I don't find him funny at all, I find him nasty, dumb, and repelent. Juvenile

Ok, it's "transgressive," and maybe I'm just a fuddy duddy. But people's willingness to "go along" and to not offend strangers is a crucial skill, a thing that prevents violence and maintains civility. It's only "hypocrisy" if you're, say, 18: It's kind of a Holden Caufield attitude. Have you read that book lately? It does not hold up well if you're an adult.

Cohen goes around humiliating people by showing them trying to make social nice with a wierdo. It's not a very funny premise: yes, people will try to be polite. It's obvious. Making fun of that tendency is corrosive and contemptuous--it's contemptuous of the glue--civility--that holds society together. It's of a piece with all the other dumb, scatalogical gross out comedies that flourish now--it's a mark of the decline of public, cvic culture and of consideration for others. And it's not a clever premise.

All this probably sounds really pompous to people who like Cohen, but I'd mark him as a major milepost on the road to idiocracy

...and we would almost accept your high-minded opinion of yourself, until you tell us how much you like "Family Guy" and "Friends"...

and Jackass I & II.

. . . except the part about Catcher in the Rye, which I think holds up pretty well provided it's read as a portrait of adolescence (and an exploration of some of the aspects of adolescence worth keeping). Then again, I always preferred Franny and Zooey.

That said, I'm not sure that what Cohen is pointing out is the hypocrisy of social niceties. It seems to me that what makes a lot of what he does funny is the way that people, even when trying to be nice, manage to betray their phobias and prejudices anyway.

Also, while I think civility is certainly the glue that holds society together, I think that transgression is the glue that holds art and entertainment together. Oh, there might be some good pro-civility art out there--Lewis Carroll portraying Alice's Victorian propriety as heroic comes to mind (though it's worth noting that this came from the pen of a suspected child pornographer), and there's always the dry-but-essential Greek tragedies--but generally, that which entertains or edifies us (and the line between the two is thinner than anyone likes to acknowledge) is that which allows us to escape the rigors of civility for an hour or three.

All that said, I'll probably wait 'til Bruno comes out on DVD, simply because there's no compelling reason to pay to see it on the big screen. Moon, with Sam Rockwell, and The Hurt Locker are both higher up on my moviegoing queue.

*** Have you read that book lately? It does not hold up well if you're an adult. ***

Then you don't have a clue what the book is about. It holds up extremely well. If you think Salinger is saying that Caulfield is necessarily right, then you are dumb as dirt. It is a profile in adolescent thinking. It does not ADVOCATE it.

Your other comments are similarly dull.

maxvintage:

I don't find him funny at all, I find him nasty, dumb, and repelent. Juvenile

Ok, it's "transgressive," and maybe I'm just a fuddy duddy.

Bingo. I'll give you credit for being able to look inward, but I hope to never wind up at a party with you.

I'm actually quite a funny guy, and very irreverent. I just don't like potty humor much. Do you? Then we BOTH hope never to meet at a party. I'l keep an ear out for the guy telling fart jokes, and move away

Oy. Well, my son just had to read it multiple times, in middle school and high school. Do you think they were giving it to him so he could see what a shallow, narcissitic jerk Holden is?

I have read it, it does not hold up well. I loved it at 15, I found it annoying at 45. I liked the Lord of the Rings at 15, now I think it's childish. I grew up! It happens, you'll see. My point was that Cohen has a similarly shallow, narrow sense of "phoniness." He thinks it's the height of erceptiveness to recogize that people d not alwasy say what they feel.

I don't have a particularly "high-minded opinion of myself"--I never mentioned my opinion of myself in the post.I'm not sure tat my opinions of myself are either high-minded or low minded, the are just my opinions.

Not sure why it's relevant, but here goes: Friends--sometimes funny, hardly ever watched it. Family guy, sometimes funny, too in love with being "naughty" for my taste. Jackases I and II? did not waste my time.

Fart jokes unite us all maxvintage!

And for Bruno being mean spirited and breaking down the social order. Yes. It is mean spirited and downright aggressive. It is bitter vitriol. That is also the nature of true satire.

I am sure Swift pissed off a few folks in his time too.

SBC appears to aim at the everyday bigot inside many of us rather than institutions in Borat and Bruno. Is it an unfair fight for a brilliant Cambridge educated man to pick on poor everyday mugwumps? Maybe. But when said mugwumps are constantly complaining about "out of touch elites," and see themselves as somehow more noble, I think it is pretty much fair game.

Well I maybe agree that all art is transgressive, but I think you'd have to agree that ll transgressiveness is not art? Just becasue something is transgressive doesn't make it art, or funny, unless you're 5 years old, at the age when everything is funnier with the word "butt" attached to it.

SBC is the definitive example of audacity. I believe as well that there has to be a purpose to audacity. Audacity for its own sake appears to be what Paris Hilton and Heidi Montag and her reptilian husband are all about (and countless other examples). SBC is audacious for a purpose. I think he is very funny much of the time (though often I am watching through my fingers). You don't. Fair enough.

I am simply arguing that there actually is a place for malicious and hurtful humour. I think that Tom Green is simply pointlessly puerile. But SBC is not simply thumbing his nose at social conventions for a few yuks. It is political humour.

I suffered through "Borat" to indulge my 16 year old son who thought it was great.
I felt the same pangs of embarassment for the hapless victims of the predictable set ups
which passed for comedy.

You've pinpointed the exact cause of my discomfort with Cohen's work. He supposedly is mocking the backwardness of his targets but with us fully aware of the deceit, instead makes us feel empathy for them and feel the pain of their humiliation. This is excruciating to watch over and over again.

I found Borat literally painful to watch and tried to explain my reaction to my son by
describing the comedic devices and stereotyping Cohen used as "mean spirited" or "cheap shot".
I agree that the actual target of his "comedy" is civility, which is why his films are more a
bleak sociological study and not funny at all.

goffers:

SBC is the definitive example of audacity. I believe as well that there has to be a purpose to audacity. Audacity for its own sake appears to be what Paris Hilton and Heidi Montag and her reptilian husband are all about (and countless other examples). SBC is audacious for a purpose. I think he is very funny much of the time (though often I am watching through my fingers). You don't. Fair enough. I am simply arguing that there actually is a place for malicious and hurtful humour. I think that Tom Green is simply pointlessly puerile. But SBC is not simply thumbing his nose at social conventions for a few yuks. It is political humour.

I agree that SBC is not simply thumbing his nose at social conventions for a few yuks, but I'm not sure that its political humor. While I do think that SBC intends to do things like expose the hidden homophobia that lurks just under the surface, one of the things I find brilliant about him is that with that cover, he's given himself total freedom to make the most basic homophobic fag jokes. Borat's not a guy bringing a bag of shit to the dinner table, he's exposing the pretnsions and hypocrisy of genteel southern culture. Yeah, but he's also got his shit in a bag at the dinner table.

Fair enough--I can see your point. I don't agree, but it's a good argument. In my opinion, what SBC does to get laughs is corrosive, and in a bad way, because it undermines the quality that makes it possible for those who are deeply opposed to each other to get along. I'm not surprised to find homophobia deeply rooted in ordinary Americans, but so what? There is no requirement that I like and approve of my neighbors or that I share their values. There's a legal requirement of fairness--which is why I support gay marriage, for example. And there is social expectation that I will treat my neighbor with courtesy, even though I think he's a right wing jerk. SBC could probably lure me into revealing I think my neighbor is a rght wing jerk, or that I think religious people are nuts, but nothing would be gained, excpet the revelation that I'm often nice to people who I privately strongly disagree with.