WHO IS AMERICA?
Public America’s diminishing sense of shame leaves Sacha Baron Cohen little to play against , writes Tymon Smith
Is it satirical, distasteful or just juvenile?
It’s been 14 years since Sacha Baron Cohen’s last television prankster appearance in the final season of Da Ali G show, which introduced the US to the comedian’s alter egos — rudeboy rapper Ali G, Kazakhstani cultural correspondent Borat and exuberantly camp fashionista Bruno. After a successful feature outing for Borat in 2006 and a more mixed one for Brüno in 2009, Baron Cohen retreated from the real-life comedy that had made his name and produced two middling, irritatingly juvenile and determinedly lowest-common-denominator films, The Dictator (2013) and The Brothers Grimsby (2016).
In the 14 years since he retired Ali G, the world — and the US in particular — have become increasingly gobsmacking in their lack of shame or irony in public pronouncements and official actions.
So it was with much hype and hope that last month stories of outraged US politicians who were indignant at being fooled by Baron Cohen in a new show began to make the rounds on the internet. Showtime, the channel responsible for Baron Cohen’s new show, Who is America?, gleefully capitalised on this by drawing a thick cloak of mystery around the show ahead of its debut three weeks ago.
Now, however, Baron Cohen’s muchanticipated satirical exposure of the American character in the age of Trump is out there and so, like his targets, it’s fair game. Disappointingly, there’s far more to be critical than appreciative of.
In light of his increasing fame, Baron Cohen has had to create new characters for his no-reveal form of prankster skits and so we are introduced to the heavily latexreliant disguises of four new personas in the first episode: Billy Wayne Ruddick jnr, an alt-right conspiracy theorist; Nira CainN’degeocello, an NPR T-shirt-wearing, selfloathing cisgender heterosexual liberal;
Rick Shannon, a British ex-con and painter of works made from his own faeces and “ejaculatorate”; and Erran Morad, an Israeli mercenary and former Mossad agent.
These characters provide some initial chuckles, but they quickly grow tiresome as the show progresses, mostly because Baron Cohen is unable to ensure that his satirical arrows hit more often than they miss.
The first episode’s first skit is a complete miss as obese Ruddick jnr, sitting on his mobility scooter, attempts to get a rise out of irascible former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders by convincing him that the solution to the US’s economic inequality is simply to move the 99% into the 1% — a mathematically ludicrous idea that Sanders attempts to argue against before resigning himself to letting Ruddick jnr wear himself out.
It’s followed by another miss as liberal Cain-N’degeocello goes to dinner at the house of a wealthy Southern Trump Republican and tries to get a rise out of her and her husband by explaining why he and his wife think it’s a good idea to let their teenage daughter Malala “free bleed” while sitting on an American flag — an idea that is clearly distasteful but which his victims are too polite to be outraged at.
Similarly, an out-of-place and badly executed interaction between ex-convict artist Shannon and a gallery owner — in which he gets her to clip some of her pubic hair and offer it to him as material for an artwork — serves to highlight her empathy rather than offer much more than an unnecessarily mean and frankly juvenile joke.
It’s only in the final skit of the first episode that Baron Cohen claims a palpable satirical hit. That’s when Morad manages to convince a group of pro-gun-rights congressman and advocates to participate in a public service announcement for a programme in which kindergarten children are taught to arm themselves as a means of preventing school shootings.
Even then, the question to be asked is whether this is so far from the outrageous and surreal public pronouncements of members of the gun lobby that it adds anything new to the debate.
The second and third episodes unfold in much the same more-hit-than-miss fashion — a Georgia representative exposes his bum and hurls the n-word around (he’s since had to resign, and that’s something to count in Baron Cohen’s favour); an awkward and not very incisive interview with former vicepresident Dick Cheney in which several “Dick pics” are snapped and a waterboarding bottle is signed; the singing of Shosholoza by Nira in order to placate the residents of a small conservative town following the announcement of plans to build a palatial mosque there; a paedophile detector that goes off when it comes near former Alabama chief justice Roy Moore; a horribly inept rap battle involving Nira.
All of which offer the occasional schoolboy chuckle but ultimately prove that the US has changed so much in the past 14 years that there’s little that offers Baron Cohen space for revelation.
Who is America?, rather than being the much-needed satirical kick in the groin to the nation’s conscience, is thus far mostly a misdirected attempt by its creator to get back in a game that’s changed too fast since he was last around for him to keep up with. The US has changed, but unfortunately Baron Cohen hasn’t really evolved much.
’Who is America?’ is far from being the much-needed satirical kick in the groin to the nation’s conscience