Thanks for this review Amanda.
I don’t think I am going to see this film. I’m not much of a fan of Cohen’s humor to begin with and with all the previews and clips I’ve seen I can’t help but feel this film is going to do more to hurt gay people then help us. I think his intentions maybe in the the right place in supposedly trying to expose homophobia but it still looks to me like he is cashing in on it more then anything else as well perpetuating stereotypes at a very critical time for the gay movement.
I just don’t feel comfortable with straight guys using my minority status for laughs without having to deal with any real world consequences for their actions.

I’m always uncomfortable judging a satire by the inevitable portion of the audience that won’t get it.  Conservatives think that Colbert is one of them, and the fact that this movie is aggressively anti-homophobia at parts will probably fly over the heads of homophobes in the audience.  It’s a shame, but I’m not sure what to make of that.

I play dungeons and dragons with a bunch of swingers… also Libertarians, and I think maybe even secret fascists (even to themselves). It was constantly frustrating to interact with them, because I speak up around my politics. I remember one time, we were going back and forth about whether a fertility doctor should be required by law to treat lesbians (remember that court case in California). I asked, “So, what about gay people growing up in Salt Lake City?” “They should move away as soon as possible.”

Such deeply right-wing bullshit was really hard to understand, because these are people who saw themselves in the Enlightenment mode—challenging socially-imposed preconceptions, rebuilding a system of morality from the ground up, very self-confident and self-assured. It took a long time for me to figure out what was going on, to align these people in my mind with those tiny, afraid little right-wingers who think the sky’s going to fall if we don’t blow up everyone in the world who might not like them.

Your point (Cohen’s point?), about the Swinger thing, fits in with all of that so perfectly, and in a way I never realized before. Thanks for the observation, Amanda.

Just musing around these points… this is why it is so important that we NOT be colorblind. I worry that PC pressure (like what’s gathering against Buchannan right now) might even be standing in the way—people are so desperate to assert that they aren’t racist, homophobic, whatever, that they keep those prejudices and behaviors without realizing it. I dunno… thoughts?

I know what you mean Amanda, and I also share a bit of that discomfort.
But I think for me, as someone that had such a horrible time being young and out growing up, I worry about how this is going to affect the lives of gay kids or perceived to be gay kids across the country. Could the name “Bruno” become another slur like “faggot” to be thrown at young, vulnerable kids? Will this film give dumb jocks yet another reason to beat up some poor kid?
I’m not sure Colbert’s satire deals with the same level of accidental consequences for the people who don’t get it.
If Cohen were gay, I think it would change things as it positions the viewer’s relationship to the comedian in a different way. I’d feel much more comfortable, not to mention excited about seeing, a movie based around Scott Thompson’s character “Buddy Cole” from Kids in the Hall.

I don’t particularly enjoy Cohen’s brand of humor (too painfully embarassing) but the one thing I think it shouldn’t be judged by is how it might affect queers or anyone else. That way lies silence.

Liking AdamN’s points there.

I was in high school when South Park started using “gay” as a negative. I thought it was hilarious—what a wonderful way of pointing out how stupid homophobia is. Take something sucky, but completely unrelated to homosexuality, and call it “gay.”

Well… it took a week before I realized I was the only one who was getting the joke. And then I got sad.

Also: LOVE Buddy Cole.

Buddy Cole ain’t silence.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZX-sUGWt6o

ha: Such deeply right-wing bullshit was really hard to understand, because these are people who saw themselves in the Enlightenment mode—challenging socially-imposed preconceptions, rebuilding a system of morality from the ground up, very self-confident and self-assured.

This is a really good point. A high self-opinion doesn’t always translate into actual openness and tolerance, and when it doesn’t, there’s that extra barrier there of having to convince these people that there’s even something wrong. Consider the SF fandom, claiming a profoundly enlightened perspective on race (“if one’s imagination readily grants full human rights to future AI programs, robots, dolphins, and extraterrestrial aliens, mere color and gender can’t seem very important any more”)... but in reality, when the SF community was confronted, the result was RaceFail ‘09.

Also, that bit about the sensible response to living in an especially oppresive locale being to leave it… I’m reminded here of the memetic defect common to libertarians which invariably places the burden of action on the oppressed individual, and refuses to blame the actual perpetrators.

Like in the video above, there’s a lot of humor in the fact that straight men do get pleasure, sexual and otherwise, out of each others’ bodies, but they can never, ever admit it, because they’re crippled by their own homophobic policing.

Hmm. I really wasn’t going to see this before, but now I’m seriously tempted. I’ve sensed that weird omnipresent force against men expressing any sort of affection toward each other, like a third person in the room. I might want to hug my friend, and as far as I know, my friend might want to hug me, but we just don’t.

