind of tender Beckettian absurdity. The shape of human hunger is incalculable. Camouflage is another name for being human.
You are reminded of this note of mystery in the film’s penultimate scene, a cage match between Brüno and his lovelorn assistant, whom Brüno had once had recreational sex with and then heartlessly spurned. After a few minutes, the two men stop fighting and begin passionately and graphically to make love. The Red State audience is outraged, furious, despairing. Yet there is a question as to why they are so profoundly unsettled. Are they horrified by the sight of two men having sex? Or are they horrified by the spectacle of Brüno’s selfishness giving way to self-surrender? If it’s the latter, then what they are witnessing is the violation of everything that American culture nowadays seems to stand for.
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Lee Siegel is The Daily Beast's senior columnist. He publishes widely on culture and politics and is the author of three books: Falling Upwards: Essays in Defense of the Imagination; Not Remotely Controlled: Notes on Television; and, most recently, Against the Machine: How the Web Is Reshaping Culture And Commerce—And Why It Matters. In 2002, he received a National Magazine Award for reviews and criticism.
PatriceFitz
An interesting and apt take on the bizarre film, Bruno. Ultimately, I found it to be satire of the highest order, as did this writer.
Though parts of the film were hilarious, and much of it uncomfortable, it wasn't all that funny as a whole. I can't imagine it will have "legs" as a movie.
Spoiler Alert:
The explicitly sexual scenes (homosexual at the start, and heterosexual at the end) which bookend the film were smartly set against each other. The fact that this turns out to be a very moral movie, and a love story, was a surprise.
The cage scene is brilliant. It was an amazing exhibition of the animal rage that some still feel against homosexuality.
To me, Sacha Baron Cohen was not making fun of gay men as much as personifying an extreme caricature of gayness in order to provoke honest -- and sometimes horrifying -- reactions. This will be a film talked about for a long time.
damenace
I finished watching the movie a few hours ago and agree on all your points around the satire. But it's also worth highlighting that between Bruno and Borat, Cohen mocks nearly every group but the liberal urbanites that alternately recoil in guilty-horror and glee in his skewering and who seemingly buy his tickets and DVD's.
How I wish we could get Marshal McLuhan's take on this. I can only imagine.
lsmith6
This essay makes me so happy. I love the sharp analysis of popular culture. I'm going to use this as an example of analysis with my AP English seniors next year.
Hephaestion
This is the silliest review I've ever read. Bruno is pure slapstick. Of course he's making fun of all that is foolish in American popular culture, but he was primarily just showing how irrational and silly homophobia is. Period.
Redhead5050
I don't know about anyone else...but this guy just creeps me out in all of his films...Just not amusing.
sophia5
I hope Sacha Baron Cohen's next spoof targets
pseudo intellectual cultural "experts" who dissect, and try to
find deep meaning in his hilarious exaggerated characters.
It's not that deep. Get over yourselves "Cultural Essayists."
As for the gays who are having a hissy fit
over the movie.
Apparently there was some concern in the gay
community, that the adoption scene
would portray gay adoption in a bad light.
The whole adoption scene was hilarious,
from opening the box at the luggage claim, to the
photo shoots.
Get over it. It's called exaggeration.
Cohen was poking fun at Madonna and Angelina,
and the whole "coolness" factor of adopting a
"prized" African baby.
Lighten up. Learn to laugh at yourselves.
Try not to be humorless, like PETA.
Just wondering if there were any moments in
the movie that might offend PETA ?
Perhaps when Bruno made reference to
the death of a hamster, or was it a gerbil ?
crngndmhm
I'm sure the elephants foot and trunk in the airport scene will get them going.
overdue
Not having seen this movie, I can't comment on the Swift comparisons. But knowing Cohen's MO through his shows, I assume he still finds easy targets and tries to humiliate them. Yes? And if he doesn't succeed easily, he goes further and tries to manhandle them or somesuch? Then maybe, just maybe, a poor working class redneck from The South gets "punk'd"? And all the "enlightened" viewers get to laugh at the redneck's faults? Gee, sounds like fun.
Makes me want to make a movie about the homeless:
I can start by teasing them with food and a roof, then pull the carpet from under their feet. Oh what laughs it'll get!!
Or about the Brit's and their race problems:
I can easily find a racist lorry driver in the north, and pit him against a Pakistani cornerhop owner. Give them knives and let them go at it!!
How we'll be rolling in the aisles!!!!
naomaf
I laughed so hard my sides ached. Even when I left the theater I would review a scene in my mind and still
keep laughing. Bruno is a great film. See it.
TheDailyJban
Lee Siegel looks like Jack Bauer.
ginsushark
busted a gut laughing. not bothered by mix of staged and real events. seems like the staged events were used to frame/set up real moments. the film axis of narcissism and homophobia isnt quite as perfect as borats xenophobia/racism discourse, but it has 1000% more clever social satire than most studio comedies.
middledge
bruno is stiffing.........
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