Who Is America?: Season 1
July 19, 2018 12:59 PM - Season 1 (Full Season) - Subscribe

Is it funny, rude, productive, deceitful, illuminating, mean, subversive, constructive, or a great example of how we got where we are today pretending to be a solution to where we are today? Sacha Baron Cohen's latest "entertainment" involves four characters (disguises) who question political figures, celebrities, and ordinary citizens about the current state of American politics.
posted by Stanczyk (7 comments total)
 
Sacha Baron Cohen’s Art-Gallery Dupe Regrets Nothing (Except Her Dress)

The rest of the show seemed balanced. Her part was funny and cringey, but one felt mostly bad for the art gallery dupe, recognizing her good intentions at the same time as the grossness of the situation, that she was being made fun of for tolerating the grossness and the seeming pretentiousness of taking it seriously.

The balance in the rest of the show: Bernie's guest was making fun of a conservative archetype, with ultimately the joke not revealing anything negative about Bernie. The rich conservative couple was likewise confronted with a broad liberal archetype, and only their extreme forbearance was brought out for laughs.

The gun stuff was horrific. I haven't thought of it in the light of the new NRA-Russian connection that's been revealed since I saw the episode.

The premise of SBC's show is troubling and I'm not sure what to think of it. Is it a great example of how we got where we are today? Oddly Bernie and the rich couple showed red and blue America more... police and civil?--than we might expect. Or more negatively: over-eager to accept a cartoonish negative stereotype of the opposition as real?

And in the back of my mind is the gotcha "journalism" of O'Keefe...
posted by Schmucko at 7:20 AM on July 21, 2018 [1 favorite]


In the scene with Republicans Jane and Mark and Dr. Nira Cain-N'Degeocello I kind of liked Jane and Mark and thought they were treated kind of poorly. I kept thinking that what made them Republicans was where they were from. You had to be a Republican there to have any social life at all. SBC just seemed dickish trying to top each attempt to get a rise out of them with one extreme liberal stereotype after another. Except for the Trump thing, I could almost see being friends with them. Of course maybe if our families were friends, Mark would be in a better position to leave the closet.
posted by Stanczyk at 1:01 PM on July 21, 2018


The recently aired second episode was much more consistent, hilarious/horrifying and shocking start to finish. It's amazing that the Cheney interview is just thrown in the middle.
posted by ejoey at 10:38 AM on July 23, 2018 [1 favorite]


He got a elected representative to make an awfully racist Chinese impression, shout the n-word, and then drop his pants and do butt-thrusts while shouting AMERICA. I don't think it would be possible to get Cheney to do anything more bizarre that that.
posted by lmfsilva at 4:03 AM on July 25, 2018 [1 favorite]


(also: bonus points for making him say he was from Georgia... right before the "Made in Georgia" vanity card for tax incentives to work there)
posted by lmfsilva at 4:35 AM on July 25, 2018


Georgia Rep Jason Spencer to resign. Hope this follows him until the end of days because he WENT THERE. He screamed those epitaphs. He took an up-skirt picture. He offensively mocked an Asian person. And he shoved his bare ass at an imaginary gay person screaming USA like the complete homophobic, racist, misogynist idiot HE IS. He did all those things.

SBC crew told Spencer he would be an example for their safety videos, which totally appealed to Spencer's arrogant ego. I don't care if it's gotcha. He's a hateful moron and it shows. In Spencer's mind he will forever be the greatest victim here.

The gallery woman's comment about her dress choice is wonderful and makes me like her more.
posted by dog food sugar at 5:44 AM on July 26, 2018


On Episode 3:

I thought when Moore started hearing SBC go on about rapists and pedophiles, he got on with the joke, but no, he was really getting uncomfortable.
Bone Crusher's reactions were the best part of the episode.
The bit with the three chuds was... just ok until the big misunderstanding. Not sure if it was staged or they were real.

Perhaps the weakest episode so far, but if it made Roy Moore have nightmares for a couple of days with pedo-detectors, I can live with it.
posted by lmfsilva at 8:48 AM on July 31, 2018


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