It struck me that being gay comes with the benefit of having said “fuck it” to the most important bit of repression that men internalize, so that there’s really nothing else to be threatened by—it must be rather liberating. ‘Course, I don’t know if this is actually so. Perhaps the gay community’s own strictures are just as bad, and this is wishful thinking on my part.

Just tell me this movie is better than that god-awful Borat movie.

*bristles in defense of SciFi fandom* There are a lot of things going on in this particular community, of which I am definitely a part. I recall the UFO geek in perhaps XFiles best episode “Jose Chungs from Outer Space” (oh yes, I’m a SciFi nerd), who was hoping aliens would abduct him and take him to a place where he didn’t have to get a job. Many of the rest of us, on the other hand, are far more balanced, healthy, and productive. I, for example, have a job. So there.

SciFi really opens the doors to working out your weird ideas about the way society can function. There is a huge intersection with Marxism in the genre (I point to TNG as being completely coherent with the End of History). Also creepy Libertarian notions about homesteading. Also outright fascist fantasies, like Orson Scott Card (homophobe successionist fuckstick) put forward in his Ender’s Game sequels—every planet in the universe becomes dedicated to an Old Earth monoculture. Planet Mormon. Planet Portuguese Catholic. Planet Taoists.

It is okay, because these societies are supposedly self-selecting, right? Actually, no, and you’re an intellectually dishonest crypto-fascist who completely ignores the pro-cosmopolitan, left-wing argument.

Also, that bit about the sensible response to living in an especially oppresive locale being to leave it… I’m reminded here of the memetic defect common to libertarians which invariably places the burden of action on the oppressed individual, and refuses to blame the actual perpetrators.

Libertarians conveniently ignore what happens when people can’t escape oppression or leave and find that oppression has followed them to their new home.  What would they say to Anne Frank and her family?  They had the good sense to leave Germany when they had the chance, but they weren’t able to get far enough away.

Hmm. I really wasn’t going to see this before, but now I’m seriously tempted. I’ve sensed that weird omnipresent force against men expressing any sort of affection toward each other, like a third person in the room. I might want to hug my friend, and as far as I know, my friend might want to hug me, but we just don’t.

You see this even in completely, positively, nonsexual situations.  At my last family reunion, I noticed something: female relatives hugged each other, when greeting and saying goodbye.  Females would hug males.  But the men would all shake hands.

MonkeyShine, definitely take another look at SciFi.

Star Trek TNG was massively left-wing. A cosmopolitan crew, apparently egalitarian motives in all directions, and they work for the government! As far as defining the genre, there are few works that loom larger than TNG, and it is, I feel, rather overtly Marxist.

Even in stuff like RoboCop, you get the police department staging a strike, rather sympathetically I thought, because the company who owns them has them overworked, underpaid, and dying in the streets. It takes a Reagan-inspired turn in the end, of course, just like how Alien’s “the Company” who sends them to their doom is replaced with one bad-apple, who happens to be Jewish, in Aliens.

Going back to those earlier writers… I’m not sure they really have command over the genre anymore, even in terms of influence. And writing back then muddies the politics of their work… after all, liberals love freedom too. But do take another look… you’ll find lefties aplenty.

ha:

Did you know that in Mormon theology every patriarch gets a planet to be god of?

I did not, Paul. That’s… freaky. God, I fucking hate that guy. I hate Joss Whedon just because Orson Scott Card said Serenity is the best scifi movie of all time. Because if Orson Scott Card likes your movie that much, it must be because you’re a secret Nazi, even if you don’t know it yourself.

Also, lefty book suggestions from my tweeps: Last in Kabuki series, by David Mack, quite revolutionary, anarchist. V for Vendetta, Alan Moore. The Postman, David Brin. The Road, Cormac McCarthy. The Diamond Age, Neal Stephenson.

Did you know that in Mormon theology every patriarch gets a planet to be god of?

Aw man, *now* I know why our planet seems so screwed up sometimes… the darn Mormons were right! :p (I thought Heinlein was the shit when I was a kid, despite the sexism, but I never had the bad taste to like anything of Card’s besides Ender’s Game. And I was definitely in the camp of surely-the-point-of-the-book-is-how-f’ed-up-this-whole-thing-is which I think redeems the fans of that book somewhat. ^^)

Is 1984 not left-wing sci fi? It had a huge left-pushing influence on me in HS, when I was obsessed with it. Also, Margaret Atwood does a lot of scifi/futuristic/dystopian things (Handmaid’s Tale?) Also, Ray Bradbury (though I’m not a huge fan of him).

Ha: Interesting thoughts on this thread. Did South Park originate the usage of “gay” as a slur? I thought that was multiples of decades old.

