The following paragraph from AO Scott’s review of Bruno says more about AO Scott than it does about Bruno, Sasha Baron Cohen, satire, or homosexuality:
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. An early sequence that graphically shows Brüno and his lover exerting themselves in various positions and with the assistance of, among other things, a Champagne bottle, a fire extinguisher and a specially modified exercise machine, derives its humor less from the extremity of their practices than from the assumption that sex between men is inherently weird, gross and comical. The same sequence with a man and a woman — or for that matter, two women — would play, most likely on the Internet rather than in the multiplex, as inventive, moderately kinky pornography rather than as icky, gasp-inducing farce.
HMMMMMMMM. Because I think the use of such objects during heterosexual copulation would be icky and gasp-inducing but mostly hilarious. That’s just me though! Maybe I’m heterophobic?! Because I kind of don’t find that sort of thing as kinky as AO Scott does, who would find it icky in homosexual context. Well well, is this a hall of mirrors I see?
I’m sure the movie is funny but of course I am a little suspect as far as the intention of some of its comedic setpieces but mostly I won’t be seeing it because I don’t really like humor based on cringe-worthy situations laughing at other people’s stupidity, a syndrome dating all the way back to America’s Funniest Home Videos. Because more than dildo-equipped bicycle sex, that kind of comedy is icky to me.
If You Build Your House... 