In Borat (2006), a film that Sacha Baron Cohen wrote, produced and played the titular role in, Cohen played a fictional journalist from Kazakhstan travelling through the United States, recording unscripted interactions with clueless Americans. In one of the film’s bitingly funny scenes, Borat addresses a crowd at a rodeo, dressed up as a cowboy.
“Kazakhstan supports your war on terror,” Borat tells the audience, and draws a big cheer. “May your (President) George Bush drink the blood of every man, woman and child in Iraq,” he continues, as more applause follows, before wishing that nothing survives in Iraq over the next 1000 years, “not even a lizard”.
When Borat came out, the movie was hailed for its ability to turn offence into satire, getting Cohen and his co-writers a Best Adapted Screenplay nomination at the Academy Awards. Twelve years ago, Cohen’s style was considered to be, in many ways, path-breaking.
Last week, Cohen debuted Who Is America? , a show that adopts the routine of some of his earliest works ( Da Ali G Show , where he disguised himself as fictional characters, and interviewed celebrities, politicians, and regular citizens). Cohen takes on as many as four disguises here, interviewing politicians, gun lobbyists and law makers in his inimitable style, asking some pretty outrageous questions, and getting them to say some pretty awful things.
In a 10-minute clip released on YouTube to promote the seven-episode series, he plays an Israeli anti-terror expert, Colonel Erran Morad, who gets gun rights activists and Congressmen to support a fictitious programme that would train American kids in the use of guns and mortars. Morad gets them to record a message, which is then intercut into a montage for comic effect. The “executive director emeritus” of an association called ‘Gun Owners of America’, Larry Pratt, reading off a teleprompter, says that four-year-olds “are essentially like owls — they can see in slow motion,” and that “children under five have high levels of the pheromone, Blink 182”.
This is by far the funniest segment in an episode that also has Cohen get an art gallerist to lend her “pube” to a paintbrush made out of prisoners’ pubic hair, and an interaction with Democratic politician Bernie Sanders, where Cohen tries to convince Sanders that if 99% Americans were moved to the 1% bracket of rich Americans, it would result in 199% rich Americans.
Clearly, Cohen felt that he was on to a bright idea, capitalising on the utter stupidity of (mostly) right-wing Americans, and recycling a formula that he himself created years ago. However, the idea of influential people making fools of themselves on camera isn’t unique to the Cohen-created world anymore. On late night comedy shows, in online skits, and on social media, statements made by politicians get torn apart on a daily basis. US President Donald Trump is nothing if not a bumbling comedian, whose quotes and mannerisms make for a continuous flow of memes and viral content.
This time, Cohen is trying to jump on to an existing bandwagon, rather than reinventing the wheel like he did years ago. Who Is America? feels best-suited to YouTube alone — in smaller doses, and with the ‘skip’ mode on standby.
Season 1 of the show is available on Hotstar
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