Sacha Baron Cohen’s ‘Who Is America?’ Reveals Us For The Attention Whores We Are

We heard about Sacha Baron Cohen‘s new Showtime show Who Is America? before we saw anything about it. Sarah Palin, Roy Moore, and an avalanche of public figures complained that they had been duped by the comedian in a series of “gotcha” interviews. The buzz for Who Is America? was high, and I’m not sure it totally lives up to everyone’s wild expectations. Who Is America? isn’t going to fundamentally upend the world of comedy, nor is it likely to change people’s politics. What the show is good at, though, is exposing a deep rot in the heart of American culture: a toxic vanity that pushes many folks, whether they be Congressmen or art gallery owners, to put the chance of any form of self-promoting publicity over any inkling of common sense.

In many ways, Who Is America? is simply a return to form for Sacha Baron Cohen. The show is divided into a series of interview segments, each ruled over by a different Baron Cohen character. Replacing Ali G, Bruno, and Borat are right-wing “Truthbary” owner Billy Wayne Ruddick Jr., Ph.D., uber-liberal Dr. Nira Cain-N’Degeocello, British ex-con and artist Rick Sherman, and Israeli anti-terrorism expert Erran Morad. So far we’ve seen these characters interview everyone from Senator Bernie Sanders to some lower tier South Carolina Republicans.

From a comedy standpoint, Who Is America? is nothing revolutionary. It’s almost painfully similar in format to Da Ali G Show, a sketch comedy program that was radical 18 years ago. That said, Baron Cohen still excels at pushing people’s limits with awkwardness to reveal something true about their natures. Ironically, Nathan For You‘s Nathan Fielder has since surpassed him as an artist in this game. So it was kind of, though not much of, a surprise to see Fielder’s name listed as a consulting producer in the show’s credits. (That Rick Sherman art gallery bit smacked of Nathan For You zaniness.) So Who Is America? is sort of funny, even if there are better comics doing bigger things with the genre in 2018.

However, there are a lot of people tuning into Who Is America? specifically for the political commentary. My own twitter timeline and Facebook homepage are full of people sharing the premiere’s most damning segment, where gun-crazy Erran Morad gets several prominent Republican figures, lobbyists, and guns right activists to advocate for arming kindergarteners. It is indeed a shocking series of clips, though I found some of the subjects’ own volunteered opinions — like how children who are too young to have developed consciences would make good soldiers — to be more horrifying than a couple of camera-hungry pundits robotically reading from a cue card.

I don’t honestly believe that someone is going to watch this show and suddenly change their political beliefs. If you are pro-NRA and upset by what Trent Lott, Joe Walsh, and Dana Rohrabacher say in the fake ad, then you can point the finger at Baron Cohen for tricking them. If you are pro-guns rights and see it, your worst fears are just confirmed. What I do think the show — and that segment — prove is that the people in currently in power are more interested in offering soundbites than solutions.

Throughout the show, we see how far vanity will carry people away from the norm. In the aforementioned Rick Sherman art gallery segment, a well-seeming Laguna Beach gallery owner volunteers incriminating information about her own youthful hijinks to put the ex-con at ease. When Rick shows her his simplistic work, she’s unimpressed, until she hears that it was painted with his cum and feces. She almost seems honored when Rick excuses himself to paint her portrait with his own ejaculate, and later eagerly offers him her own pubic hairs to join Damien Hirst’s in a grotesque tooth brush made of hair. Would she have done all this if cameras weren’t on? Would she have offered up her pubic hair if not to feel as important as Banksy? I don’t know, but I would guess not.

What Who Is America? reveals about America is that we are a culture that is puts a premium on attention. It’s why South Carolina delegates might invite a leftist activist they’ve never heard of into their candlelit house. It’s why a bunch of pundits and politicians might have agreed to sit with a mystery Showtime production in the first place. What Baron Cohen shows is that some people would rather go along with an uncomfortable situation than make bad television, and still others are just waiting for someone to give them permission to be as awful as they secretly want to be. Watching each segment, I didn’t see anything that looked like a “gotcha” moment, so much as I saw what happens when an interviewer appeals to a subject’s vanity, and that subject decides to indict themselves.

Because that’s really what this show is about: the vanity of America. Our politics are less about policy than self-identification. We measure our popularity in likes, and our worth is tied to how many followers we have. Even if you don’t subscribe to that notion, you have to admit we are a culture drunk for attention. For many, it doesn’t matter what you’re saying on camera, as long as the lighting is good and the chyron spells your name correctly. So who is America? A people that puts vanity over values.

Where to Stream Who Is America?