Well, it looks like the unthinkable has happened. After a 14 year absence, Sacha Baron Cohen has revived his famous Kazakhstani reporter Borat Sagdiyev for a feature-length endeavor regarding modern American politics. Rarely has a time felt more suitable for his return, and the only bigger miracle is that he managed to shoot it underneath everyone’s noses after his first movie earned over $260 million internationally. How does such a recognizable figure possibly get away with his “gotcha” style of comedy, managing to capture reality when it least expects it.
But that’s the brilliance of Cohen. He has a secretive approach that makes every new project exciting. You can’t believe that he got away with any of it, but that’s because it’s difficult to know when he actually filmed it, when he took to the road and caught somebody at the most unsuspecting time. That’s what makes his new film Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2020) so incredible. How does it exist? It’s a miracle unto itself and helps to carry his characters into a new decade.
That’s the most interesting part of his guerilla comedy. Following his debut on the groundbreaking TV series Da Ali G Show, Cohen has changed the face of comedy and forced us to ask what is real and if there’s any truth in the fiction. Is he really capturing the honest perspective of these people with his buffoonish characters, or is he manipulating the situation? Cohen is one of the few trailblazers of the 21st century, managing to take comedy to someplace more abstract, capturing insight in a society divided on ideas.
What’s more incredible is that he managed to become a legitimate actor in the process. With a dramatic turn coming in The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020), it’s going to be an interesting time to see his resurgence all over again, potentially showing just how diverse his potential truly is. For now, it feels right not to focus on his many great movies, but the characters that he’s personally created. They have reshaped the landscape in meaningful ways, and one has to wonder what he’ll come up with next. While nothing has come close to his early run, there’s still hope that something will spark a brilliance inside of him. Even if that doesn’t happen, here are five characters worthy of marking as major accomplishments in his career.
1. Borat Sagdiyev
Origin: Da Ali G Show
Plain and simple, there is a reason that this is Cohen’s most recurring character. Even if he theoretically retired him years ago, he still manages to pop up from time to time to provide comedic bits for random shows. Depending on how well you can handle people saying “very nice” and “my wife,” he’s actually an endearing character who doesn’t have a cynical bone in his body. He is the bright-eyed immigrant who looks to America as this land of great opportunity. His interviews have created a subversive look at the immigration process, reflecting the cultural values as well as subtle twinges of xenophobia that may lurk in every character. He may be socially inept, but he’s strangely nice about it all.
That is what made Borat: Cultural Learnings for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006) into a global phenomenon. In a time when the country was steeped in War on Terrorism paranoia and the waning days of blatant homophobia, Borat found a way to reflect these people in ways that were appalling not only because of what they said but because they were so sincere. It’s not like they didn’t know that a camera was running. The filming process was well-documented, and it’s only amusing to watch people grow offended when they realize that this isn’t for some no-name show in Asia. It’s going to be at your local Cineplex, serving as a vision of America at its most flawed.
For certain people, the broken English nature of Borat may be too much to tolerate. There were a few years in the late-2000s when he was omnipresent (he even published books). With that said, he’s the most emblematic of what Cohen is capable of, reflecting his willingness to do the most absurd things while deadpan, committed to a character as he’s on the verge of being arrested. His audacity is incredible but only made more impressive because how it works as method acting taken to another level. Borat as a movie is hilarious because it feels dangerous. You keep waiting for him to get decked for a dumb comment, and that’s kind of the point. This is America, and you can’t believe how well this faux-immigrant character captures the animosity so well.
2. Ali G
Origin: Da Ali G Show
On the surface, Ali G is maybe one of his least interesting characters: a white guy who acts like a street rapper. It’s an exhausted trope that most people have long lost interest in. However, there was always something more to Ali G as a figure. Where Borat was geared to explore immigration and xenophobia, or Brüno with fashion and homophobia; Ali G was somehow the smart one, who could land panel interviews with just about any politician he wanted. He was a cartoon character whose confidence in street culture was always amusing. He opened segments by yelling “Booyakasha,” and trying to make his squarest guest look hip by forcing them to perform sometimes questionable actions.
He was the one who bookended Da Ali G Show, managing to use every episode to explore a theme. They’d often be something as simple as respect, though spelled to match his view of the world (“Respek”). He was another lovable doofus who was secretly the best at this chess game, managing to lure the politicians into a debate that could go long stretches without feeling significant before dropping a twist. It electrocutes the conversation, making you recognize how Cohen finds comedy in the subliminal, lulling people into saying things that were ridiculous. Did they mean it? If they didn’t, then why would they even think it?
It may be why Ali G was, until 2006, the most popular Cohen character. He appeared in music videos for Madonna and became a comedy icon. He was the starting point for every other character, though even then you can recognize how limited his appeal was. Whereas Borat and Brüno got guerrilla-style comedies, Ali G had a more traditional drama called Ali G Indahouse (2002) that was, in all sincerity, evidence of Cohen’s limitations at creating memorable characters in a controlled environment. They needed to be let loose on the public, and it’s when Ali G was at his best. It was when everyone Cohen ever created felt most memorable. As far as movies go, Ali G Indahouse is a low point. However, Da Ali G Show is a masterpiece that throws him up the list among the greatest comedy characters of the 21st century.
