'Bruno' Revisited
I went to see "Bruno" in the public theaters, with the normal everyday people who go see movies. I went to the second- or third-gayest theater on earth, the Chelsea Clearview, because I wanted to see if the normal everyday gays would walk out. Beside me, however, sat a straight couple, of unspecified Latino somethingness. Before the movie there was a trailer for the Latino Film Festival. All the people in the trailer had the Rosie Perez accent, basically. "We don't talk like that!" the girl of the straight couple said. They were laughing but they were really kind of aghast. They amused themselves talking like Rosie-Perez-out-drinking-on-Avenue-D for a while. They thought the movie was very funny however. I found this highly germane.
Apart from the issues of (what they called in the early 90s) "representation"—issues which I am going to continue to prefer to believe don't really exist in this modern age (and I think even Rabbi Simcha Weinstein agrees), when we all represent ourselves on the Facebooks—there is the issue of representing actual things accurately, which falls apart in Bruno. Even the "terrorist" interviewed by Bruno is now angry, since the terrorist interviewed in the movie is actually on the board of the Holy Land Trust.
More importantly, Anthony Lane is very much on to something today, when he wrote, "I realized, watching 'Borat' again, that what it exposed was not a vacuity in American manners but, more often than not, a tolerance unimaginable elsewhere." Similarly, I realized, watching Bruno again, that what doesn't happen in interactions with people in the film is what is important. People in odd job interviews are agreeable and sycophantic; people are happy when a baby is taken away from an obviously bad parent; people are upset and disturbed when confronted with an obviously crazy person. Yet, overall, people exhibit an extremely profound cultural training that forces them to treat people with at least some basic respect, when it isn't completely, earth-shatteringly obvious that they are dealing with a crazy; Bruno shows the extent of this social code, and how it borders on extreme, myopic denial.
People believe that other people are essentially the same on the inside. People do not always stop and take time, during an interaction, to add up all the factors that would indicate that the person they are dealing with is crazy, or dangerous, or a fraud. And the reason many people think that Bruno is mean-spirited is that the essential prank at the movie's heart is trade upon those values. We are watching a person with bad intentions flail on other people's social inhibitions. Those inhibitions are strong—like, Anne Frank "people are basically good at heart" strong, the worst expression of the denial of bad intentions ever. This cultural training is why bad people run riot on society, and take what they want. The rest of us just can't believe that anyone would do that. In any event, none of the gays present last night walked out on Bruno, and neither did they particularly talk like him either.
I am supposed to see this tomorrow at a free screening. So Sasha won't be making a dime off of me.
YES!
Now, when are we getting a Flickd Off about the REAL WTF gay movie of the summer, "Hump Day?"
I think the main thing learned is that movies that have gay central characters need not be "gay movies". Not to change course on the above, but here's what I mean. Because gays are so culturally starved for icons most of their life (like little African-American girls in the 70's with no black Barbie) as soon as something comes on the screen with some mintrelized gay thing, there is not really an evaluation of cultural worth but more of "this thing is like/not like me".
With this "The Pride" project, I had a conversation with non-New York gays who were very much like, "I don't understand" when I was telling them more about Mark and Eric and Stephen and Greg and Omar and Devin and the gals. So there is this cognitive dissonance where, because they don't identify with the (urban/slutty/like-my-friends-and-me) characters that they shut off their story intake. (My city friends "get it".) (Oh, and? No comments last week? Damn.)
This leads back to my point that after searching for themselves in Bruno, the audience either reject it or they can look for the story/meta-story of the piece. Only after moving to this level do you realize that it's, well, okay and pretty funny in a fratty kind of way, but that's all it is.
If you expect less, you might get more.
For what it's worth, I enjoyed your last "The Pride".
As one of those "non-New York gays," I don't really understand The Pride, either. The product placement! My eyes glaze over and then I sit astounded thinking, "How does he keep all that straight!"
…I always read "The Pride", too.
I've just been too damn tired to come up with any comments (but I always enjoy it!)
Rod, I like your "The Pride" pieces and get them, being a straight female notwithstanding. They call to mind a literary Béla Bartók.
A gay man searching for himself in Bruno would be akin to me searching for myself in Lady Bunny.
My friend David and I enjoy going to restaurants frequented primarily by a gay clientele and we let the wait staff assume we are on a first date. One of us usually throws a minor fit over some aspect of the food and we like to see how they react.
Later, we go to a straight bar and laugh and laugh. We'll be seing Bruno sometime this week. Super!
It appears to me that at the end of all this overwrought dissection of the cultural implications of not only the movie–but our meta and beta reactions to it is that the main character is a clown…simply…a clown. No matter if he is a clown with lumberjack leanings or Cater-waiter leanings. And the moviemaker used many different tools and tricks to articulate and present said clown–I dont beleive that once the story lines, story boards, improvisitations and editing tricks have all been employed that there is enough cinima verite left–afterall it is not a documentary…to merit a seriously argued critique of it intellectual integrity– rather it is a finely (and hilariously) constructed piece of summer entertainment. Enjoy. Laugh. Bleach your Asshole.
Not sure I will be going to see it, probably wait till it comes on DVD. Cohen was funny in Borat but… sometimes just goes too far.
At least Hedda Lettuce wasn't hosting.
Needs a "deep thoughts" tag
God that's so true. I'm not going to name any names here, but how often have you heard decent people say of an insane narcissistic nightmare-person on television, "He/she is just like you and I!" No, no he/she really isn't, he/she's a fucking monster.
This whole thing is great.
You nailed it here, Choire. You nailed it so nailed you actually found a teeny seed of virtue in the film. It's almost as if someone opened the back of "The Confidence-Man" and all the works shot out.
Not that the auteur would know or care, I suspect, so long as there's money to be made from more of the same.
This is so right on. I kept waiting for him to "expose homophobia," as everyone said he would. All he really exposed is the fact that people, when faced with total insanity, will generally power through much longer than we would expect.
It was funny as hell to watch but by no means is it some kind of cultural masterpiece.
I dunno. Don't you think that this is at odds with the notion that "people will do anything with a camera present"?
Including powering through totally insane circumstances?
Perhaps they were just waiting for the payoff, like the rest of us.
Ahhh, best piece on Bruno, and also on bad people who run riot on society, ever.
Sacha Baron Cohen takes advantage of people's good intentions because he is a classic psychopath. Just read the literature on this subject, e.g. Robert Hare's book Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us, or any other authoritative book on psychopathic personality. Baron Cohen fits the profile so well, it isn't funny — and, believe me, "isn't funny" is the right term.