Is “Brüno” Homophobic? (Or Are Some Gay Observers Missing the Point?)

In Brüno, Sacha Baron Cohen, in character, asks a skin-head, “Do you think there are any skinheads who aren’t gay?” And he joins an ex-gay group, only to proceed to hit on all of them.

As in Borat, the whole point is provoke a reaction. A year ago, Defamer.com famously gave the movie the mock title Brüno: Delicious Journeys Through America for the Purpose of Making Heterosexual Males Visibly Uncomfortable in the Presence of a Gay Foreigner in a Mesh T-Shirt – only to see their mock-title picked up around the blogosphere and reported as actual news.

Gay panic – the idea that there’s humor in a straight man freaking out over being perceived as gay – is nothing new in American movie comedy. But unlike most “gay panic” humor, Brüno doesn’t seem to be saying that homophobia is the natural, if funny response to the presence of a gay person.

No, in the world of Brüno, homophobia is an object of outright ridicule.

Bruno attending an anti-gay marriage rally

Or is it? Some GLBT people are worried that everyone might not get the joke – that some people are going to be laughing not at the satire, but at the extreme gay stereotypes. At a recent charity event, actor Jack Plotnick, who had seen an early cut of the film, accused Cohen of doing a form of gay “blackface” – the racist artform where African American features were exaggerated on stage in order to make audiences laugh at them.

Indeed, one sequence in the film has hotel workers unlocking a chained-up Brüno and his would-be sexual partner, but with fecal stains on the walls and a gerbil in the room. Exactly what point does such a scene make?

Even the studio releasing the film, Universal Pictures, apparently has some concerns. “Throughout the many private screenings they have had, the reaction from gays has been almost uniformly one of alarm," an unidentified person associated with the film told TheWrap.com, which is also reporting that they are editing and reshooting several scenes in response to the criticism from the GLBT community.

Last month, Rashad Robinson, Senior Director of Media for GLAAD, and two other GLAAD members were invited to screen an early cut of the film along with a general audience.

"There were times we didn’t think the audience was laughing at the homophobes,” Robinson says. “[It seemed like] they were laughing at gay people.

Rashad tells AfterElton.com that the version of the movie he saw was “a mixed bag,” noting that some of the movie is funny and thought-provoking, but that other sequences might cross the line into being offensive, at least for some people.

He cites one sequence in which a baby adopted by Brüno is seen in a hot tub full of naked men, and another in which a mostly African American audience is provoked into responding hostilely to Brüno.

“The goal was to make the African Americans seem homophobic,” says Robinson, who also got the impression that the studio is still making changes to the film.

Next Page! Are gay groups really "outraged"? And Brüno drops trou on Ron Paul.