Drama in Disguise

“I got news for you, Uncle Sam / I got no use for you / You're just another made up man / In a stupid costume /  Here comes a magician and he's got no tricks / Wants to cut the ladies in half / He ain't seen the future like we all did / 'Cause he's livin' in the dark ages”

⁠— Grouplove, Promises (2020)

While many theorists have investigated narrative and performance theories in relation to Sacha Baron Cohen’s rhetorical devices. Theorist Judith Butler also offers ways of approaching Baron Cohen’s work by considering the politics that performative bodies often fabricate. Butler’s elaboration on the concepts performance and performativity, particularly put into political spheres, allows us to further consider and apply the dynamics of Baron Cohen’s multifaceted comedy to our broader sense of reality. What I mean, here, is that while rhetorically we may inherently label something like “comedy” as political in its own right, the work Baron Cohen produces in Who is America? has broader implications than just the rhetorical dimensions surrounding the comedy itself. There are not only aftermath effects from the show, but as anecdotes occur on the show, it immediately brings light to issues surrounding performative values within the United States. The concepts of performance and performativity provide a framework for understanding these broader implications. When we place Butler’s definitions in conjunction with Kenneth Burke’s, we may analyze how unexpected performativity disrupts Burke’s concept of the rhetorical pentad, which includes: agents, acts, scenes, purposes, and agency.

 When I think about the distinction between performativity and performance, I consider the difference between a rehearsed reaction (performance) and our natural inclinations based on societal expectations (performativity). Therefore, I view the reactions of Baron Cohen’s guests as being indicative of social performativity. As I argue that Baron Cohen is the originator of his comedic style, I understand that an argument could be made that many improvisational comedy shows are conceptually the same. However, while improv relies on performativity’s intimate relationship to performance, Baron Cohen’s comedy relies solely on his guests’ expectations of anecdotal performativity. The element of the unexpected arises because, unlike improvisation, Baron Cohen’s guests are not aware of the scheme: they almost never initially see through his disguises. However, social performative expectations and even anecdotal evidence from his more infamous guests allude to the rhetorical decisions Baron Cohen may have to make in order for a scene to work. In her opening examination of “linguistic injury” in Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (1997), Butler suggests that reactions to language create a perpetual loop of negotiating how we are supposed to perform in response to reactions that we may not even agree with. She says,

When we claim to have been injured by language, what kind of claim do we make? We ascribe an agency to language, a power to injure, and position ourselves as the objects of its injurious trajectory. We claim that language acts, and acts against us, and the claim we make is a further instance of language, one which seeks to arrest the force of the prior instance. Thus, we exercise the force of language even as we seek to counter its force, caught up in a bind that no act of censorship can undo. 

Butler’s words show us that language potentially creates a perpetual loop with its potential to injure and a desire to respond to the injury with language. Our performativity signifies how we have been conditioned to react to language.  

 Who is America? further complicates Butler’s language loop because Sacha Baron Cohen is in disguise, which disrupts his guests' understanding of the situation or what Burke may refer to as the scene. According to Burke, the scene encompasses the background and setting of the drama, or in our case, the anecdotes we observe throughout Who is America?. Understanding Burke’s concept of scene allows us to readily point to particular anecdotes within Who is America? within their specific contexts. The context of the scene impacts Baron Cohen’s disguises by providing the foundation for how they create satire. For example, it is the satirical elements of the scene that make it humorous for Baron Cohen to disguise himself as the progressive liberal Dr. Nira Cain-N’Degeocello and attempt to convince a conservative small town in Arizona that they need the world’s largest mosque. In a recent article,  Michael Rangoonwala elaborates on Burke’s concept of scene in a way that examines the broader cultural influences indicative of a scene. Rangoonwala says,

In addition to physical environments, scene can represent ideas such as cultural movements or communism. The scope of the context assigned to the scene, such as the difference between a city and a continent, is termed the circumference of the analysis. Lastly, scene has the philosophic terminology of materialism.  Materialism as a system “regards all facts and reality as explainable in terms of matter and motion or physical laws.” Fay and Kuypers describe it another way as determinism.

