Amber's Dragons

Sacha Baren Cohen - the Marmite Man. You either love him or hate him. Personally, I can take or leave Marmite, for example: I wouldn't have it on my Bran Flakes, but I wouldn't have my mum's pastry wheels without it. But I digress, I was discussing SBC's latest movie, Brüno. Once again, it was cringeworthy, embarrassing and offensive - just what the doctor ordered!

Most of the population don't get SBC's work, seeing it purely as the three descriptives above, but they don't take into account that he's working along similar lines to John Agard:

"explain yuself
wha yu mean
when yu say half-caste
yu mean when light an shadow
mix in de sky
is a half-caste weather?
well in dat case
england weather
nearly always half-caste
in fact some o dem cloud
half-caste till dem overcast"

Sasha's work is about taking people's prejudices and forcing them to breaking point. Take Borat for example, he's not actually being offensive about Kazakhstan, he's just picked a country he knew very few British and American people would actually know about and worked with the assumations they develop. With Brüno, he's taking the mick out of us for our ignorance, picking on his victim's unfamiliarity with Austria. Let's face it, this time two years ago, even I didn't know Kazakhstan existed. I now know it's capital is Astanta and the favoured traditional instrument is the Dombra - a two stringed lute! It's not to reinforce incorrect views, but to show the audience how ignorance makes people look stupid! Sasha himself is Jewish, so casting "Borat" as an anti-semite reporter was bold, humorous and educational. (Pic: Harpers Bazaar)

"When will you Jews return the pyramids?" - discussing politics with the Hammas.