Baron Cohen is better analyzed through the theory of comedy rather than through political theory.  His method is to disarm his victims by adopting the persona of a disempowered outsider (gangster rapper, Kazakh journalist, gay Austrian).  He further disarms them with the temptation of fame - the video camera.  He presents the outrageous as something completely normal to his character’s outsider culture, and mines the culture clash for comedy.  This method produces politically interesting material, because it seeks to display how his marks react to the Other, but the fundamental purpose is not political - it is to get laughs, sell tickets and make money. 
The two best scenes in Borat were:
1) The comedy consultant, who can barely restrain himself from laughing at Borat’s retarded brother jokes.
2) The dinner party, at which Borat flagrantly abuses the norms of Southern hospitality.
The race, nationalism and terrorism stuff was incidental. 

The best scenes in Bruno are the parents interviewing for their babies to get on a photo shoot and the WWF-style cage match that takes a wild turn.  Without spoiling anything, I’ll just note that Elton John sings the closing number.  The movie has the imprimatur of the planet’s most famous fag.  Enjoy the film for what it is (often hilarious, if you have the stomach).  If you are worried that the movie will set our movement back, the joke’s on you.

“If you are worried that the movie will set our movement back, the joke’s on you.”
But I kind of don’t appreciate this kind of comment. It kind of feels a bit like “oh you silly fag, can’t you take a joke” when for most of my life my identity has ALWAYS been some straight guy’s punchline. Sorry if I’m tired of it.
Why shouldn’t gay and lesbians be concerned about a film by a straight guy that uses outrageous stereotypes of us at at a cultural moment when we are still very much fighting for equality and to live lives free of violence, even if that straight guy making the film is “really” on our side?
I don’t understand how suddenly Cohen gets away with things because of his intentions, things that we would otherwise be alarmed by, and things that many people in this country won’t get and could lead to violence/harassment of real actual gay people.

There is nontrivial evidence that Card didn’t write Ender’s Game.  Seriously.

Science Fiction reflects its authors.  Female writers are outsiders twice over, both as female intellectuals and as women traveling in an even more male-dominated culture than usual.  They tend to be excellent. 

I think the Race Fail is a real thing, but its genesis is inescapable; as long as the Enlightenment is viewed as the property of the West, then science fiction will be in the vein of the West.  Because The Enlightenment -> Science -> Science Fiction.  And because science is so, well, stunningly effective, cultures that accrete to it are going to start Westernizing at least somewhat.  Which creates some spectacular tensions within a community which is inherently about ideas.

SF right-wing? Well, I think it is safe to say it tends to be a sub-culture that fosters a kind of elitism—the elitism of nerds, to be sure. I guess this is one reason I took to it so strongly as a kid—I wanted to become a mad scientist and have the world beholden to me, you see…

Also, it’s a very US-dominated genre, so insofar as the USA as a whole is tipped rightward—and we generally have been—that flavors the whole thing.

However—consider the roster of the “Golden Age” masters—people like Isaac Asimov, who was born in the Soviet Union (well, they might not have quite adopted that name yet, but in Russia or perhaps Belarus, after the Bolshevik Revolution…) and never stopped being a leftist. Or Fredrick Pohl, who was for a time an actual member of the Communist Party.

Heck, even Heinlein himself ran for Congress, as a Democrat—and not just any old kind of Democrat; he ran in the late 1930s in Los Angeles, as part of the leftist EPIC (End Poverty In California) movement launched by Upton Sinclair’s gubernatorial run. Sinclair lost (due to a massively funded and orchestrated national corporate campaign against him) but his associates took the Governor’s office four years later, and dominated California’s Democratic party for some time after. Heinlein was one of them. Later he married a woman distinctly to the right of his then-wife; so I’ve been reading lately anyway, but I always figured he just swung right as he got older.

Then, later, in the 60s and after, you got people like Spider Robinson (big Heinlein fan but also clearly a hippie) and Ursula Le Guin. Has anyone ever mistaken Le Guin for anything but a leftist progressive? (The kind that seduced me into aspiring to be such a person myself…quality all the way.)

Or say Joe Haldeman—Vietnam vet, kind of cynical—but clearly a leftist.

I confess I spent some time in the 1980s trying to figure out if C. J. Cherryh was some kind of right-winger or not; I decided after reading Cyteen that if she could possibly be a Republican, she’d be one of the sane, pragmatic kind that they have pretty much run out of the party by now. And I read a lot of the politics among humans (as opposed to atevi) in the early “Foreigner” novels, which began in the mid-‘90s, as a dig against the kind of Republican extremism Newt Gingrich et al were pushing then.

I get the impression there is and always has been quite a lot of rightist SF out there. But I tend not to read most of it, nor do I find it remembered the way the leftist masters stuff is.

