Setting us straight

Who knew the bearer of the world’s biggest balls would be one gay Austrian fashion journalist? That someone way out of the closet and way out of his mind could maybe save us from the murky depths that our media-saturated selves have dug our souls into?

The declaration that Brüno is a crusader of morality will probably strike you as blasphemous. But with a lot more sass and political incorrectness since 2006’s Borat, Brüno Gehard, the third alter ego to spring from method comedy actor Sacha Baron-Cohen’s multiple personality disorder, has grabbed the world by its balls at a time when it needed it. 

You’re probably familiar with the trailers, rife with flagrant faggotry that guarantees us upset stomachs from a whole lot of laughs and discomfort. Of course, Brüno isn’t called a mockumentary for nothing, and what would it be without the “real people” and “real situations” promised in the trailer, all brushing up against the title character’s man-scaped bravado. Indeed, these are people and situations that we’re well aware of — that we’ve slipped into the filing cabinet of our reality (“How a redneck would act,” “How a drill sergeant would react,” “How a man should behave in public,” etc.), except that here’s a big, gay creature poking this matrix with an eight-inch dildo. 

But all this is for Brüno’s shameless search for über fame — his end all-be all throughout the film that is certainly representative of our online objectives today. This need to be “the biggest gay movie star since Schwarzenegger” or “biggest Austrian superstar since Hitler” is as vulgar as how he imposes his sexuality upon whomever crosses his path, from the closer-to-homo waifs at Milan’s fashion week to the hick hunters who tell him to “f*ck off” when he tries to squeeze into their tents at night. His search for fame, like his insatiable need to fondle a “kugelsack” (a pair of, uh, balls), knows few boundaries. And while all the people — victims, rather — shown in the trailer are trying to digest the walking anomaly Cohen has created, we are too.

Shock Therapy

When we find our protagonist claiming an African baby at a baggage carousel in order to accessorize with “ze little black child” as Brangelina and Madonna have, we’re afforded the gasps of witnesses. More so when he lands a guest spot on a talk show dominated by a black audience, their protests resounding when they find out that his ill-begotten son, given the “traditional African name” O.J., had been swapped for an iPod. Or Brüno in a skin-tight shirt getting tips from a clueless alpha on how to use karate against the attack of a homosexual, hand-to-dildo combat and all (“They probably would attack from behind”); this, after dropping trou in front of former American presidentiable Ron Paul in a bid to seduce him.

The point to the preposterousness becomes clear when you see the actual movie, which I’d done over the weekend due to the considerable lag of its local screening and thanks to the guerrilla-cam dibidi copies cinemas warn you about. While we’re able to segregate our concerns — the world issues from the world of celebrity — through our Google Readers, Cohen has made a masterpiece of pitting them nail-bitingly close together. In the name of fame, Brüno heads to L.A. to pitch a “Hot or not”-type show reminiscent of red carpet critiquing — but for celebrity fetuses (“Keep” or “Abort”); he’ll hold a casting call and see how far stage parents will go to get their babies to bag a job (liposuction? Okay); he’ll travel to the West Bank to convince a “real terrorist” to kidnap him and on to Jerusalem to play mediator between a former Israeli Mossad agent and Palestinean academic, likening their conflict to Jennifer and Angelina’s but less dramatic. He’ll even go so far as to “quit guys” after an epiphany that big Hollywood stars like Tom Cruise and John Travolta (wink, wink) are hetero. But after joining the army in D&G gear, hitting on a pastor attempting to lead him into salvation, and getting unwillingly whipped out of his clothes by a buxom dominatrix, our fearless flamer reaches his straight-saturation point at a cage fighting arena in Arkansas, where its Red State audience sees red after Cohen tries to see how far freedom of expression can go. Not for the sodomy-squeamish at heart.  

In the end, you might be enlightened enough to find that all the indecent exposure was necessary in order to expose us for what we really are: hypocrites, haters, predatory fame whores, and people who just generally know not what we do — or say, especially since calls for peace, love, and understanding have made for great commerce, if not prime material for satire.

With Borat, Cohen addressed our uneasiness towards the alien. With Brüno, he’s sharpened his usual feigning of ignorance in order to exploit our own, but more to wave around the prevalence of intolerance today. A Band-Aid-checking song collaboration — Bono, Snoop, Sting and Elton — shown as the credits roll best exemplifies this. And when you heave that last nervous laugh, you have to think once more, “God, is this the world we live in?”     

(Parental) Guidance Counselors

Brüno as an abominable caricature of our times (to keep us in line, no doubt) means that education and ethics can come from a few other unlikely places.  

John Hughes: His death last week should have people canonizing him as Shakespeare for the teen screen. Consider Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off as classics that can be passed down to the next pimply generation in order to up their EQ and realize that life will always be like high school (even after graduation) but will still be what you make of it.

Lily Allen: “I am a weapon of massive consumption, and it’s not my fault it’s how I’m programmed to function” Allen trills on her latest single, The Fear, what could be a song of warning for a generation drowning in their vices and devices (iPods, Blackberries, whatever); timely satire from such syrupy vocals.  

Bill Maher: Before teachers were stuffing Catholicism down my throat in elementary school and kids were condemning me for not being “confirmed,” I wish I had Mr. Maher as a Real-igion teacher. The conflicted can find solace, however, in the 2008 comedy/documentary Religulous, where Maher casts a rueful eye on the many faces of religious fanaticism — all ugly rather than illuminating.  

Joel McHale: The host of E! Channel’s The Soup offers up a remedy to all the toxic trash on television: wry humor. Sarcasm is not the defense of the weak but a means to point out the filth and absurdity that meets us at every reality show corner. Trust me, his commentary is even better for your soul than a bowl of chicken soup.