Based on Rangoonwala’s assessment of a scene’s potential to reflect “cultural movements,” we may conclude that the scene determines the zeitgeist  of a consequential anecdote. For example, Who is America?’s scene is an extension of not just 2018, the year it was released, but the scene is also indicative of the political atmosphere driven into chaos by Donald Trump’s presidency, which began two years prior. The motivations of individual scenes within Who is America? are dictated by Baron Cohen’s astute observations of different facets regarding American culture. Alternatively, the motivations of the show’s guests are dictated by the scenes they individually occur within. The different disguises Baron Cohen uses with individual guests naturally elicit different reactions.

The success behind a scene, especially a scene bound for virality, is the reveal of an often suppressed truth on the part of a guest. Baron Cohen’s disguises imply a particular tone, a particular identity, and a particular association to observers.  Through his disguises, Baron Cohen embraces the opportunity to meet his guests with unconditional terms...at least for himself. Since he can remove his disguise, he can remove responsibility for a guests’ grotesque reactions. Butler remarks on the ability of speech to break from its context. She says,

Understanding performativity as a renewable action without clear origin or end suggests that speech is finally constrained neither by its specific speaker nor its originating context. Not only defined by social context, such speech is also marked by its capacity to break with context. Thus, performativity has its own social temporality in which it remains enabled precisely by the contexts from which it breaks. 

Butler’s assessment of performativity allows us to draw the connections between Baron Cohen’s disguises and the undeniable political consequences they cultivate. Performativity’s ability to break context creates consequence by disrupting social expectations. Perhaps obviously, this idea becomes clear once the guests on Baron Cohen’s show realize they were set up only after the show airs. Once they experience the reveal of the setup, their reflections and how they react are subsequent ramifications of the show. These ramifications are entangled within the loop of how we determine our response to a language—to a performance. Understanding and finding comedy within Baron Cohen’s work means recognizing his guests may be pushed into boundless obscenity, and we have to navigate our reactions to the obscene, which is a performative response we may or may not be able to consciously control. The turmoil that occurs within ourselves serves to demonstrate how different styles of comedy usually only work with particular audiences.

The combination of Baron Cohen’s chosen disguise and the context of a scene steer the direction, which often leads to obscenity especially with his political guests.The most brazen example of political obscenity on Who is America? undeniably occurs when Sacha Baron Cohen is disguised as his character Erran Morad. Haaretz writer, Adrian Hennigan, best details the disguise of Erran Morad: 

First, there’s that look. Everything about him screams macho Israeli military type: the swaggering gait straight from an IDF propaganda video; the ramrod-straight back; the outfits – the black sweatshirt with ATS “Anti Terror School” logo whose accompanying Hebrew translation is printed the wrong way around i.e., the text goes from left to right, mocking the interviewees’ superficial awareness of Israel. Heck, even his hair is jet-black.

Erran Morad persuades and identifies with his audience by embracing toxic masculinity and preaching Islamophobia. The audience has to understand Baron Cohen’s intentional utilization of the character against the particular guest in order to understand how the rhetorical outcomes operate comedically. This intrinsic understanding may be why Esquire deems Erran Morad as Sacha Baron Cohen’s best character: “This character has effectively gotten high-profile Republicans to reveal they want to arm kids and ruined the career of Georgia lawmaker Jason Spencer. Colonel Morad isn’t here to play, and he’s getting those he encounters to show their true colors, whether it looks good for America or not.” As an audience, we may recognize that this specific character Baron Cohen created has the potential to reveal truths from his guests that other characters cannot. This idea is gross because it means toxicity has to meet toxicity in order to be exposed, but when we acknowledge the grossness we may see the value of revealing a politician’s true intentions.  (I also can’t help but wonder if the toxic masculinity that radiates from Erran Morad would have identified more with O. J. Simpson.)