Actually it seems to me that nowadays rightist SF fans are more outspoken and persistent. It was quite a shock to me to hang out at the official Star Trek fan site some years ago and discover there were quite a few Bush supporters, Christian fundamentalists, Creationists (!), homophobes, and the like established there. I just have a hard time imagining how such people could ever enjoy Star Trek. Apparently they like the uniforms and the space battles and hating on Romulans or something. But I agree with ha, though with some reservations—bearing in mind that Trek was made for US TV, and that Gene Roddenberry had a few privilege issues of his own, it is about as forthrightly left-wing as our media is allowed to get. But apparently the limits imposed by the medium on being “offensive” to so-called “mainstream” American values served their purpose and quite a few rightists claim it too. I just don’t see quite how, or why…

Card—I never liked him. The only book by him I read completely was A Planet Called Treason, and IIRC it ended in genocide. Oh, and I read The Folk of the Fringe because I was bored; I’ve described my negative reactions to that screed before here at Pandagon and I won’t do it again now. None of the reviews of any of his other stuff induced me to read any of it—and that was back in the ‘80s before he went full-on wingnut.

Relative to the community of committed progressives SF is generally to its right, with some real Nazis (some of whom, like Jerry Pournelle, can write engaging, though often sickening, stories) among them. But relative to “mainstream” American discourse it clearly is to the left on the whole. And many of the worst offenders are so-called “mainstream” authors like Michael Crichton who dabble in the look and feel of SF but as SF writers are mediocre at best.

I’m always uncomfortable judging a satire by the inevitable portion of the audience that won’t get it.

It’s good you are.  Was it Walter Ong (or some other lion of a narrative scholar—I’m too lazy to check my books tonight) who once said as much?  I think his argument was that the very nature of satire itself guarantees that a portion of the audience won’t get it; those who aren’t “in” on the joke aren’t intended by the author to be brought into it, anyway. 

You see this argument all the time: ‘Well, I didn’t instantly recognize it as satire, therefore it wasn’t satire or wasn’t well-executed satire”.  Many narrative scholars consider this judgment value a fallacy.

Going over the comments in that link, I’m reminded of how batshit insane this country still was in 2005.  It really did take Katrina for us to be able to accept how fantastically stupid and mendacious the Bushies were.  God, I remember the Responsible Left desperately attempting to cling to militaristic respectability, searching about for ways to stitch together all the lies into a quilt one could throw over the atrocities.

I especially loved the pretense that things were more polarized now than they were “then.”  No, “then” we had fire hoses and dogs and soldiers shooting college students.  Things were pretty damned polarized.

Yeah, I love rightwing Star Trek fans.  In general, though, righties are very adept at ignoring reality, so it’s hardly like they wouldn’t be able to ignore the aspects of the Star Trek reality they dislike.  That’s what they do.

@adamN“If you are worried that the movie will set our movement back, the joke’s on you.”
But I kind of don’t appreciate this kind of comment. It kind of feels a bit like “oh you silly fag, can’t you take a joke” when for most of my life my identity has ALWAYS been some straight guy’s punchline. Sorry if I’m tired of it.

I hear you. In my own experience swap “fag” for “humorless feminist” though. I’d say you should never apologize for being tired of it.

There is obviously a lot of right-wing SF, but the lefty sf community is significant. There is the relatively mainstream “New Frontier” liberalism of Star Trek, but there is also anarchist SF, Marxist SF (China Mieville), and feminist SF (Octavia Butler). There’s no reason why the genre has to skew conservative.

The one thing that Baron Cohen’s straight identity brings to the situation is this: he mimes blow jobs, makes out with men, and gleefully does the gayest of gay stuff.  And the world doesn’t end.  It’s interesting to consider how that might affect a straight male audience.

BABH, all that strikes me as descriptive instead of really critical.  I’m aware of how Baron Cohen plays his pranks.  It’s even fun to figure out how they pulled certain stuff off.  But if he’s going to play in political taboo areas, he invites this kind of thinking.  Which I suspect he wants, which is why the “don’t overthink it” thing misses the point.

I’m always uncomfortable judging a satire by the inevitable portion of the audience that won’t get it.

I know what you mean, but mass market movies are a mass market medium, and if you’re broadcasting something to a wide population who’s going to take away the exact opposite of what you meant to say, then you’ve caused some harm. If you’re creating a mass market product that can only be understood by you and your little cadre of friends, then you’ve chosen the wrong medium. You’re not just judging a satire, you’re judging a big-budget movie satire being sold to the masses.

And ideologically, SF fandom is all over the map, though I would say you don’t get many evangelical Christian conservative types. But the fans do swing from fascist to libertarian to left-wing liberal.

The closest thing to left-wing Sci-Fi I found were Philip K Dick and the Illuminatus! trilogy, thought the later is far from being “pure” Sci-Fi.  And they we’re definitely in the minority.

