Burst: Brüno

This is just a quick reaction to what I just saw.

Having finished watching Sacha Baron Cohen's movie Brüno, I get the usual feeling I get with his work where it is hard to know who precisely was being mocked. On the one hand it is clear that Baron Cohen was making fun of the completely overt and unabashed hatred that homosexuals face in the mainstream of american culture. On the other hand he seemed to be critiquing the many excesses of gay culture. In the end I think the genius of his work is that no one escapes unharmed, not even him. He holds a mirror to all of us, and to himself. Clearly his mockery of Brüno's desire for fame, and above everything else celebrity, is self-referential, and our constant and willing participation in the comeuppance through humiliation of the many persons he meets says much about our lack of charity and ability to really enjoy the suffering of others.

It is clear that one of the basic conclusions of the film is that gay-bashing goes hand in hand with misogyny. There were various times the movie made this point, but none so clear as when Brüno met with the older evangelical Christian gay-to-hetero converter. In this scene the gay-to-hetero converter strangely attempts to turn Brüno onto women by talking to him non-stop about how annoying and boring women are but that "we" men need them. It was simply beyond bizarre.

This conclusion though seems relatively true to me. Perhaps gay-acceptance does not lead to the eradication of misogyny, there are plenty of examples of gay-friendly groups that are nonetheless anti-woman, but I cannot think of any gay-bashing groups that truly are pro-women's rights.