WORDS : PRIYA ELAN
So the Bruno premiere was last night. According to sources, journalists had to sign a review embargo before seeing the flick. One wonders if this is damage limitation to protect the films opening weekend gross ticket sales. Could it be a Terminator Salvation sized turkey?
It seems unlikely, with what we know about Sascha Baron Cohen’s ability to judge the precarious line between ‘pretty funny’ and ‘pretty offensive’. But perhaps the film makers and studio are worried about something else entirely.
I remember when I went to watch Borat in the cinema. As I began to look around at the lunkheads around me, I thought: ‘Are these guys laughing at the parody of American culture or, like, the hairy guy with the silly foreign voice?’
Hmmm…
Like Sarah Silverman’s knife-edge offensiveness, Baron Cohen holds a mirror up to people’s prejudices by playing the part of the comical outsider. Part of the comedy in Ali G, Borat, and now Bruno is that they end up in places and situations they’re not suppose to, subsequently baiting a reaction from potentially confrontational forces. But there’s always a danger that an audience could interpret the comedy so literally that instead of shining the light on bigots it becomes another bullet in a bullies arsenal.
And I’d imagine that the core of Bruno’s audience (pubescent boys) might not, you know, get the post-modern gist of all Bruno’s bumming jokes.
According to this article many of Hollywood’s gay community are worried about the film. But Universal Pictures say that the ‘overwhelming majority of the audience’ would understand the flick is lampooning homophobia. Which is just the type of thing a huge Hollywood studio would say.
As actor Peter Paige from the US version of Queer As Folk said: ‘When you see a Bruno clip in a room full of gay men, everyone laughs and it’s fine. When you see a Bruno clip in a room full of straight men, they’re all laughing, and it’s a different thing. You start to go, “Hmmm, I don’t know how I feel about this.”‘
And it’s hard not to feel fidgety thinking about what the general publics reaction to the film will be. Let’s just hope people get the (real) joke.