Mmm?  Eric Russell’s “And Then there Were None” is an absolute classic for anarchic libertarianism.

I’m going to say, without having seen Bruno, that the cartoonish, offensive depictions of gay stereotypes is a good thing. You see a lot of cartoonish behavior at Gay Pride, too, and I believe that has been effective. Not, “we’re so much like you,” but, “we’re here, and we’re different, but we’re the same too.” So what if the chodes in the audience are snickering “fag” to themselves; sounds like Cohen got them to watch simulated gay sex without having a gay panic—that’s a learning moment. It isn’t entirely dishonest (I assume, not having seen the movie), and Bruno doesn’t need to be broken or punished for his behavior—sounds like he wins at the end.

You got out of the theater alive. And you thought it was funny. Or you didn’t. Whatever. It seems like he’s breaking some walls down here, and that’s good.

I’m also hoping we’ll see a lot more penises in movies. We seem to have good years and bad years with that… I’m definitely pro-cocks.

Pundit Maximus—THANK YOU for the link. I’d heard of the Hitler stuff, but not the speculation that he didn’t write the book. It makes a lot of sense. Read his link—good dirt on Orson Scott Card (the huge asshat).

Comedy is often uncomfortable.  Ever seen the British Office?  Very uncomfortable, but also very human: someone trying desperately to be something he’s not.  And that’s Baron Cohen’s humor as well: people put into situations designed to expose themselves.  Bruno makes me think a lot about Corky St. Clair, the Christopher Guest character from Waiting for Guffman.  Was Corky an offensive stereotype?  Yes and no, but there’s no denying that he was a stereotype.  Was the gay couple in Best in Show offensive?  Again, yes and no.  (Was that movie’s lesbian couple offensively stereotypical?  Same answer.)  Maybe those characters only exist for laughs, but they are fun and funny as well.

Being offended is anyone’s right, not that anyone is suggesting otherwise here.  I’m often offended at the depiction of kinky straight people, straight men and women in general, heterosexual relationships, marriage as a total goal of everything, normative desires toward some hypermodern but still fixated on Norman Rockwell American Dream, and a host of other things.  As a man who wears a speedo (and does a few dozen other social faux pas of the highest order,) I do what I can to get over the supposed norms of manly behavior, but I can’t even begin to figure out what a gay man, a woman, a lesbian, or a minority has to go through to not be driven insane by the bullshit rules that govern everything we let them govern.

Maybe this is an apples-oranges comparison here, but lefties who’ve got their knickers in a twist over SBC’s decidedly outrageous stunts—calling them offensive to gay people, offensive to women, offensive to different races, or (as with Borat) offensive to immigrants in general—remind me of people who blanch and get completely unhinged over Swift’s proposed eating of babies.  In order to subvert whatever paradigm they’re targeting, satirists often shock, and shock con brio.  By actually becoming (or, as with Swift, proposing) the freakishly over-the-top logical extension of people’s ingrained prejudices and/or religious beliefs (straight folks believing that gay people are obsessed with sex and flaunt their bodies in short-shorts; the Catholic Church of the time promoting incessant childbearing, even among the poor who couldn’t feed them, even as children died of starvation) the satirist underscores the absurdity of the ingrained prejudice and/or religious belief.  Sometimes that absurdity itself is so outrageous, it can only be effectively called out, and thus decried, by potent satire, I think.

Sadly, much of our culture is either completely irony-deficient or mired in their own echo-chamber ideology, and they miss the goddamned point.  In short, they are not watchers of Curb Your Enthusiasm.

I don’t know, Tyro.  That argument bothers me insofar as there’s a real truth to the fact that people will generally meet expectations given to them.  The reason the public is so stupid when it comes to understanding entertainment is that they’ve been fed crap for forever.  When someone like Tina Fey or Stephen Colbert or Sasha Baron Cohen actually raises the bar, I have to wonder if the fact that a lot of people won’t get it is counterbalanced by the fact that it reaches a lot of people in the gray area and actually makes them smarter. 

A lot of liberal commentators were wringing their hands over the over-the-top perversity of the opening scenes that show Bruno’s comically exaggerated sex life.  But what happened was that it raised the bar so high in audience expectations that by the time he’s passionately making out with his lover in front of a crowd at the end, there was none of the usual squirming from straight dudes that you get in movies that have two dudes kissing.  Was that the intention?  Actually, I think so.  The scenes really bookend the movie. 

I share your worries, Tyro, but they’re counterbalanced by my strong concerns that lowering intelligence expectations on the audience will return us a stupider audience.

