Box Turtle Bulletin
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyPosts Tagged As: Brüno
This commentary is the opinion of the author and may not necessarily reflect those of other authors at Box Turtle Bulletin.
July 16th, 2009
Brüno, Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest mockumentary, has been criticized by gay rights groups like GLAAD for reinforcing stereotypes about gay people and “decreas[ing] the public’s comfort with [them].” The movie’s eponymous main character is a flamboyant, fame-mongering Austrian who throughout the film is shown engaging in a hot tub romp beside his adopted black baby, “O.J.”; tethered to his partner by S&M gear to which he has lost the key; and using a bicycle affixed with a long rod to its wheel as a dildo. If you haven’t seen it, you can watch the trailer here (warning: not appropriate for work).
The movie’s producers have defended the film, saying the intent was to expose homophobia.
The studio’s argument, I think, is that in presenting someone with an exaggerated gay stereotype, it will test just how accepting he or she is of gay people. I sort of doubt this was really their intent — and it’s definitely not the effect: Who in the world would not be offended by someone trying to sneak into their tent naked at night, as Brüno does? And as Richard Kim points out, it is actually surprising just how tolerant people in the film are of Brüno’s histrionics.
Other reviews/critiques have focused on whether the film is good or bad for gay people and whether it’s beyond the pale of good taste (even for satire).
XXfactor’s Jessica Grose, who “almost walked out of Brüno,” called the film mean-spirited and “not funny.” Dana Golstein from TAP points out that while she found the film at times “uproariously” funny, it portrays gay sex as deviant and “that’s unfortunate”:
Yet because I was familiar with Baron Cohen’s shtick from his previous film, Borat, what most shocked me about Bruno wasn’t its exploitation of regular people, but its overt focus on the deviance of gay sex. Every single one of Bruno’s sexual encounters is a sado-masochistic kink-fest. … a lot of folks seeing this film are going to come out of it thinking to themselves, “Wow, gay sex is GROSS!
The thing I can’t stop thinking about as I read these reactions: How does this compare to drag shows? Drag queens make a living off being mean; the meaner, the better. Or a gay pride parade? A lot of people would think New York Pride is a “sado-masochistic kink-fest.” There are even arguments about whether gays should suppress these sorts of exaggerated expressions of gay subcultures because they might be off putting to society at large.
It’s of course a different thing to make fun of yourself and another to be made fun of, but the crux of many critiques of the film is that representations of gay people should be tasteful lest we scare the public back into the 1950s.
In my opinion, this film would only succeed in hurting gay people if one thinks it is an accurate representation of what gay people are like. The movie is clearly camp, which, as Susan Sontag said, is a performance of culture “in quotations marks.” I suppose some people will read them — and others won’t.
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