My boyfriend lost it on me the other day. Apparently I destroyed the sanctity of our Netflix que, putting The Magdelene Sisters ahead of Ali G Disks 1 and 2.
"We were on the waiting list!" he said, breaking into a pout.
"Who the hell is Ali G?" I said.
"He's supposed to be incredible," my bfriend said. Already the degree of expectation was at a level that would never be exceeded by the actual thing. I had said that about The Office, Britain's television equivalent to our Office Space. I rented the first season, and while I appreciate where the creator was going with it, I couldn't stop myself from falling asleep. Subtle humor is a good thing; in fact, I tend to recoil from British slapstick, pee pee/poo poo humor, but sometimes you have to break into utter silliness to keep people engaged.
Both Ali G parts 1 and 2 arrived the next day (cold busted, Jesse!). In fact, my beloved was away on a camping trip when they arrived. I was faced with the dilemma of whether to watch a film before the person who had been building it up, or waiting until we could watch it together. Would watching it be cheating? Not if I saw, perhaps, one skit only.
How to describe this Brit pop phenomenon? Ali G is a comedian of Middle Eastern descent who takes on outrageous assignments as three different characters: a hip-hop Cockney street kid, an Arab fundamentalist sampling the pleasures of the Western world, and a gay German fashion reporter.
Every show is comprised of a series of skits in which he plays the role of one of his three characters. He chooses American venues to visit and American figureheads to interview, giving his subjects no indication that he is a comedian trying to illuminate the innate absurdity of Yank culture.
The most refreshing thing about Ali G is his ability to remain in character as the tension between him and his subject thickens. Being in an interview with an increasingly perturbed Donald Trump would make anybody break character and say, "Don't be upset, we're totally just fucking around." But no, he continues to play the role of homeboy, pitching the Big Man his latest invention, gloves preventing the wearer from getting sticky while eating ice cream.
The first question I had to ask when I saw the show was, "How did he get these interviews?" Athough some of his subjects are most convinced of their importance, he does get some legitimate celebrity/business/cultural/political figures. It's clear that these people have no idea that Ali G is a comedian trying to elicit a response. As his Arab character interviewing with a dating service, he asks (in appropriate accent), "and if she cheat on me, I crush her?" The interviewer, an attractive female, doesn't even show a hint of surprise as she answers, "You probably don't want to do that."
The episodes of The Ali G Show that I saw were created in 2002. The UK has been holding on to their little secret now for two years, and why shouldn't they? It's so much more fun making fun of the Yanks when they don't know they are being made fun of. But I can only imagine Ali G is nearing the point of saturation, when even the biggest American dorks will know who he is and just smile and nod when he suggests that Welfare should should be based on a seniority system--the longer you're on the more you get paid--as he did with Newt Gingrich, or tell the burly, machismo-stuffed planner of an American Pride event in a slobbery German lisp, "You're very cute."
Very soon, Ali G's calling-card expression--Boyakasha!--will be as ubiquitous as "Whassup!"
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