This review gave me pause in some of my concerns.  I hadn’t thought before about how the allergy to effeminacy as a “negative” stereotype may be an attempt to fight back against homophobia, but it has the effect of creating a division between “good” and “bad” gays.  Bigots do tend to retreat to an area where they’ll allow that there’s acceptable members of whatever group they hate on, which is why misogyny has always obsessed over madonnas and whores, and you’ll hear racists say, “I don’t have a problem with black people, but I hate n*ggers.”  (I’ve actually heard white people back home say this in earnest.)  We’re moving towards that problem with the acceptance of gay people, where those who conform to gender roles in their mannerisms and dress will get a lot more social esteem than those who flout gender roles outside of the bedroom.

The flaw in Lim’s argument is that Bruno isn’t a villain because he’s flamboyant.  He’s a villain because he uses Mexican laborers as furniture when Paula Abdul comes over for an interview.  But what was interesting was that many reviewers I read were more worried about the sissy stereotyping than anything else, or they mentioned that and not Bruno’s shallowness, racism, or mean-spirited attacks on his friends.  At this point, I have to say these reviewers got punked and probably proved the point that Baron Cohen set out to make—-that replacing old-fashioned homophobia with a newer version that polices dress and mannerism is just another kind of bigotry.

Bruno doesn’t need to be broken or punished for his behavior—sounds like he wins at the end.

That’s the other thing that Lim—-who seems to be an expert in the history of gay depictions in mainstream movies—-notes, almost off-handedly.  Bruno triumphs at the end, in direct contrast to the usual fate of death that’s out there for gay people even in sympathetic movies like “Brokeback Mountain” or “Milk”.

Milk dies in the end?  Amanda, you ruined it!  Darn you!  Darn you to Heck!

(I had already read somewhere that Heath Ledger died.)

ha @7:07pm -

Great point. I always contend that I was raised by racist parents, in a racist culture. It’s my life’s goal to exorcize some of the shit that’s been put in my head from the word go. I stumble upon fears, preconceptions, and I try to deal with them.

I’ve recently come to realize that when angriest, I want to call a guy a faggot or a cocksucker, like that’s the worst thing somebody could be. And that’s homophobic. I’m homophobic. I am a bigot. I try to analyse my behavior, and correct it. I have gay friends whom I think should have all equality under the law, whom I believe are equal, yet something inside of me is horrified about what they do. And I didn’t put it there. But I want it out.

When I have this conversation with people I would consider to be liberal, they deny any racism or bigotry. When confronted with the situation of crossing the street when 2 thuggish looking black guys are walking down the street, they call it pragmatism, not racist stereotypes. There’s a pretense that racism doesn’t exist in their minds. I contend that they grew up in the same groups I did. They experienced the same media. They had the same crazy adults around them that I did. Some of those subconscious stereotypes have to be there.

Unless we admit that we have racist, sexist and homophobic notions, we can’t deal with them. All the bullshit that’s come up in the last couple of days about Zell Miller referencing Gorilla Glue in a sound bite about Obama is idiocy personified. It’s hiding behind accusations to guard ourselves against any accusations of racism.

If I can call you one before you call me one, I win.

Kyra @ 8:32pm

At my last family reunion, I noticed something: female relatives hugged each other, when greeting and saying goodbye.  Females would hug males.  But the men would all shake hands.

When I see my friends, we hug. When I see my nephews, we shake hands and kiss. When I see my cousins. We shake hands. I think sometimes, it’s just the level of closeness you feel with each other. With some guys, I really like winding up, grabbing their hand, looking them in the eye and patting them on the back when greeting them. Other guys I know, we don’t even shake hands because they’re such touch freaks.

One thing that Cohen has said about the Ali G character is that he’s outing his interviewees. He’s acting riduculously stupid, but the subject is exposed by thinking that’s normal “for them”.

Politicians and journalists “play along” because they chalk it all up to those crazy kids and their new culture.

At my last family reunion, I noticed something: female relatives hugged each other, when greeting and saying goodbye.  Females would hug males.  But the men would all shake hands.

The men in my family hug a lot BUT we’re (part) Italian.  There are also those cultural differences, even a couple of generations in.

Yes to the “talking in code”, MonkeyShines—and I raise you the ever-reliable “homosexual panic” theme in fictions going back eons.  There’s a nice ambivalence there; audiences then and now can take what they want out of Joe’s reaction to gay tricking/his relationship with R. One doesn’t necessarily negate the other, as you say, for a whole host of human-nature/cultural-pressure reasons.

Dude, when two thuggish looking any kind of guys—or gals—are around, I pay attention.  There are violent people in the world, and some of them are nice enough to signal it for you.

Last night, on the way to a gay bar, I went past a group of straight guys who were making remarks about some gay man that they had seen. “Dude was a total Bruno!” “Faggot…”. This was on Polk Street here in San Francisco.
I’m not advocating silence for Cohen and his comedy, just hoping to awknodlege that this kind of mainstream satire maybe more often then not will work against its intentions.

