British comedian and actor Sacha Baron Cohen announced he will be starring in a new mockumentary as his iconic character from the late 1990s and early 2000s, Ali G. Ali G: Who Iz I? is coming to theatres this October.
Cohen took the comedy shtick of in-character interviews to levels never seen before. He starred in a blockbuster feature film in 2006 as Borat, perhaps his best-known character. Most of the film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan is made up of scenes in which unsuspecting people interact with someone they genuinely believe to be a journalist from Kazakhstan.
Despite the massive success of his characters in past decades, people were less than enthused when he announced the return of Ali G.
All the social media posts promoting his upcoming film are bombarded with comments accusing the comedian of racism—often, more specifically, ‘doing blackface’—or attacking him for supporting the Jewish state of Israel.
For the record, the character of Ali G has always been white: it was essentially a parody of suburban youth in the United Kingdom in the 1990s–2000s who were mimicking American black culture without having any real connections to it.
Young audiences’ sensibilities, however, have changed a lot in the past decades.
At the same time, there is a significant push for the return to the style of the offensive comedies of the 2010s as well. However, Cohen has managed to alienate those audiences too. In 2020, he publicly campaigned for stronger action against what he described as ‘fake news’ and racist content on social media, putting him at odds with some of the online communities that have embraced the return of deliberately offensive comedy.
The comedian has reprised his other iconic role already. In 2020, he starred in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, but the ongoing pandemic prevented it from being shown in theatres. It was only released on the streaming service Amazon Prime; thus, we do not have any box office numbers to objectively gauge its popularity.
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