Death To Those Not Finding This Funny

Stephen Oryszczuk - Thursday 17th 2012f May 2012


Sacha Baron Cohen's latest role as a daft Arab dictator will not please everyone, but Stephen Oryszczuk reckons he pulls it off.

As Sacha Baron Cohen's latest film, The Dictator, hits London screens, a pause for thought amid the hilarity: is it not a little odd that when a big feature film parodying Arab dictators and Muslim terrorists finally rolls out, the team behind it is Jewish?

Comedy actor and creative inspiration Sacha Baron Cohen has again teamed up with Brooklyn director Larry Charles, this time bringing Cohen's egotistical and maniacal character General Aladeen of Wadiya to the world stage. The pair previously worked together on films featuring other Cohen characters, one of whom was Borat - a culturally naive Kazakh let loose on American sensibilities.

Raw nerves were touched when, among other things, Borat talked of "killing Jews" to our cousins across the pond, who had no idea he was joking.

In The Dictator, Cohen is once again playing the fool to an unsuspecting US, with one scene in particular adeptly capturing America's not-so-hidden Muslim paranoia. Cohen's character General Aladeen is in a helicopter conversing, in the made up language of Wadiya, with his compatriot - a former nuclear scientist who Aladeen had earlier tried to assassinate for designing bombs 'not pointy enough' to stick in the ground, but who he has now been forced to befriend.

There are two Americans in the helicopter, listening in to their conversation. The two Wadiyans talk of driving Porsche 911s, but all the two Americans hear is "911". They talk of a fireworks display over the Statue of Liberty, loudly gesticulating the explosive power of said display, but all the two Americans hear is "Statue of Liberty" followed by "boom" noises. To some, it is priceless situational comedy that makes light of our fears. To others, it is outrageous and provocative.

But what does it provoke? Apart from the obvious notion that Cohen is making light of 9/11, the comedy comes in part because the situations created are possible, and because a Western audience would recognise them. Were we those two Americans, could we really say that we would not have at least considered this to be a discussion of a terrorist attack? Quite often the value of inserting a buffoon into high stakes situations, apart from the humour, is that those high stakes situations get seen in a different light.

Should it or would it change the way we see Middle East autocrats? Absolutely not. Whether it's Tehran's dubious nuclear programme or, Syria's bloody crackdown on Sunnis, the world will continue to see absolute power for what it is.

But when, occasionally, you need to laugh at an Arab General who builds an army full of beautiful women only to sleep with them all, who better to do it than the Jewish pairing of Cohen and Charles?

*The Dictator is on "General" release at cinemas across London