Baron Cohen plays on our societal fetishization of identities while simultaneously feeding into them to serve what much of his audience already knows to be true—politicians are deceptive. Erran Morad’s encounter with former Georgia State Representative, Jason Spencer, quickly became the most circulated clip from Who is America?. The clip has over 10 million views on YouTube, and a top comment from YouTuber Jeboteknik says, “This is like a South Park Episode but with real people.” The most infamous moment from the clip begins when Erran Morad intends to teach Spencer how to avoid being kidnapped by Islamic terrorists. “Because of who you are, you could be the victim of kidnapping by ISIS,” Morad confidently tells Spencer, who enthusiastically nods in agreement (I would suggest to my readers that if you find it funny that Spencer is afraid of being kidnapped by ISIS, then you are a target audience for this scene). In just a matter of seconds, it is clear Morad gains his trust by conceding to Spencer’s naively innate understanding of his self-importance. The scene continues with Morad asking Spencer how he would get attention when confronted by kidnappers, and Spencer explains that he would start screaming and take clothes off. Morad informs Spencer, “In America, there is one forbidden word, it is the n-word…” allusively suggesting that this word would protect Spencer from being kidnapped. Morad goes on to impersonate a terrorist kidnapping Spencer, while Spencer shamelessly screams the derogatory term to practice drawing attention for when he is inevitably kidnapped by ISIS terrorists. Morad then confronts Spencer, “Are you crazy? The ‘n-word’ is noonie. Not this word. This word is disgusting.” The fallout of the clip garnered Spencer’s resignation. While Baron Cohen revealed an abominable truth to Spencer’s identity, Spencer continues to deny responsibility. In a tweet following the incident, Spencer said, “I deeply regret the language I used at (Cohen’s) request as well as my participation in the ‘class’ in general. If I had not been so distracted by my fears, I never would have agreed to participate in the first place. Spencer’s perpetual denial of agency signifies a long standing denial of his identity that only serves to reinforce systemic racism. Much of the show’s audience has to reconcile with the fact that there is something comedic behind the reveal of Spencer’s prejudice. Butler offers insight into how Spencer’s performativity allows him to still be blind to his faults: 

Language is thought of  “mostly as agency-an act with consequences;” an extended doing, a performance with effects. This is something short of a definition. Language is, after all, "thought of," that is, posited or constituted as "agency.” Yet it is as agency that it is thought; a figural substitution makes the thinking of the agency of language possible. Because this very formulation is offered in language, the "agency" of language is not only the theme of the formulation, but its very action. This positing as well as this figuring appear to exemplify the agency at issue. 

We do things with language, produce effects with language, and we do things to language, but language is also the thing that we do. Language is a name for our doing: both "what" we do (the name for the action that we characteristically perform) and that which we effect, the act and its consequences. 

While Butler examines language’s own agency, the points she makes allude to the broader social issue of Spencer choosing to use derogatory language. By Butler’s points, Spencer cannot erase his performance as it will exist in perpetuity because of the agency within the language he chose to use—not just because of the internet. The language’s agency serves as a reminder for Spencer’s actions, but simultaneously keeps Spencer from understanding the implications of the fallout because he is blinded by his own political discourse. Perhaps, Spencer “actually” regrets actions, but more likely he regrets being exposed. While Sacha Baron Cohen instigated Spencer’s exposure, his performativity ultimately led to his demise. When the language we choose fails to meet the expectation of societal performativity, the rhetorical consequences can often be irreversible, which we witnessed as Spencer lost his entire political career to this one anecdotal moment.  

The term agency best explores how Who is America?’s guests react to the exploitation of their Idealism through their performative inclinations. Butler intimately connects the idea of agency to language demonstrating languages’ potential ownership of the context. Burke provides us with the rhetorical framework for acknowledging how language possesses agency. Burke explains that agency is the “how” of the drama—the means of an anecdote. The means of an anecdote depends on the contextual language to motivate its outcome. Rangoonwala expands on Burke’s definition of agency by pairing the term with the concept of pragmatism, which provides a framework for us to understand how agency motivates individual Idealism. Rangoonwala says,

The term agency refers to how an act occurs, and its matching philosophic terminology is pragmatism. In pragmatism, “the meaning of a proposition or course of action lies in its observable consequences, and the sum of these consequences constitutes its meaning.” In other words, the means to an end is featured and goodness or truth is indicated by the outcomes. Burke describes the school of pragmatism in an example with science: “Once Agency has been brought to the fore, the other terms readily accommodate themselves to its rule. Scenic materials become means which the organism employs in the process of growth and adaptation.” This example illustrates how a focus on agency causes a focus on processes.