As far as defining the genre, there are few works that loom larger than TNG

Dear ha, if you believe that you’re the one who needs to take another look at sf fandom. Since I’ve been reading sf for more than 45 years, and it existed, as a genre, well before that, TNG, can’t possibly have been one of its defining works. Here’s a news flash, the world did not miraculously come into existence 15 minutes before your birth.

MKK—grumpy old phart

PiaTor, right on!:

His Excellency fastened a cold eye upon him and demanded, ‘Well?’

‘He refuses to come.’ Bidworthy’s veins stood out on his forehead. ‘And, sir, if only I could have him in the space troops for a few months I’d straighten him up and teach him to move at the double.’

‘I don’t doubt that, Sergeant Major,’ the Ambassador soothed. He continued in a whispered aside to Colonel Shelton. ‘He’s a good fellow but no diplomat. Too abrupt and harsh-voiced. Better go yourself and fetch that farmer. We can’t loaf around forever waiting to learn where to begin.’

‘Very well, Your Excellency.’ Trudging across the field, Shelton caught up with the farmer, smiled pleasantly and said, ‘Good morning, my man.’

Stopping his machine, the farmer sighed as if it were one of those days one has sometimes. His eyes were dark brown, almost black as they regarded the newcomer.

‘What makes you think I’m your man.’

‘It is a figure of speech,’ explained Shelton. He could see what was wrong now. Bidworthy had fallen foul of an irascible type. They’d been like two dogs snarling at one another. Oh, well, as a high- ranking officer he was competent to handle anybody, the good and the bad, the sweet and the sour, the jovial and the liverish. Shelton went on oilily, ‘I was only trying to be courteous.’

‘It must be said,’ meditated the farmer, ‘that that is something worth trying for—if you can make it.’

Pinking a little, Shelton continued with determination, ‘I am commanded to request the pleasure of your company at the ship.’

‘Commanded?’

‘Yes.’

‘Really and truly commanded?’

‘Yes.’

The other appeared to wander into a momentary daydream before he came back and asked blandly, ‘Think they’ll get any pleasure out of my company?’

‘I’m sure of it,’ said Shelton.

‘You’re a liar,’ said the farmer.

His colour deepening, Colonel Shelton snapped, ‘I do not permit people to call me a liar.’

‘You’ve just permitted it,’ the farmer pointed out. Letting it pass, Shelton insisted, ‘Are you coming to the ship?’

I’m extremely late to this long thread, but I should point out that SF isn’t actually left-wing. Do recall, the majority of the U.S. is left wing; SF reflects that majoritarian view and distills it. This is why SF non-literature is progressive, but never radically so: Star Trek doesn’t have people switching genders or changing ethnicities or even deal with the implications of mass interbreeding with free worldwide travel and communications (we’d all be brown after X generations). The point: SF, except for novels, is always SOFT SF, and soft SF—or out-and-out science fantasy, which is 99% of all soft SF in a visiual medium imo—doesn’t seriously deal with the implications of technology. Technology is just a way to explore one concept or another. That’s why Star Trek is riddled with technology that should rattle the pillars of civilization . . . but never does.

Writers, however, can be awesome progressives, imo, with greater ease.

Mmm?  Eric Russell’s ”And Then there Were None” is an absolute classic for anarchic libertarianism.
Phoenician in a time of Romans  on  07/18  at  01:46 AM

Anarchic libertarianism—a.k.a., real libertarianism—is the exact opposite of “right-wing libertarianism.” This poster knew that, I’d bet—just pointing it out.

Last night, on the way to a gay bar, I went past a group of straight guys who were making remarks about some gay man that they had seen. “Dude was a total Bruno!” “Faggot…”. This was on Polk Street here in San Francisco.

My question would be, had those guys actually seen the film, or had they only seen the trailers and TV commercials?

I can’t defend it one way or the other because I never saw Borat and I’m probably not going to see Bruno, but I suspect the problem is going to be more with the people who don’t actually see the whole film but see the clips in the commercials than with the people who actually see the whole thing.  You’re probably going to have a whole bunch of 12- and 13-year-old boys (and their emotional equivalents) adopting the phrase without having any idea of what’s actually in the movie.

Fresh Air ran a repeat of an interview with Cohen on Friday.  Two things Cohen mentions that are relevant to this thread:

- Cohen compared documentaries, where you need weeks of time, if not more, to get subjects to open up, with his style of comedy, where his characters serve as a shortcut to get people to open up much more quickly.

- As Lim points out in that Slate piece (and as you can see from the linked YouTube piece where Bruno’s in Alabama), Cohen feels he’s in much more danger as Bruno than as his other characters because homophobia is still acceptable.  The situation he describes about Bruno at that U of Alabama game is pretty harrowing.

