I’m sorry Bruno, you’re no Borat

July 9, 2009 - 11:28 AM by David · 3 Comments
Filed under: General, Movies, Pop Culture 

brunoMaybe because it’s been universally panned or ignored since its release, the Israeli premiere today of Bruno, the latest film by Sacha Baron Cohen isn’t ruffling feathers or making waves the way that Borat did.

Cohen filmed some of the scenes for Bruno, based on his gay, Austrian fashion photographer TV character in Israel – in one, he’s chased through Mea Shearim by a haredi mob, and of course, there’s Yossi Alpher, the co-editor of BitterLemons.org and a former Mossad agent, who has a minor role in the film.

Alpher and his BitterLemons counterpart, former Palestinian Authority Labor Minister Ghassan Khatib, were duped by Bruno into sitting down for an interview about the Israel-Palestine conflict. They were dumbfounded when Cohen asked questions like why there was so much hatred for “humous,” confusing the food with Hamas. Alpher told The Jerusalem Post this week that he wasn’t planning on seeing the film.

But, about the only controversy surrounding the film’s release here took place a couple weeks ago when Israel Railways banned a poster on their trains and depots advertising Bruno because of what it calls controversial content.

The poster showed Bruno naked in a field of flowers. Following the Israel Railways refusal, the campaign switched to pictures in which Bruno is shown in the field wearing shorts and a shirt.

Aside from Alpher, the other targets of Bruno’s humor are taking things in stride. A spokesman for the Austrian Embassy told the Post, that despite attempting to do for Austria what Borat did for Kazhakstan, the film was being taken lightly in Vienna.

“If it’s something which attracts people to this movie then it’s fine with us,” said Arad Benko, spokesman for the embassy. “Austria in terms of tourism in absolute numbers is in the top 10 in the world… There is no reason for us to be mad.”

In Bruno, Cohen states that he wants “to be the biggest Austrian superstar since Hitler.” Despite ruminations about the Austrian connection to Hitler, Benko said he is “totally cool” with the movie.

Likewise, members of the gay community in Israel said they had no problem with Cohen’s over-the-top portrayal of Bruno.

“It’s the same way that Borat didn’t represent anyone for real,” said Amit Lev, spokesman for the Jerusalem Open House for Pride and Tolerance. “It’s a comedy show, it’s a movie. We don’t have to take everything so seriously. It’s funny, that’s it.”

“They should grow a sense of humor,” Lev said of people deriding Cohen for his caricature of a gay man. “It’s nothing but a character. It’s overly exaggerated just to be funny. People have to laugh – it’s only human.”

Unfortunately, according to the critics, there’s not that much to laugh at in Bruno.

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The Simpsons to bring peace to Israel

March 27, 2009 - 12:25 PM by Harry · 1 Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, History and Culture, Politics, Pop Culture, Travel, coexistence 

The Simpsons flee AustraliaLike most existential quarrels, the Arab-Israeli conflict is a nuanced and tricky beast. Those on the outside often take a paternalistic, “Oh, those silly Middle Easterners, why can’t they just realize that coexistence is the way to go, put their weapons down and start getting along?” attitude.

In the minds of most Israelis, I’d wager, this perspective is naïve and can lead to disaster. Many have argued that Bill Clinton’s personal need to end his presidency on a positive note led to over-simplified tactics at Camp David, which in the end backfired and brought about the Second Intifada.

I’m not sure that that thesis is itself sufficiently nuanced, but diplomacy analysis aside, a similarly paternalistic outsider’s view that has informed many tongue-in-cheek pop culture Mideast peace comments. And these comments also come off to us locals as either refreshingly naïve (as in the case of the dreamy conclusion of Tom Robbins’s Skinny Legs and All) or as not necessarily adding to the discussion but amusing nonetheless (especially when they are aimed at exposing the hypocrisies and general lack of vision among our leaders, like when Bruno stopped by last summer).

And our beloved Simpsons, probably one of the greatest TV shows of all time, if not the greatest, has a dodgy track record when it comes to understanding cultural nuances from an insider’s perspective. It’s all part of being an irreverent, edgy comedy.

According to Ha’aretz, Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie are headed our way in the coming months:

Multiple media sources have quoted the show’s executive producer, Al Jean, as saying that America’s number one animated family will head to the Holy Land next year.