Our individual understandings of “goodness” and “truth” dictate how we see agency operate. Language gains agency when employed for rhetorical motivations which are intimately tied to performative motivations. Who is America? suggests agency can be interpreted in numerous ways, including Baron Cohen’s, the guests’, and the audiences’ different perspectives. These different perspectives rely on each agent’s interpretation of a scene’s consequences. 

While we may consider the implications of agency for other politicians Baron Cohen imposes on such as Roy Moore and Dick Cheney, we can also think about the connotations of agency in a broader applicable context. Like many of us, I have kept up with the democratic presidential debates for the 2020 democratic nomination, and I would suggest there exists an even deeper connection to the debates and Baron Cohen’s show than political themes. In a recent debate, I watched Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Pete Buttigieg (among the others) battle over who has the best plan for American Healthcare. Regardless of who we may or may not agree with, I suggest we might all agree that they are battling over human issues. These issues are driven by the acts and scenes that permeate through American society.  Unlike the presidential nominees, Baron Cohen interrogates issues beyond what it means to exist as human. He pushes towards what it means to act human—to perform humanity. 

In fact, the act of Burke’s pentad is the term we witness as disrupted the most by Who is America?. Acts are the motions of reality that promote universal understanding of particular value systems. For example, we may generally agree that murder is inherently wrong, but we may understand an act of murder in self-defense.  Rangoonwala uses Burke to extend on this idea that acts influence our understanding of the motions that drive an anecdote. Rangoonwala says, 

Burke claims that act is the central, beginning term that develops the pentad since it creates a situation to examine in the first place. Its corresponding philosophic terminology is realism.  Realism, in contrast to nominalism, can be defined as “the doctrine that universal principles are more real than objects as they are physically sensed.” With realism then, language is utilized to understand objective reality and universal truths. However, while Burke identifies realism as the philosophical school for act, he further describes action in ways [connoting] freedom, choice, and essence. For instance, he states the “act itself alters the conditions of action,” implying an existentialist philosophy in which actions form essence.

Baron Cohen exploits Realism by creating a false sense of reality through cunning disguises. However, his facade is necessary in order to reinforce not only the purpose of his comedy but also to continue to expose the charades of his guests.  While Baron Cohen’s guests possess freedom, choice, and essence, they are responding to a simulacrum designed to reveal their individual, vulnerable identities. This concept sounds sneaky and corrupt at the onset, and honestly it probably would not jive with the IRB, but when we specifically consider the politicians Baron Cohen exposes, I think it is difficult not to see how this potentially benefits the greater good. The more we know about those who are in positions of power supposedly striving for the betterment of their constituents, the better we may be able to assess their capabilities. By way of an act, Baron Cohen sets the motions in place for the anecdotes he creates to have potential comedic outcomes while simultaneously exposing a guest’s shortcomings. 

Baron Cohen’s satirical intentions become critical to not holding him accountable for imposing on the lives of his guests. In order to do this, however, audiences must understand that satire is taking place within the show’s setups.  The comedic elements of Baron Cohen’s satire leave audiences negotiating the benefits to certain truths. It is difficult not to want to laugh at Jason Spencer’s shortcomings, but knowing he was in a position of leadership makes laughter difficult to swallow. In a recent article dissecting the relationship between satire and comedy, Beth Bonstetter informs this idea. She says,  

Audiences need to understand not only that something is acting satirically but also how it is operating, if they are to understand the satiric message and how the satirist is wielding his or her power. In other words, audiences need to do more than laugh at the outrageous antics of Sacha Baron Cohen in Borat; they also need to understand how he is presenting his subjects of criticism and whether his presentation simply invites ridicule or calls for rehabilitation of these subjects. Failing to understand this and instead reducing such actions to merely “entertainment” can at best result in nonaction, a reinforcement of the social problems as individual faults rather than systemic ones, or, at worst, a reifying of racist, sexist, classist, heterosexist, or otherwise hegemonic ideas. 

