The Devil’s Water

“He doesn’t look a thing like Jesus / But he talks like a gentlemen / Like you imagined when you were young” 

⁠— The Killers, When You Were Young (2006)

In 2003, Sacha Baron Cohen’s Da Ali G Show debuted in the UK. Baron Cohen became infamous for subduing the notable guest stars who appeared on his show by confronting them as outrageous caricatures. Fifteen years later, Baron Cohen’s disguises evolved and became politicized in strategic ways with his new show Who is America?, indicating Western society’s transformation of media expectations. Baron Cohen’s evolution of manipulation demonstrates his understanding of his audience’s expectations. Baron Cohen’s strategic rhetorical comedy allows him to maintain his ultimate goal of eliciting shock and skewing perspective. While Baron Cohen is in control of the outlandish situations that stir the comedic elements, his (usually) oblivious guests control the action and create the punchlines.  When Baron Cohen fools his guests, he often leads them to revealing pieces of their hidden identities. These rhetorical derivatives of the show rely on Baron Cohen’s assumptions of his guests’ motivations. This unpredictability leads us, as an audience, and Baron Cohen⁠—as the agent of the performances⁠—wondering what move he will need to make to create the necessary action for his victims to fall into his traps.

Who is America? premiered on the television network Showtime in 2018 during a time of peak political turmoil. This turmoil continues to seep through social media outlets, where many people are quickly soaking in news through snippets, videos, and images. The show’s opening credits emphasize this “meme” culture that has pervaded essentially all forms of social media. The sun rises over amber waves of grain, while in the background, we hear John F. Kennedy proclaim, “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.” Other timeless quotes from past United States presidents quickly contrast with Donald Trump infamously mocking a reporter with a disability. A montage of all things “American” then shows us Pamela Anderson, Hillary Clinton, the Women’s March, and people buying guns in grocery stores. The sequence is a mockery of the disillusionment within American nationalism and the performances that feed into its continued propaganda. 

This idea of disillusionment drives Baron Cohen’s show, and he even embraces it through his performances and character disguises. His emphasis on disguise is the backbone for how his guests take to him. In a recent interview, he remarked:  “There's a huge amount of research and study and prep that goes into all the characters because they have to be real...With each of these characters, I create a very, very detailed backstory, because I need to be prepared to answer any question they ask.” Baron Cohen created several new characters for the show including Dr. Nira Cain-N’Degeocello, a liberal extremist who in one episode presents why a small town in rural Arizona needs an elaborate mosque; Billy Wayne Ruddick, a far right activist who interrogates Bernie Sanders about his opinion on President Obama’s healthcare plan; and Italian billionaire, Gio Monaldo, who attempts to get O. J. Simpson to confess to the murder of Nicole Brown. The meticulous detail Baron Cohen puts into his characters suggests a particular attention to the emotional component of rhetorical success. 

The rhetorical success of the show also relies on its audience(s)’s interpretations of the consequential anecdotes that derive from the inner workings of the show. Through his encounters with his guests, Baron Cohen often creates anecdotal revelations that the audience can interrogate by considering why a guest reacted the way they did. This project ultimately seeks to explore how Sacha Baron Cohen’s work disrupts our traditional notions of rhetoric in relationship to anecdotes. By exploring some of the setups with his guests, putting them in anecdotal contexts, and acknowledging how Baron Cohen disrupts our traditional understanding of particular performative terms, we may discover new possibilities for exploring the roles our character and identity play in our rhetorical practices. In addition, I suggest we will find that there are many anecdotes within pop culture that we have trivialized and coded as “low-brow,” including the show Who is America?, that actually have a significant impact on how we share our own stories.