Bruno is an “other”, far removed from our normal lives and references and therefore much easier for viewers to follow and accept his misadventures as Cohen yet again instigates and dives into the unpleasant realities that we all blindly trudge around in but never genuinely question. Gay or straight, Bruno is a vile vicious person and the laughs in the movie will come from those who Cohen exposes as being just as vile (gay or straight) as his cooked up character, passe or not. What will need to be seen is if Bruno can inspire the same energetic reactions from these real people as Borat did. My guess is that despite the increasing exposure of homosexuals in our pop culture, the reality is that faced with it in person (certainly one as conspicuous as Bruno) people will still behave in ways they would prefer not to be filmed. It’s one thing to see a gay man on TV but it’s a whole other to deal with it in your face as a threat. This is my experience as a gay man. If Cohen can bring to light that same hypocrisy as it represents the broader problem of our culture’s disconnect with reality then I think this will be a very successful film.

I don’t take anyone seriously who can’t laugh at themselves.

I accidentally wound up seeing Borat with a bunch of older Orthodox Jewish ladies from my office who couldn’t wait to see for themselves. They cried with laughter through the whole movie, and afterward they all seemed to think that Cohen’s send-up of antisemitism was incredibly smart and artful.

From my own enjoyment of the bits of Bruno I’ve seen, I’d wager that I’ll feel the same way here. I think that straight people will be way more squeamish about knowing what it’s “safe” to laugh at than the gay people in the audience. I think that’s constructive, it forces individuals and even society at large to question everything and re-decide what’s funny and what isn’t. I think it’s far better that this comes to us in the form of comedy — it’s the sugar that makes the bitter pill slightly easier to take.