Who Is America?

[Atypical-Abbie]

I recently found out about this show called Who Is America? in which Sacha Baron Cohen, who I only really know as the Borat guy, I actually haven't watched anything he has done, dresses up as various characters with wild political views and talks to celebrities, politicians and the general public and poses ridiculous questions that are intended to stir the pot, he asks for endorsements to the insane proposal of "Kinder Guardians", which is literally giving guns to kids to protect from school shootings, as he puts it "16 to 3 years old", hilarious stuff if it wasn't so insane.

 

He also asks Corinne Olympios to support child soldiers so that they can get better weapons, and talks to a bunch of conservative people in a town hall as a liberal guy who wants to introduce a huge mosque in a small town, and they are not happy about it, one guy even saying "Yes, I am racist towards Muslims", and that's just a tiny portion of the first two episodes, and I could not believe that this was real, yet it turns out that it's very real, and it seems to have a lot of consequences too, which is why I'm making this topic, because it turns out that some are not happy about taking down their pants and shouting the N-word repeatedly, who knew?!

 

Yeah, turns out that Jason Spencer is threatening to sue the show, which I very much doubt holds any water, because I'm going to assume that the company were smart enough to make sure that they had contracts, because why on earth would anyone agree to be filmed saying these insane things otherwise? He claims he was not in the right state of mind, which I find suspicious, because at any point he could say no, as seen by Ted Koppel, who had enough of Cohen's right-wing character, trying to prove that there were way more people as Trump's inauguration, yet the picture he showed him was quite clearly photoshopped to show a timestamp that was nearly midnight, yet the sun was shining, and thus they got into a debate of what an eclipse was, eventually giving up on the guy and leaving the studio, showing that they had no obligation to continue talking to them.

 

Personally I think that nothing wrong is going on here, if they themselves choose to say these things on camera, they are responsible for everything they say, and if that means you're going to lose you career, you probably shouldn't have said these racist, ridiculous things. But that's just me, what do you think? Is the show going too far? Not far enough? Here is a video of some of the things Spencer did, along his statement, as well as the Kinder Guardian video, since that deserve a watch as well.

 

[mido9]

She shouldn't resign or be fired or get any negative consequences. He's in a so-called anti terrorism video where the guy is telling him to drop his pants and eat a dummy's penis and imitate a chinese tourist and etc etc, of course he isn't being serious or acting on his truest intentions.

Even then ruining someone's life because they said jabroni to nobody, thinking nobody would hear it,  is completely disproportionate and evil and wrong

[Atypical-Abbie]

She shouldn't resign or be fired or get any negative consequences. He's in a so-called anti terrorism video where the guy is telling him to drop his pants and eat a dummy's penis and imitate a chinese tourist and etc etc, of course he isn't being serious or acting on his truest intentions.

 

Even then ruining someone's life because they said jabroni to nobody, thinking nobody would hear it,  is completely disproportionate and evil and wrong

He isn't ruining his life, he is himself saying that, he is himself doing that, and your point about it being to nobody, there are literal cameras in their faces all the time, he is literally doing a video for people to learn, he absolutely knows, and if you don't think that what you say on camera will be used, then don't bloody say it!

[(GigaDrillBreaker)]

This is... Pretty in line with what Sacha Baron Cohen makes.

 

Borat wasn't what many people thought, to be perfectly honest. It wasn't making fun of foreigners, and the Kazakhstani character played by Cohen was far from the true subject of the film. He created a foreign man so ridiculous that it managed to pull out some pretty funking deep-seated xenophobia and racism in otherwise normal American citizens. Yes, people had a right to be upset with him for his behavior, but the things they called him, and the ways they treated him, more closely reflected their opinion of non-americans as a whole. His second major film Bruno did a similar thing with the public perception of gay men. The most incredible part is that he managed to market both of these films as comedies, pulling millions more into his social experiment, as people left the theater mocking his characters rather than admonishing those who made arguments that they were just like rest of the groups they were created to serve proxy for.

 

And here he does it again. The truly incredible part, to me, is that now he is much less of an outsider, and yet still can be so alien to those he (admittedly) harasses. This shows just how deep the political divide is now in the US. Jokes about illiterate foreigners and flamboyant gay men have evolved into jokes about those who disaggree with us politically. I really have never been a fan of cringe comedy, but I feel that when Sacha Baron Cohen's work is taken for what it is meant to be, there are important lessons to be learned about how we see and treat other human beings.

 

As a final note, I appreciate how he targets both sides of the political spectrum, to point out that these behaviors aren't tied to a single party, and in fact are an issue with America as a whole.