“I think we’re going to do one next year where they go to the Holy Land as we haven’t been there yet. The premise will be that the Christians, the Jews and Muslims are united in that they all get mad at Homer. It’s the only thing they can agree on,” Jean said.

Sometimes the international ethnic and otherwise-sensitive communities don’t manage to take The Simpsons with the appropriate grains of salt. Racial stereotypes as regular characters? But of course. Accusations of homophobia? You got it. And then there are the recurring episodes where the family travels internationally, ripping apart the cultural and ethnic mores of China, Italy, African banana republics, Ireland and Japan. They’re exceedingly funny, but sometimes people get offended. When the Simpsons traveled in South America in a 2002 episode, the Tourism Board of Rio de Janeiro reportedly seriously mulled a lawsuit against the Fox Network for libel. Or slander. Or something.

The episode that kicked off this recurring series is 1996’s “Bart vs. Australia,” which supposedly had Aussies in such a tangle that letter writing campaigns and public censuring ensued. But a closer reading of that episode reveals that it’s all tongue-in-cheek – its very plotline focuses on the Americans’ laughable lack of understanding of anything non-American, which is carried out throughout as the starting point of many quality jokes. The family barely escapes (pictured) with their lives.

So just because the Simpsons talk or act in a certain way, doesn’t mean that the show’s writers or producers want its audience to follow suit. But when it comes to Mideast peace, why not? Sometimes a little naïveté is what we need to break out of our most self-perpetuating, defeatist grooves.

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Bruno strikes again

July 6, 2008 - 3:16 PM by Harry · 3 Comments
Filed under: Pop Culture 

Bruno, yet another alter ego of Sacha Baron CohenSasha Baron Cohen has been making a living by messing with people for ten years now. Ever since the first appearance of Ali G on England’s Channel 4 in 1998, he’s been refining his art of taking on provocative personae and interacting with real people. The results end up revealing quite a bit about his interviewees: their true beliefs and the limits of their capacity for tolerance of “the other.”

While many of us have been tracking Cohen’s exploits for close to ten years, the global mainstream media and its consumers were largely oblivious to the phenomenon until the release of the Borat movie (subtitled Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan) in 2006. The resulting exposure meant that Cohen could no longer get away with his antics in the same manner, as potential targets began to know what they were getting into, so he announced a few months ago that his primary personae, Kazakh journalist Borat and Cockney-Ebonics poser Ali G, would be retired.

In the meantime, development and production for the Bruno movie has begun in earnest. A flamboyantly gay Austrian MTV-style talking head, Bruno has was sighted a few months ago in a Wichita airport, dancing provocatively with a balloon salesman.

Cohen, meanwhile, has been to Israel many times. Having grown up a Jewish preppie in London, he even volunteered on a kibbutz for a year with Labor Zionism’s international Habonim-Dror youth group. And despite Borat’s headline-making staunch anti-Semitism, the blockbuster Cohen persona promoted his movie extensively here, even giving interviews in Hebrew – I mean Kazakh.

But now Bruno has been sighted in Israel for the first time, having duped a peace-making duo self-branded as Bitter Lemons into actually explaining why the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is slightly more important than the Jennifer-Angelina one, explaining to him the difference between hummus and Hamas and so forth.

This according to a memoir, written by Bruno’s victims for The Forward. The Israel-oriented media world is, of course, lapping it up. Some have wondered if Bruno came to Jerusalem to participate in the city’s recent gay pride parade. Others have focused on putting the incident into the context of Cohen’s long, storied career of putting stuffy diplomats in their places. And still more have pointed out that the Bitter Lemons guys need to perhaps down-play their own supposedly tongue-in-cheek bitterness if they want to be seen in the movie as anything but partners in suckerhood – the ultimate Middle Eastern taboo.

Cohen “is exploiting our tragic and painful conflict in the most cynical and deceptive manner,” laments peace-nik Yossi Alpher in his Forward column. “I doubt he’ll give us anything in return,” Well how about giving us an excuse to unpuff our shirts? As Robert Plant once yelped, “Does anyone remember laughter?”

Until the Bruno movie hits theaters in about a year, though, all we have to deal with is a big buzz over a production spoiler – a mere footnote in the annals of Zionism that has captivated pop culture fans and detractors alike.

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