I honestly thought the food critic was going to refuse to eat the condom food. It was just… So shocking when he cut into the strawberry flavored condom and ate its contents, then proceeded to eat what he believed to be Chinese dissident flesh, and thank the family of the dissident on camera.
Part of me feels bad for him, because his career is probably dead now. But the other part of me doesn’t, because what the fuck man??
Sacha Baron Cohen’s sense of comedy and acting skills continue to astound me. The man is a genius of human manipulation.
I had a strange reaction to the most recent episode, the middle segment in particular. It started out being similar to what Cohen has done with other deluded people, mostly putting them in silly situations. But when he took the older guy out in lesbian disguise it got very sad. I found myself feeling very sorry for that man, and how he allowed himself to be manipulated into thinking he was killing someone. His reaction after was heartbreaking. I still don’t know what to think about it.
Now, we only see what made it to air, edited in a certain way. So who knows what actually happened, and what was really going through that guy’s mind. But if there was any semblance of his true thoughts and intentions, it was very, very sad.
The OJ segment didn’t strike me as especially noteworthy after that.
A few days ago I was visiting a friend in Rockaway and we spent the night on his boat at the marina there, he had the idea to watch this and we stayed up all night watching it and laughing our asses off. My jaw was absolutely on the floor throughout the entire thing.
It definitely felt to me, though, that there was a mix of staged skits and improvised bits. The numerous segments where he played the Israeli guy and was “training” right-wing dudes, I felt that those guys may have been in on it. It’s really, really hard for me to imagine anyone taking seriously the genitalia prosthetics, dressing in drag, and sexual roleplaying. The fact that they all just went along with it stone-faced without ever laughing or questioning it is a little bit hard to take.
In those bits where there were multiple people involved, I think there may have been a mix of “plants” and real (extremely stupid) guys. But I am definitely highly skeptical of the idea of all of those segments being completely 100% real-life unscripted pranks.
I have to say out of all of it, the one that shocked me the most was the food critic eating the “veal anally aged for eight days in a strawberry prophylactic” and the “vegetarian-fed Chinese dissident.” I do in fact believe that one to be real, but I suspect the critic - a rather obscure guy named Bill Jilla who does not have a large internet footprint - might have known the whole thing was bullshit but went along with it because he wanted the publicity, even if it was bad publicity that made him look like an idiot. He seemed like a desperate guy and very awkward throughout the entire thing, very unenthusiastic, somewhat morose, possibly under the influence of drugs. Apparently his website and public profiles have been taken down in the wake of that segment’s airing - I suspect he realized that it wasn’t such a good idea after all.
The Jason Spencer thing with pretending to be a “Chinese tourist” and ramming his ass against the Israeli guy shouting “AMERICA!” was also fairly awe-inspiring (and horrifying.)
I’m ressurecting this thread in the hope of further discussion.