While I’m explaining comedy to everyone because I am the expert on everything, can I just nitpick this one little thing that I see quite a lot about Sasha Baron Cohen?
From Jezebel’s post on “How to Make Rape Joke”:
1. Borat
“In Kazakhstan the favorite hobbies are disco dancing, archery, rape, and table tennis.” Okay. Why is that funny? Who is the butt of the joke? Rape victims? Nah, I’d say that the butt of that joke is Kazakhstan, or, at least, the caricature of Kazakhstan that Sasha Baron Cohen has constructed—a borderline-medieval old world racist mud-hole. He’s satirizing the casual misogyny of a certain set of crusty old anti-Semitic post-Soviet eastern European men in stinky suits. And I have no problem with that. Though I could be wrong!
Sasha Baron Cohen’s joke is not on Kazakhstan and nor was his Ali G joke on UK immigrant rappers in council estates, his joke is you.
This is probably easier to see in the original TV series. The joke is actually about your prejudices. The hapless person representing you and your culture on-screen is being confronted unknowingly with one of Baron Cohen’s characters and they (you) have such a sense of superiority that they can be convinced these ‘foreign’ cultures and sub-cultures are as backward and stupid as he is playing them to be. That the person believes these stereotypes to be real people is the joke, not the stereotype itself. Baron Cohen often orchestrates situations where you get to see how patronising we can be to people of other cultures, too, and knowing Baron Cohen is English helps explain why he chooses to target class snobbery and xenophobia the way he does in his comedy. Another of his favourite jokes is about your hypocrisy. By playing these characters Baron Cohen gets people (you) to drop your guard and participate in, or at least tolerate, incredibly offensive things that you would otherwise be PC about. So, in the Borat joke on that Jezebel post we can see Borat expressing not only misogyny but also quite a lot of antisemitism and Baron Cohen is Jewish. His joke is about how you would speak up if someone was saying those things in front of him as a Jewish man but that you’ll let them pass by when you don’t think a Jewish person is in the room.
You can hate other things about the Borat joke but you can’t hate that it is a stereotype, because that’s the whole point. So, anyway, that’s how you suck eggs.
Oh it’s so nice to see someone else thinks this way. I apparently took on the title of humourless feminist years ago when I realised this while watching Team America. I was laughing at it :ironically: because :I: would never call someone a ‘towelhead’ or something like that. Meanwhile, my housemate (somewhat conservative guy) was laughing at it because he really thought it was funny. He wasn’t laughing ironically. After that I realised that you can’t laugh at something racist (or sexist, etc) ironically. it’s not ok for you if it’s not ok for someone else.
and that is why I find watching Borat and Baron Cohen’s other movies very difficult, because I get that dynamic now, he is making fun of us making fun of others. the song Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist from Avenue Q also gave me the same kind of creepy feeling. I saw it with a big group of people and only one other person thought that song was gross (basically the song implies a white audience is singing along and enjoying the joke).
O deer, I keep commenting on certain kinds of posts and then coming back to see if there were any other comments, and finding out I was the only one to comment. And I am absolutely not game to comment on that article you wrote rejecting the smug mother stereotype, but that is where all the discussion is happening, with 25 comments. ANGST.
I find watching Baron Cohen painful too for much the same reasons. He makes me cringe at myself which is a deeply unpleasant sensation. He does it so well you feel like he is watching over your shoulder saying ‘why are you laughing at this?’.
Now I understand why that part of the Jezebel piece made me feel weird. You are totally right. It’s not a type of humour I enjoy, although it can be extremely clever and effective with some people.
But the risk of not being truly understood is so large – there’s another British comedian called Al Murray who’s persona is “the pub landlord”, who is extremely misogynistic (e.g. women are only allowed to have two occupations – nurse or secretary), and probably racist too. Some people love him because they know he’s taking the piss, but too many in his audience laugh because they agree, and I can’t stomach it. He says it’s their own fault/loss and he’s there for the people who get the joke, but I’m not comfortable with that attitude.