The work of the creator of Ali G is to be the subject of an in-depth study in Spring, 2015. A Symposium on the Comedy of Sacha Baron Cohen will take place on March 11 next year at Brunel University in Uxbridge, Middlesex.
Sacha Baron Cohen's characters Ali G, Borat, Bruno and General Aladeen are immensely popular yet have all provoked critical responses and in some cases protest from various groups (e.g. from Black activists in 2002 and Hasidic Jews in 2012). Since Ali G’s emergence in 1999, Baron Cohen’s characters have provided key examples of the public debate that can be generated by comedy. This symposium, from a variety of academic perspectives, will address the complexity of Baron Cohen’s comedy.
A number of papers will be presented, as follows:
No Laughing Matter? Race, Identity and the Humour of Sacha Baron Cohen - Richard Howells
Sacha Baron-Cohen: Gonzo Trickster and the Art of Comic Insurrection - Helena Bassil-Morozow
“Even though it’s sexist and racist in some parts, it’s still funny”: An Audience Reception Study of the Comedy of Sacha Baron Cohen - Simon Weaver
Richard Howells is Reader in Culture, Media and Creative Industries at King’s College London, where he specialises in cultural sociology, especially visual and popular culture, together with cultural and critical theory. His books include The Myth of the Titanic (1999 and 2012); Visual Culture (2003 and 2012, the second edition with Joaquim Negreiros); Using Visual Evidence (2009, edited with Robert Matson); and Outrage: Art, Controversy, and Society, edited with Andrea Ritivoi and Judith Schachter (Center for the Arts in Society, Carnegie Mellon University, 2012). His articles range from a study of race, identity and the humour of Ali G to a discussion of fake works of art for sale on EBay, and he is currently working on an academic monograph on the relationship between creativity, design, atheism, and Utopia, due for publication in 2015. Richard studied at Harvard and Cambridge Universities and lives in London and West Sussex with his wife, the designer Sarah Howson.
Helena Bassil-Morozow is a cultural philosopher, film scholar and academic writer whose many publications on film include the monographs Tim Burton: the Monster and the Crowd (Routledge, 2010), The Trickster in Contemporary Film (Routledge, 2012) and The Trickster and the System: Identity and Agency in Contemporary Society (Routledge, 2014). Helena is currently working on two other Routledge projects, Jungian Film Studies: the Essential Guide (co-authored with Luke Hockley) and Narcissism and Society.
Simon Weaver is Lecturer in Media and Communications at Brunel University London. His research interests include racist and offensive humour and comedy, and the connections between humour and rhetoric. He has written on Baron Cohen’s comedy in the European Journal of Cultural Studies (2011) and in his book, The Rhetoric of Racist Humour (2011). He has recently completed an audience reception study on the comedy of Sacha Baron Cohen.
The event is one of three 2015 events organised by Brunel’s Centre for Comedy Studies Research (CCSR). The other two events are A Symposium on Italian Comedy Audiences on January 19 and a discussion of Comedy, Health and Disability, which will look at representations of disability in television programmes such as The Last Leg and Trollied. This will take place on March 4.
All of the events are free but anyone interested in attending should register by emailing [email protected]