3. Brüno Gehard
Origin: Da Ali G Show
To be honest, Brüno may just suffer because he’s the most dated of characters. While everyone on Da Ali G Show feels of their time, there’s nobody who feels as antiquated. He was overly flamboyant, whose sole purpose was to make straight people feel uncomfortable with ridiculous fashion choices and questions that catch the most masculine of men off-guard. If you judge Brüno from his appearances on Da Ali G Show, there’s reason to argue that he’s maybe the most likely to be lost to time. The culture has outgrown Brüno because, in some ways, the LGBT culture has evolved to something even more complicated and accepting than he ever could be.
Which, to be totally honest, makes his movie Brüno: Delicious Journeys Through America for the Purpose of Making Heterosexual Males Visibly Uncomfortable in the Presence of a Gay Foreigner in a Mesh T-Shirt (2009) all that more of a miracle. It was still a time before gay marriage was legal, where people were more likely to walk out from discomfort caused by the queer sex acts. It was more confrontational, tricking straight people into questioning their own place on The Kinsey Scale. It was at times even more appalling, finding Cohen going even further by trying to solve peace in the middle east with a song about killing Christians. As far as improvements from TV to film, Brüno had the best odds.
As far as movies go, it’s at times the most aggressive and shocking, finding Brüno evolving to a character reflecting on the very idea of celebrity culture. He’s the type who goes on talk shows to talk about trading iPods for an African baby. It’s maybe Cohen’s least guided in terms of focus, but not without a more impressive audacity, taking risks that you can’t believe anyone would. It’s still vulgar and shocking, but it’s also somehow of its time. Still, there was no moment where this was more symbolic than in a wrestling ring scene where he makes out with a man as an angry homophobic audience throws things at them. Brüno was INCHES from getting decked in the head with a folding chair. You can’t believe what you’re watching, and it makes the experience all the more exciting and evident of Cohen’s immortality. After all, as Snoop Dogg would say “He is the white Obama.”
4. Admiral General Aladeen
Origin: The Dictator (2012)
To be fair, Cohen needed to lie low after Brüno. It wasn’t just that people expected him to play crazy characters, but you had to wonder how close he was to potential career suicide. Between his previous two films, he had swallowed up tons of lawsuits and criticism, making any third step right away overkill. It makes sense why he would decide to give in to a fictional story, for the time being, exploring the crazy powers of a dictator who comes to America and must find out that there’s more to the world than control. Which, to be fair, was unlikely that he could achieve in the real world. Unless they’re selling countries on Craigslist, he had no other choice.
As I’ve said before, The Dictator suffers from having to be fiction. There is no spontaneity that makes Da Ali G an essential part of comedy history. In that way, this film is a bit less enjoyable. However, one has to ask if his commentary is just as rich. Well, kind of. There’s no shortage of jokes about dictators with massive egos trying to control the world around them. Even the soundtrack features North African covers of R.E.M. “Everybody Hurts.” Even then, the best joke in the whole film is, maybe unintentionally, the most George Orwellian. Admiral General Aladeen’s last name has become shorthand for every adjective. For instance, I got the test results back, and everything is Aladeen.
There’s a reason that The Dictator has become obscurity, joining his other fiction films as his less memorable output. It’s not always in top form, managing to rely more on shock humor than insight at times. While Cohen is a talented actor capable of delivering charismatic turns, The Dictator doesn’t quite live up to his other works. It’s still an interesting character when it works, managing to play into Cohen’s tendency for flamboyancy. It’s good but should tell you why he returned to Borat before he did Aladeen.
5. Erran Morad
Origin: Who Is America?
There was something exciting about this Showtime series. For the first time in roughly a decade, Cohen was returning to his guerrilla-style comedy with a whole host of new characters. The issue is that most of them lack the immediacy, the poster-ready quality of Da Ali G Show. It’s the type of moment where one has to wonder if Cohen has been outpaced, unable to keep up with modern comedy’s blurring lines of realism. It’s not that his points weren't sometimes deadly, but he no longer felt like the sole commentator in the game and, save for a famous trolling of Sarah Palin, the show would likely go under the radar of disappointment.
But if the show had one memorable character, it was the one who looked least like a real person. Erran Morad was an Anti-Israeli Terrorist soldier who taught Americans how to protect themselves. It was the perfect level of absurd, talking about gun control for kids and talking to Vice President Dick Cheney about waterboarding. There are moments that were genuinely shocking, reflecting the one character who might work a decade ago. It’s the right level of shock, the realization that America is a bit too obsessed with violence and paranoia. Whereas most of his other ideas fall flat, he still has proven his capability to capture people at their most vulnerable, needing some justification for their actions. In that way, Morad was the perfect figure for Cohen to come back with.
Who are your favorite Sacha Baron Cohen characters?
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