Bruno

[TransformX]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAGpmNb2xfQ

[jms]

One of my favorite comedians!

[Dr Mordrid]

OTOH I cringe every time I see his face. No interest at all in his latest abomination.

[Gurm]

OTOH I cringe every time I see his face. No interest at all in his latest abomination.

Hey wait, maybe you and Brian have something in common after all - sensibilities shaped in the first half of the 20th century! *wink* *nudge*

Sorry, couldn't resist. Everyone UNDER 50 finds Sacha Baron Cohen hilarious. Especially us J00z.

[Dr Mordrid]

Our 4 kids, aged 11 to 30, can't stand him either. Neither can the spouses of the 3 that are married. Go to one of our civic clubs, whose members are not oldsters, and mention the guys name, or those of his characters, and they either don't know him or nearly retch as we do. I know. I did just out of curiosity.

[Gurm]

Weird. *shrug* Jonathan Swift didn't get much respect either.

All I know is I've been a fan ever since the first time I saw "Throw the Jew Down the Well".

[Dr Mordrid]

The most common criticism I hear is that he's too juvenile - more for tweens, 12+ year old's, not adults, and even then they wouldn't let their kids watch his films.

[Gurm]

The most common criticism I hear is that he's too juvenile - more for tweens, 12+ year old's, not adults, and even then they wouldn't let their kids watch his films.

He makes you REEEEEEAL uncomfortable. That's for sure.

[High_Jumbllama]

He proved he was an ****ole in Borat. Reason enough to never watch any of his shit movies.

[Evildead666]

Never managed to get thru Borat....
Can't see myself watching this film either...
Will watch this trailer and see..

[Gurm]

He proved he was an ****ole in Borat. Reason enough to never watch any of his shit movies.

Really? What made him an "****ole", exactly? You DO realize that the POINT was to make you hate the character, right? To make you REALLY uncomfortable to the point of squirming? To make you go "DEAR GOD WON'T YOU PLEASE SHUT THE HELL UP AND GO AWAY?"

It's performance art. It makes you - and me - uncomfortable. On purpose.

Have you read "A Modest Proposal"?

[High_Jumbllama]

Never read it.

These movies may be performances but I do not find them entertaining in the least.


Whether or not people like this are playing ****oles or simply are ****oles, they/the characters piss me off too much.

[Gurm]

Never read it.

These movies may be performances but I do not find them entertaining in the least.

Ahh. Your basic education was a bit slipshod, then.

"A Modest Proposal" is a solution - put forth by Jonathan Swift - to the overpopulation problem in Ireland. It suggests - quite reasonably - that the solution to too many children and not enough food... is to eat the children.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_modest_proposal

Essentially, a proper Juvenalian satire is about not just irony (which is implicit in satire, something I'm not sure many people understand - you can link to a full discussion of satire from the wikipedia article) but in particular BITING, or MEAN irony.

Sacha Baron Cohen is no more an "****ole" than is any actor who played Shylock in "Merchant of Venice", or William Shakespeare for writing it. To say he is implies a fundamental lack of understanding of the source material.

You CAN dislike it. Many MANY people disliked "A Modest Proposal", something Swift was all too well aware would happen - he published it anonymously for exactly that reason.

One could even debate, I suppose, whether "Borat" or "Bruno" even qualify as Juvenalian (not Juvenile, *ahem*) Satire at all. But the very fact that nobody is in on the joke, everybody is uncomfortable even when they ARE in on the joke, and that it hits REALLY close to home... makes it so.

[Gurm]

Baron Cohen, the grandson of a Holocaust survivor, says he also wishes in particular to expose the role of indifference in that genocide. "When I was in university, there was this major historian of the Third Reich, Ian Kershaw, who said, 'The path to Auschwitz was paved with indifference.' I know it's not very funny being a comedian talking about the Holocaust, but it's an interesting idea that not everyone in Germany had to be a raving anti-Semite. They just had to be apathetic." Regarding the enthusiastic response to his song, "Throw The Jew Down The Well", he says, "Did it reveal that they were anti-Semitic? Perhaps. But maybe it just revealed that they were indifferent to anti-Semitism."

... and there it is.