Thoughts on Sacha Baron Cohen's film Bruno

Saw the comedy film Bruno last weekend. This post will contain spoilers for those who have not seen the film.

I do wondering if Bruno needed to be quite such a ridiculous caricature, one assumes he was a send-up of the image some people have of gay men. Of course, he was also partly used to send up the materialistic fashion industry.

Highlights were the greedy parents of babies used in fashion shoots, the Republican senator Ron Paul being used as a possible seductee for a sex tape, the reaction of hotel staff to a chained up Bruno and his assistant and the talking penis.

The talking penis was fantastic. In fact, I wonder if they will bring out a talking penis screensaver for the computer or the mobile phone. It would certainly be popular.

I'm not sure if the film had elements of homophobia.

It could be interpreted by homophobic morons watching the film as how all gay men act, and I am concerned about the pack mentality of homophobic schoolchildren deciding that the one gay (or possibly gay) child in the class is like Bruno.

The section where Bruno and his then boyfriend take part in bizarre sex rituals, including using a exercise-bike powered dildo, shoving the large end of a champagne bottle up the boyfriend's bottom and spinning his boyfriend round while penetrating him, was probably the one that did most to reinforce homophobic stereotypes.

A.O. Scott in the New York Times goes further, claiming "The film demonstrates, at a fairly high level of conceptual sophistication, that lampooning homophobia has become an acceptable, almost unavoidable form of homophobic humor, or at least a way of licensing gags that would otherwise be out of bounds."

I would have liked to see less focus on Bruno himself (who isn't very interesting) and more on how people react to Bruno.

It would also be interesting to see how people on the left reacted to Bruno, including some of the hypocrites on the far left who only support gay rights when it suits them.