When considering Bonstetter’s point, satire becomes a clear subtext to Baron Cohen’s work. An element of outrageousness stirs us, as viewers, to finding comedy within his guest’s gullibility. How could anyone believe that the experience they are having is with someone “real”? From my assessments, his guests’ willingness to go along with his antics reflects his credibility as an artist of caricature—a master of disguise. I would argue that no one reads hundreds of pages about Sacha Baron Cohen’s creative performances without starting to question whether every television personality is SACHA BARON COHEN...in disguise.  Throughout a democractic presidential nominee debate I recently watched, I thought to myself, “Bernie Sanders is looking exceptionally healthy tonight...can I be sure Sacha Baron Cohen isn’t filling in for him?” Before readers start to question MY credibility, I want to suggest that it would be more appropriate to question the face value particular performances offer. 

Sacha Baron Cohen’s disguises are blatant to his show’s viewers, but we are surrounded by celebrities, politicians, and many other people especially those in leadership positions who put on more concealed disguises everyday. Part of Baron Cohen’s commitment to his comedy is the notion that he takes on the ideologies of the character disguises he creates. This point is critical to his work towards revealing the vulnerabilities of others because he uses his false ideologies to identify with his guests. People in positions of power often put on disguises in order to identify with their audiences. For example, Robert “Beto” O’Rourke ran for Senator of Texas, and used his nickname as a means to identify with his Latinx constituents. Many political critics took issue with this, but his use of a nickname made him more approachable in many communities. In a recent article, Emma Bloomfield and Gabriela Tscholl remark on the necessity of Burke’s concept of identification within the political sphere: 

Without identification, Burke theorized that persuasion could not occur because there was no point of similarity from where persuasion could originate. He argued, "You persuade a man only insofar as you can talk his language by speech, gesture, tonality, order, image, attitude, idea, identifying your ways with his.” While this statement indicates a sequential relationship between identification and persuasion, Burke also invited the consideration of the two as co-constitutive acts. Burke noted that the process of identification can occur between people "even when their interests are not joined, if he assumes that they are, or is persuaded to believe so." Thus, identification and persuasion are not fully sequential or separate acts but are instead components of a dynamic constellation of symbolic interactions that bring people into a state of being "consubstantial." 

Baron Cohen’s disguises disrupt this traditional understanding of identification because Baron Cohen’s willingness to identify with his guests is a part of the disguise, not his real identity. Then again, the show proves that we can fake the identification process to our benefit—a fundamental element to manipulation. In spite of the manipulation, even the fake identification allows his guests to put their guard down; they show him a side they have never shown their constituents or their fans.

While the language of a scene dictates its context, the performer’s disguise dictates the language’s perception. Butler refers to Shoshana Felman in a way that allows us to understand how disguise drives performance in a way that can override performativity. Felman’s words point to how disguises and costumes heavily disrupt spoken language. Butler says, 

[Felman] reminds us that the relation between speech and the body is a scandalous one, “a relation consisting at once of incongruity and of inseparability ... the scandal consists in the fact that the act cannot know what it is doing.” Felman thus suggests that the speech act, as the act of a speaking body, is always to some extent unknowing about what it performs, that it always says something that it does not intend, and that it is not the emblem of mastery or control that it sometimes purports to be. She calls attention to the way in which a speaking body signifies in ways that are not reducible to what such a body “says.” 

By Felman’s assessment we may see how disguise can be portrayed through the body as well as through speech.  In one moment a person may hold one particular view while the next moment their make America great again cap says otherwise. There are all of these rhetorical tools at our disposal that we can use to take advantage of particular situations, what distinguishes us as people is the intention that we have when we use these tools. 

