Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Life

Sacha Baron Cohen’s Award Show Antics

Sacha Baron Cohen’s ostentatious characters are beloved for satirizing American phobias and closed-minded discomforts relating to social issues. In 2006, Borat’s cross-country journey mocked antisemitism and xenophobia. And now Bruno — Cohen’s gay Austrian fashion worker character whose self-titled film premieres this summer — pokes at the empty quest for excess, and its unfettered fear of gays.

A more perfect and public scenario to kick off this conversation could not have occurred: Last night at the MTV Movie Awards, Cohen purposefully placed his bare tuchas in the face of a very unamused rapper, Eminem. Remember Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction? This was better.

First, Cohen soared in on white wings. Then audience members witnessed his targeted fall into the lap of incredulous Marshall Mathers, who walked out of the awards show spitting expletives, and trailed by two meaty bodyguards.

Perhaps Cohen was gunning for such a reaction from Eminem, whose song lyrics have been called homophobic by gay rights groups, including the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. As if to reconcile Eminem’s hating past, Queerlife recently reported that Eminem and Elton John have become fast friends. Would Eminem have reacted better to Sir Elton John’s backside?

Watch the trailer for “Bruno” here.

Watch the incident at the MTV Movie Awards below:

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.