[Marxism] "Bruno" reviewed

[J Rothermel]

  Bruno: A homophobic and tedious failure of a film

Dressed up as irony, this caricature of ‘gayness’ is a boost for the 
bigots, writes Colin Wilson

Bruno, Sasha Baron Cohen’s latest comic persona, is an airheaded 
Austrian gay fashionista who has come to the US in search of fame.

Along this thin plot line are strung a series of scenes about Bruno’s 
homosexuality and the homophobia he provokes in people – from wrestling 
fans to army sergeant majors.

The first thing that strikes you is that this is a grotesquely 
homophobic film, a compendium of everything that a particularly bigoted 
12 year old boy might think he knows about gay people.

There’s an obsession with anal sex, which is treated as both revolting 
and hilarious.

Every teenage myth is referenced – from the belief that gay men have sex 
in front of children to the story that we push gerbils up each others’ 
backsides.

Undermine

When homophobic bullying frequently goes unchallenged in schools, and 
Radio 1 DJ Chris Moyles can use the word “gay” to mean “rubbish” with 
impunity, it’s depressing to imagine the effect this film will have for 
LGBT school students.

With its most memorable moments stressing that gay people are either 
absurd or revolting, it can only give confidence to bigots.

It’s no excuse that Baron Cohen also mocks homophobic Christians and US 
rednecks in the film.

Attacking both gays and bigots doesn’t make everything equal and leave 
us where we started – the film fails to take sides, and as such does 
nothing to undermine anyone’s anti-gay ideas.

The really strange thing for me is that this film is all about 
homosexuality, but there are no gay people in it.

In that sense it has as much to do with gay men as the Black and White 
Minstrel Show had to do with the reality of black people’s lives in the 
Deep South.

In both cases we have a bizarre series of stereotypes which end up being 
just plain offensive.

Some commentators have claimed that Baron Cohen confronts homophobia in 
the film. But confronting homophobia is about explaining the truth about 
the lives gay people live. Most LGBT people do this, and we know it 
requires patience and sympathy.

Because Bruno is an idiot, he’s not in a position to do that. Nobody 
learns anything or changes their ideas.

The rednecks go on being rednecks, and the world is presented as a 
mixture of mutually uncomprehending groups between whom no real contact 
or discussion is possible.

It’s a deeply miserable view of the world rather than a comic one.

In fact the film mocks everybody and everything. Models and Hollywood PR 
consultants are revealed to be facile people, which hardly counts as 
biting satire.

Bruno’s attempts to bring peace to the Middle East pokes fun at both 
Hassidic Jews and Palestinians. Nothing is worth taking seriously.

If this was the unfocussed, slightly crazy rage of Jonathan Swift or 
Eminem against the whole world, it might be interesting.

Gnat-brained

But the belief that the whole of human life and struggle is just the 
opportunity for one more joke about anal sex is tedious.

Even Bruno’s victims quickly get bored – most of them realise pretty 
soon that something isn’t right and are out of there, and the film’s 
gnat-brained attention span moves on.

This would be a truly depressing film if Baron Cohen found it easier to 
provoke homophobia.

However, he has to work really hard, in absurdly contrived ways, to make 
this happen.

Bruno goes hunting with rednecks who only throw him out after he has 
woken them up twice at night with crude seduction attempts.

He winds up a black talkshow audience by pretending to have adopted a 
black child and called him OJ.

Most of the people he encounters are remarkably tolerant of his dreadful 
behaviour until repeatedly provoked.

Sasha Baron Cohen is clearly an intelligent and creative person. He 
could presumably produce a film worth remembering in some way.

But Bruno deserves to be forgotten about as quickly as possible.





http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=18381