The idea of motivation held within Burke’s concept of dramatism is key to understanding how Baron Cohen persuades his guests. Not only does Baron Cohen use disguises to identify with his guests, but his disguises also allow him to relate to their intentions. Earlier, I linked to the YouTube clip of Baron Cohen (disguised as Erran Morad) convincing Dick Cheney to sign his waterboard. Would Dick Cheney sign just anyone’s waterboard? I mean maybe, but the acts between the two appear to lead Cheney to believe that no one, at least within that moment, would criticize him for supporting a human torture device. This scenario raises questions for how we should understand Cheney and Baron Cohen as agents within the scene. In considering Baron Cohen’s scenes with politicians, Burke’s concept of agent is nuanced when applied to Who is America?. Before I expand on this idea, let us look at how Rangoonwala explains agent:

Agent, or who is performing the act, has the philosophic terminology of idealism. Idealism is “the system that views the mind or spirit as each person experiences it as fundamentally real, with the universe seen as mind or spirit in its essence.” With this philosophy, a human’s mental capacities form reality. Fay and Kuypers also associate idealism with self-determination. In idealistic discourse, agents appear rational and empowered, using “an individual’s inner resources to overcome adverse circumstances.” 

While Baron Cohen is certainly an agent within Who is America?, the show’s guests add complexity to the term. Most of Baron Cohen’s guests are infamous in some way, which means that they are appearing on a show where an audience is already going to project a particular idea of what kind of agent the guest is. The audience’s projection, however (and perhaps obviously), is still separated from the guests’ conceptions of how they view themselves. So not only does the audience’s preconceived projection effect the guests as agents, but the idea that the show’s audiences are aware of the facade, while the guests are not, exploits the Idealism a guest might subscribe to before and after a particular scene. 

An analysis of the transcendental nature of an act reveals the complicated dynamics performance has on Burke’s pentad as well as on Baron Cohen’s guests within a scene. Butler uses Felman to show how acts of agents may perpetuate the issue of speech in disguise in opposition to the body in disguise: 

Felman writes, “If the problem of the human act consists in the relation between language and the body, it is because the act is conceived-by performative analysis as well as by psychoanalysis⁠—as that which problematizes at one and the same time the separation and opposition between the two. The act, an enigmatic and problematic production of the speaking body, destroys from its inception the metaphysical dichotomy between the domain of the ‘mental’ and the domain of the ‘physical,’ breaks down the opposition between body and spirit, between matter and language.” 

As viewers, we are not privy to the self actualization his guests may or may not have after appearing on his show. Felman may suggest that we should not make absolute judgments of his guests because of this idea, but politicians are supposed to represent the values of the people they serve. While it is rare that any one politician will reflect any one person’s entire value system, their thoughts should not be presented in disguise. However, as we are able to distinguish truth from disguises, we may identify the broader purposes of a politician's performative act.

The distinct disguises Baron Cohen utilizes with different guests also parse the purposes of the performances—the motive of an anecdote. Burke explains that the purpose is the motivation behind why an act occurs. Rangoonwala explains purpose as an agent’s reasoning. Rangoonwala says, 

The fifth term, purpose, describes the agent’s reason for doing the action. Foss et al. clarify that purpose should not be confused with motive, which is only discovered using all five terms. Purpose has the philosophic terminology of mysticism in which “the element of unity is emphasized to the point that individuality disappears. Identification often becomes so strong that the individual is unified with some cosmic or universal purpose.” The accentuation of purpose emphasizes the ends, rather than the means, as the focus of discourse. 

Despite Rangoonwala and Foss’s warning, I suggest that Who is America? positions purpose and motive as coextensive of each other specifically through Baron Cohen’s intentions. A guest’s purpose is often going to be justified by the cumulative discourse of how the corrupted scene, act, agent, and agency directed the guest’s purpose.