As far as Bruno inciting homophobia:  How many of you believe that the racism towards President Obama is inspired by that New Yorker cover?

Wait wait wait…a discussion of the politics of sci fi, and noone mentions the greatest living sci fi writer, Iain M. Banks?  The Culture is a post-scarcity society, and you need scarcity to have capitalism.

Do recall, the majority of the U.S. is left wing;

My first reaction to this claim was, “News to me!”

On second thought there’s some truth to it—the majority is probably considerably to the left of the leadership, at least on concrete issues. This is why the Democratic and not the Republican party has consistently had more registered members, and generally dominated offices, after all.

But the reason this claim of yours sounds so stunningly counter-factual is that our cultural narrative is strongly, even overwhelmingly, right-wing, any way you care to measure it.

SF reflects that majoritarian view and distills it.

Well, if that were the controlling factor, wouldn’t we expect all sorts of more-or-less popular genres to be equally or even more blatantly “left-wing?” Would you characterize soap operas, or sports, or regular sitcoms, or any mass media at all as “strongly left-wing?” Music, maybe. Perhaps theatre. In any of these we all know of strong counter-examples of course.

This is why SF non-literature is progressive, but never radically so:

No, actually if by “non-literature” you mean TV, movies, etc, I think the reason for its moderation, often to the point of dilution, has to do mainly with the flat demands of the corporate-controlled mass media not to cross certain lines at all.

Half the fun of watching a show even today is seeing them sneak stuff under the radar.

Star Trek doesn’t have people switching genders

Yes they did! Well, once that I recall—Quark on DS9. Which illustrates your point better than if it never happened—since it was possible for a human doctor to change Quark to a Ferengi woman and back to male again, presumably it would have been trivially easy for any human who cared to to do the same—so never showing anyone else doing it is indeed bizarre.

or changing ethnicities

Now that I never did see—though they’d often get surgically altered to look like entirely different species.

or even deal with the implications of mass interbreeding with free worldwide travel and communications (we’d all be brown after X generations).

Fair enough, since they showed the opposite…

The point: SF, except for novels, is always SOFT SF,

You’ve got to mean “stories”—written stories that is—there’s plenty of short Hard SF—in fact I imagine the total word count in that category is longer than Hard SF novels—actually if you have a story that merits a full-length novel, the hard-SF part of it has got to be background to a story about people. Short stories are the perfect medium for pure focus on a hard-SF idea.

and soft SF—or out-and-out science fantasy, which is 99% of all soft SF in a visiual medium imo—doesn’t seriously deal with the implications of technology. Technology is just a way to explore one concept or another….
No One of Consequence on 07/19 at 06:46 AM

It sounds to me like you are defining “dealing seriously with technology” as specifically not dealing with its implications for human beings! Which to be fair does describe a certain brand of SF, specifically the kind that took the greatest pride in being the “hardest!”

But for just about any SF author, even one as “hard” as say, Hal Clement (who is generally very “soft” when it comes to stuff like characters and plots!) technology, and even science itself, is indeed mainly about exploring concepts.  If that concept is not mainly about people dealing with it, then you’d better be writing a short story!

Anyway, in the fan wars between “hard” and “soft” SF of the Sixties, it was the right-wingers who generally flocked to the “hard” banner, while disdaining “soft” SF as the province of hippies. So we’d expect that the “softness” of media SF would make it even more left-wing.

Whereas you’ve correctly pointed out that media SF tends to be severely restricted. In fact in the 1980s I pretty much wrote off any movie or series billed as “Science Fiction” since, after movies like Terminator (which was SF) and I suppose still more seminally, the “Star Wars” movies (which were not, by my standards anyway), it got to be more and more “Cops, Cowboys and Soldiers IN SPACE!” (or at any rate FROM SPACE!) At best, modern SF movies and shows overlap pretty strongly with the horror genre—or are our modern answer to westerns.

Now for me, SF is and always has been mainly “literature,” written stories. And all that stuff you said Trek didn’t do, people like Ursula LeGuin, John Varley, Spider Robinson—and heck, even Robert Heinlein—did.

Bruno’s gleeful perversion is contrasted with the strong whiff you get from the swingers that they’re trying to prove something, coupled with their overly strong insistence on seeing a difference between getting aroused by fucking near people of your own gender and fucking people of your own gender.  (At least for the men.) Like in the video above, there’s a lot of humor in the fact that straight men do get pleasure, sexual and otherwise, out of each others’ bodies, but they can never, ever admit it, because they’re crippled by their own homophobic policing.

Haven’t watched it yet, but wouldn’t getting sexual satisfaction from someone of the same gender mean that you are not straight, but either gay or bi?