photo courtesy of gawker

Ads have been popping up on top of cabs all over NYC for weeks- Sasha Baron Cohen has done it again, starring in another film that will be outrageously controversial and hilarious. Its coming out (no pun intended) on July 10th.

Brüno centers on a flamboyantly gay fashionista who aspires to be “the most famous Austrian since Hitler” and documents supposedly real reactions to his outlandish actions from an array of Americans. In an article by Brooks Barnes in last week’s New York Times, Brüno was described as “mercilessly exploiting the discomfort created when straight men are ambushed by aggressive gayness,” which unsurprisingly, he wrote, “exposes homophobia.”

Of course the film will have mixed reactions from viewers, gay and straight alike. Similarly to Baron Cohen’s last film “Borat,” Brüno intends to poke fun at the average American rather than its minority protagonist.

However this point will most-certainly go over a good portion of viewer’s heads. Last time Baron Cohen was highly criticized for being anti-Semitic after the release of Borat- despite the fact that the actor grew up in an Orthodox-Jewish family and is of Israeli descent.

We can only wait until its release to see how the gay community, which is at an extremely delicate point in time right now in terms of equality politics in the U.S., will react to the film. We’ll see if allies and members of the LGBT community will find humor in Baron Cohen’s endeavor, which is the movie’s fundamental purpose- Personally, I know I will.

And in light of pride parades that happened worldwide this weekend in commemoration of the Stonewall Riots, check out pictures from parades posted on flickr!

June 30, 2009 by rachel
Tags: anti-semitism, Borat, Bruno, flickr, Gay Pride, lgbt, movie, Sasha Baron Cohen, Stonewall Riots