Purpose and motivation unite to demonstrate why a particular action garnered a particular consequence. Ideologies often influence the ways in which we understand our purpose. Bloomfield and Tscholl elaborate on how ideologies also impact motivation: 

Don Parson proposed that dramatism and argumentation can be productively combined when he summarized Burke's ideas on ideologies: “in choosing a vocabulary of action, humans necessarily select a part of reality and reason from that part.” Our ideologies, and thus the vocabularies we use that reflect those ideologies, provide the foundation for our reasoning processes. Barry Brummett expanded on this point by noting that “ideologies motivate and guide political rhetoric and give it purpose.” How people make sense of situations at least partially explains their “core” ways of thinking and making decisions. 

Bloomfield and Tscholl’s assessment of ideologies explains why we may more readily identify with someone who shares our ideologies because they already share our understanding of how we contextualize language. How we contextually understand particular scenes influences how we react to them. In our modern political sphere, it is usually activists who point to the purpose for political change and calls to action. The influence between activism and politicians has never been equitable in the United States because politicians’ ideologies can be disguised as much as they can be bought. Baron Cohen’s show asks us to reconsider our reasoning processes by showing us how these look from another perspective. As much as we may try to separate ourselves from the connotations of politics, Who is America? demonstrates that we are not doing enough. We have to interrogate an entire infrastructure that has consistently failed in adequately representing many groups of people. Who is America? only just begins to point to the injustice. 

While there are many remarkable rhetorical elements that emanate from Sacha Baron Cohen’s Who is America?, I strive to emphasize the importance of what disguises within politics reveal to audiences because this continues to be one of the most urgent issues in American society. If we asked the majority of women in the United States, “Who are American politicians?” I think many would answer, “Rapists.”  As I write this today, my choices for the future president of the United States are both known for their disregard for women. Sure, others will run, but if I vote for them I still lose. Through revealing the disguises of American politicians, Baron Cohen’s Who is America? encourages us to vote for the fight that we want to go up against, the one we might have a chance to change. The one that will allow us to give a voice to generally marginalized populations. The voices that have been hushed by many of the political guests on Who is America?. Butler points to the issue of political censorship as she explores its production in terms of power. She says,

Censorship is a productive form of power: it is not merely privative, but formative as well. I propose that censorship seeks to produce subjects according to explicit and implicit norms, and that the production of the subject has everything to do with the regulation of speech. The subject's production takes place not only through the regulation of that subject's speech, but through the regulation of the social domain of speakable discourse. 

Butler’s observation of censorship in accordance with “norms” and “regulation” is indicative of the problems that arise when we speak out about political injustice. We witness this issue at its highest level of intensity when women speak out against men in power who have assaulted them. Examples of this issue include Anita Hill’s experience speaking out against Clarence Thomas and Christine Ford speaking out against Brett Kavanaugh. As a country, we can’t rely on Sacha Baron Cohen to expose the wicked identities of people in power. We have to shift the “social domain of speakable discourse” in a way that exposes their disguises. 

Shifting discourse is never an easy task, but we might acknowledge that we have the tools that allow us to move forward. The #MeToo movement laid the groundwork for creating social change for women who have experienced assault. Social media provides platforms for us to speak out against political censorship—political injustice. Butler acknowledges the difficulty in fighting against those in powerful positions. She says, 

 To move outside of the domain of speakability is to risk one’s status as a subject. To embody the norms that govern speakability in one’s speech is to consummate one’s status as a subject of speech. "Impossible speech" would be precisely the ramblings of the asocial, the rantings of the "psychotic" that the rules that govern the domain of speakability produce, and by which they are continually haunted.

Butler’s words imply that when we stand against injustice we put ourselves on the line for scrutiny. This is another ramification we witnessed when Hill and Ford came forward. Despite the almost 30 years that came between Hill and Ford’s reports, “impossible speech” prevailed by allowing Thomas and Kavanaugh to win. We have to learn  from Butler as well as Baron Cohen that we cannot be idly complacent. We have to not only interrogate the values set in place by our political representatives, we have to disrupt them until we set a new standard that values women and other historically marginalized groups. This disruption may start by holding political representatives accountable and forcing them to remove their disguises.