A Comedian Misses The Punchline

In case you have been living under a rock for the past decade, let me tell you that Sacha Baron Cohen’s humour is vulgar, crude, obscene and grotesque. That is exactly why he is so praised.

In his new film, he plays Admiral General Aladeen, Dictator of Wadiya, A spoof of an Arab dictator, part Gaddafi, part Hussein, and with a sprinkling of Al-Saud.

But alas, he has touched yet another nerve, this time of Dean Obeidallah of CNN:

Sacha Cohen’s movie a minstrel show (CNN) 

Sacha Baron Cohen’s new movie, “The Dictator,” is a modern-day minstrel show judging from the trailer and Cohen’s comments promoting the film while dressed as the film’s star, “Gen. Shabazz Aladeen,” the leader of a fictitious Arab country.

Cohen, who is not of Arab heritage, plays this Arab character while sporting a long fake beard and speaking in a strong Arabic accent, which would be fine, except the character is showcasing the worst stereotypes of Arabs.

For example, at a news conference in New York City this week promoting his film, Cohen exclaimed: “Welcome devils of the Zionist media and death to the West.” He then joked about liking TV shows that showed Arab terrorists killing Americans and admiring fashion designer John Galliano for hating the Jews.

To me, this is essentially the same as white performers in blackface portraying black people in buffoonish negative stereotypes for the enjoyment of white America

OMG! an actor playing a character! who would’ve guessed that that is what actors do. But wait, there’s a punch:

But for some reason, the entertainment industry appears to truly enjoy ridiculing “brown” people, Arabs and Indians, and has no qualms about casting people not of our heritage to portray us. Indeed, just last week Popchips snack company found itself embroiled in a controversy because an ad showed Ashton Kutcher playing an Indian character in brownface, similar to what Cohen is doing in “The Dictator.”

So the problem is that Baron Cohen is not an Arab. He’s not of Arab heritage, he’s not Muslim, he’s not brown. You see, in order to play an Arab, you have to be stereotypically brown, while stereotyping Arabs in movies.

This is Dean Obeidallah. He’s “brown.”

 

Or not.

And let’s be honest, these types of buffoonish “brownface” stereotypes would not be permitted if it were any other minority group.  What would the reaction be if a white actor in blackface mocked African-American culture? Or if an actor of Arab heritage pitched a movie about the leader of a fictitious Jewish state in which he would portray the Jewish leader and showcase the worst stereotypes of Jews? Is there any chance that film would get the green light from a Hollywood studio?

In trying to sound smart and to the point, this self described political comedian misses the punch. Cohen takes a jab at Arab dictators, not Arabs. He also makes fun of North Korea, Iran, Cuba and basically every other paradigm of human rights. By equating the making fun of despicable tyrants, with the stereotyping of Jews (and with an Arab actor, as it’s somehow supposed to hurt us), Obeidallah is yet another person who fails to grasp Baron Cohen’s characters, be they Kazakh, British, gay Austrians or Arab.

And a final note, it seems that the writer forgot, or doesn’t have a clue, about the couple of million of Jews of Arab heritage, some of whom Baron Cohen as definitely met, because Malawach is one of his favourite catch-phrases.

Aussie Dave adds: Someone’s noticed this post.

 

17 thoughts on “A Comedian Misses The Punchline”

  1. Sasha has big ones. Borat stuck it to some people who needed it stuck to. The running of the Jews scene may have actually been an eye-opener for the public.

    1. Actually, I think he’s mostly Ashkenazi – his maternal grandmother, who lives in Haifa, is from Germany, and she is a Holocaust survivor. His father was born in Wales. But he has spent enough time in Israel to be immersed in the culture, so he refers to Malawah and Jachnoon as General Alladin.

        1. Ashkenazi and Sephardi are genetically closely related. Many of Ashkenazi Jews came from Spain. I’m from Russia (where my nationality was Jewish) and there were many of us Semitic looking people.

    1. Do u speak Arabic? I’m fairly sure that’s a mistranslation because sayings aren’t suppose to be literal and as an Arabic speaker I know there’s a different word for someone with dark(er) complexion than the word “black” as in the color. Because the Arab ethnic group ranges in skin tones they generally don’t use specific colors like the “west” does. They will say light skin and dark skin for example…

  2. I think that Obeidallah is further missing the point because, not only is Sacha Baron Cohen depicting an Arab dictator, the material for the film is also loosely based on a book written by Saddam Hossein. He doesn’t have to be of the same heritage to portray a character, good or bad. As far as being racially offensive, Sacha Baron Cohen’s mother was born in Israel. Therefore, he is of middle eastern and Semitic heritage (though not Arab), so he can certainly lay claim to be one of the “brown people”. I’m certain that in many comedies like “Wog Boy”, there were actors of Italian heritage playing Greek characters and vise versa.

  3. I would think the “brown people” would be more embarrassed and offended if people thought all Arabs were like the actual Gadaffi, Saddam Hussein, Ahmadinejad, Assad. Besides, he claims that it’s not acceptable except if it’s making fun of Arabs. Yet, this is the fourth character Sacha has portrayed from another culture, where he caricatured them.

  4. Jim from Iowa

    Judge Dan, go to the head of the class. This movie isn’t about Arabs, per se. It’s about Arab dictators. Big difference. If you want to see what happens when you apply Mr. Obeidallah’s sensibilities about race/ethnicity to mass media just watch some American advertisements. It is overwhelmingly the case when they are pitching a product using humor employing groups of people of various racial and ethnic backgrounds, the one who makes the wrong choices, behaves stupidly or inappropriately in some way is almost always a white person. This is no accident. Bill Maher even jokes about this trend in advertising. He says something like: Does the dumb a-hole who picks the wrong deodorant always have to be the white guy?

  5. About The Author: “His lack of formal journalistic, political and sociological education means he is still capable of objective, unbiased views and opinions.”

    The most dangerous thing is ignorance disguised as knowledge.

  6. VoiceOfReason

    If I make a joke about my sister, we can all chuckle about it. If you make a joke about my sister, I’ll punch you.

    That’s the gist of the issue here. Many black comedians capitalize on making jokes about Afro Am culture. Dean Obeidallah makes jokes about Middle Easterners all the time. Why can’t Sacha Baron Cohen get away with making all these same jokes? He is not a part of either of those communities. This was the complaint about Ali G as well. Outsiders cross the line consistently because they don’t actually know the cultures, rendering it not only politically incorrect, but unfunny to those who could most relate to the jokes because they find the material to be corny and boringly mainstream. Sacha has no accountability for his character’s comedy because there is nothing to be accountable for; that’s bad any way you look at it.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Scroll to Top