I was 8 when my older brothers snuck me into a London cinema to see Monty Python’s Life of Brian. Although my underdeveloped brain may not have fully grasped the critique of religion or internecine fights among political leftists, I loved the feeling of being surrounded by 300 people screaming with laughter.
The late Philippe Gaulier was one of the all-time great teachers of clown and modern theater. Gaulier kept a drum handy while we were onstage, banging it to cut short a performance he considered “sh-t,” which was often. His goal, and greatest gift to us, was helping his students discover what he called their “inner idiot.”
—Photograph by Nadav Kander for TIME
It’s what satirists have done throughout history. And along the way, some people, instead of laughing, wince—or worse, take offense. The Greek playwright Aristophanes brilliantly lampooned the militarism and demagoguery of his day. Yet because he deployed phallic jokes so obscene they would make even Ali G blush, critics like Plutarch sneered at Aristophanes’ “coarseness ... in words, vulgarity, and ribaldry.” We celebrate the Roman satirist Juvenal, but his contemporaries barely acknowledged him. Nearly two millennia later, Lenny Bruce’s four-letter comedy was branded “sick” in the pages of this magazine in 1959. Note to editors (and to Plutarch): you missed the point.
I’ve always designed my characters and comedy as vehicles to expose prejudice, bias, and stupidity, though I realize not everyone sees them that way. Ali G is a white imbecile—a delusional cultural appropriator—who steals the fashion and lyrics from his favorite gangsta rap and dancehall idols, from Compton to Kingston. The joke is on him, and on the predominantly white male establishment who take him seriously enough to believe that HBO would hire the stupidest man in the world as an interview host. Like a good bouffon, he undermines that establishment—not the culture he loves and borrows from.
What makes satirical comedy so effective is what it lays bare. I’ll never forget a fox-hunting rally I attended the first time I created Borat—which involved me rummaging around in the trunk of my car for two minutes, finding a hat I’d bought in Astrakhan, Russia, and sticking it on my head. “Jagshemash,” I proclaimed, riffing off a Polish greeting.
Each of my characters has a specific mechanism to encourage people to drop their guards and show what they really believe, prejudices and all. Borat, an antisemitic journalist, exposes Jew hatred, xenophobia, sexism, and casual racism. Erran Morad, a stereotype of a tough-guy Israeli commando—“I’ve been in 14 terror attacks,” he says in my new movie Ali G: Who Iz I?, “and started two”—exposes Islamophobia and the ludicrous things people will do when they’re gripped by an irrational fear of “the other.”
Sacha Baron Cohen transforms into Ali G on the set of Ali G: Who Iz I? —Courtesy of Michael LegatoAs the titular Ali G, left, in the new movie Ali G: Who Iz I? —Courtesy of Amazon MGM StudiosOther characters highlight the problems facing our society without engaging real people at all. The Dictator’s Admiral General Aladeen—the cartoonish ruler of a fictional Horn of Africa nation and a mash-up of personality-cult authoritarians from Kim Jong Il to Idi Amin—warned, in 2012, how easily democracies could fall into autocracies.
Done well, brutally honest satire can be cuttingly effective. At a time when Hollywood largely avoided anti-Nazi content, Charlie Chaplin—then one of the most famous movie stars in the world—used The Great Dictator to point to the destruction that Nazism would bring. Peter Sellers’ sinister Dr. Strangelove showed the insanity of mutually assured destruction. Abbie Hoffman, who became a hero of mine while I researched my undergraduate thesis on civil rights—and whom I later played in The Trial of the Chicago 7—deployed outrageous stunts to oppose the Vietnam War.
Of course, comedy has its limits—more satirists in Weimar Germany could not have prevented Nazism. Still, satire—along with a free press, independent institutions, and a robust civil society—does play a role in promoting free societies.
Even in democracies, satirists, instead of getting a laugh, sometimes face sanctions. In the U.S., Lenny Bruce and George Carlin were arrested for uttering obscenities. Because of its irreverent treatment of Christianity, Monty Python’s Life of Brian—the very film that introduced me to satire—was banned in half a dozen countries, and even parts of the U.K.
Abbie Hoffman holding a Ronald Reagan mask by the nose, after his keynote speech at the CMJ Music Marathon, Aug. 29, 1988. Hoffman's shirt is in reference to Nancy Reagan's campaign of saying, JUST SAY NO! to drugs, but Hoffman had modified it to saying JUST SAY NO! to drug testing. —Richard Corkery—NY Daily News Archive/Getty ImagesPhilippe Gaulier and Bridget Brandon (Director of Drama Action Center) at their center at Rozelle Hospital, Church St. Leichhardt. Aug. 21, 1988. —Philip Wayne Lock—Fairfax Media/Getty ImagesAbsolutely not. In fact, I believe that satire is more important than ever. The Trump Administration’s own actions show why. If ridicule is now irrelevant, why did CBS cancel Stephen Colbert’s show just days after he mocked his parent company for paying Trump $16 million to settle a lawsuit? Why did Trump’s chairman of the Federal Communications Commission appear to threaten ABC’s broadcast license—leading ABC to briefly suspend Jimmy Kimmel Live!—after Kimmel’s comments about the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk?
So why does my new movie bring back that phony and unfunny guy, which some have criticized as “microwaving a relic from a generation ago?”
Back when I first created Borat, it took a few minutes—or a few drinks—to get people to reveal the racism that often simmered below the surface. Now, those views have gone mainstream—whether it’s fans hurling slurs and abuse at Black players during the World Cup or hundreds of white nationalists marching through Washington, D.C., on July 4.
In 2018, disguised as Dr. Nira Cain-N’Degeocello, an ultra-woke developer planning to build a mosque in a small town, I showed people’s hostility to Muslims. One even declared, “I’m racist—towards Muslims.” Now, right-wing U.S. Congressmen readily admit as much.
As Borat, in 2006’s Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. —AJ Pics—Alamy
Then there’s the explosion of misogyny. Six years ago, in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, a plastic surgeon cheerfully discussed giving my fictional 15-year-old daughter Tutar breast implants to appeal to important men. In today’s “manosphere,” that’s nothing compared with how Andrew Tate advises his millions of followers to treat women. Nor was overturning Roe v. Wade and a women’s right to control her own body apparently enough. Christian nationalists are now calling for “household voting”—effectively taking the right to vote from many women and giving it to their husbands.
Thanks to this toxic brew of lies, conspiracies, and hate, right-wing authoritarianism is on the march. Intolerance and extremism have surged on the left as well. Political violence has increased, as has our tolerance for it. In one survey, one-fifth of Americans agreed that “true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.”
Where, then, do we go from here?
I made this latest film for the same reason I’ve always done this work. Not only to make people laugh, but also to bring them face-to-face with the danger of fanaticism and conspiracy theories.
Satirists can expose hypocrisy. Bouffons can shed their clothes and show that the emperor has none. But after the credits roll, it’s up to all of us to decide what comes next. If our pluralistic democracies are going to survive, we need to create societies where we stop the hate and tolerate those different from us—no matter who they are, where they come from, whom they love, or how they pray. Because the only way out of this mess is to treat everyone with what Ali G has always preached: Respect.
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