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At Humana, our Medicare Advantage plans are easy to understand and easy on your wallet. Like offering more benefits than you'd get from original Medicare alone, and including dental, vision, and hearing coverage in every plan. And the best part is, every plan has a zero dollar or low monthly plan premium, which makes it easier to save, too. So this Medicare planning season, plan well with Humana. Learn more at gethumana.com. Humana is a Medicare Advantage HMO and PPO organization with a Medicare contract enrollment. Any Humana plan depends on contract renewal. This is a CBC podcast. Well, it's been quite the week for controversial characters making big comebacks. I'm talking about Ali G and the return of Apu to the Simpsons. But how are those comebacks actually being received? I'm Emil Niazi sitting in for Ella Mina of Del Mahmoud. This is commotion. Saratai Black, Barry Hertz, and Rad Simon Pillay are all here to make sense of this. Welcome back to commotion. Thanks for having us. Thank you. Hi. So we're also going to talk about the new fantasy romcom wicker, but first let's start here. Yo, it's me Ali G. I've been gone for 20 years, chilling. And in that time, the world went to crap. There was COVID, wars, and Ed Sheeran. But I was going to get back on top with a brand new thing called a documentary. Well, that's a bit of the movie trailer for Ali G. Who Is I? Barry, this is the first Ali G feature film in more than 20 years. So you're going to have to remind people who is Ali G? And what is the premise of this new movie? Who is Ali G? I wish I had never knew the premise of this movie. So Ali G is a character created by Sasha Baron Cohen. And that's really the onset of his career, which could go on to include Borat and many other creations. Kind of initially envisioned as this middle class white British kid who appropriated, you know, elements, stereotypical elements of black culture. And was kind of yet then used as a fool to kind of fool people who were in actual positions of power and had actually, you know, genuine hate in their hearts to kind of, you know, subvert ideas of cultural norms. But that was 20 years ago. And now he's back presumably because Cohen has some fresh ideas to play with. But in actuality, in my opinion, because he is desperately clinging to relevance. So the whole premise of this film is, you know, from a very wide distance, it's clever. It's like Ali G has fallen out of favor in the cultural conversation. And now he has to claw his way back. But in practice, it is just a very unfunny mess. Well, Rad, you've watched Ali G's return to the big screen. We have heard what Barry said about what he didn't like, but what did you like about it? Oh, I don't know that I liked anything about it. I mean, like, look, like I think when the movie finally gets to the sort of a mission statement that Barry referred to in terms of exposing kind of hateful actions of people. I mean, I could appreciate that because, you know, some of those people include former Republican congressmen, George Santos. Also, the Chair of the El Paso Republican Party, Michael Aboude, and, you know, so the movie, it appears that they, it shows them appearing to take part in some very hateful acts. And in the case of the latter, I mean, we're talking about some serious crimes and stuff in service of their mag up politics, right? But the thing is like, you know, for that, whatever value there is in that and whatever, like kind of barren chuckles, like chuckles you'll get in an otherwise barren comedy. Yeah, I don't know that it makes up for the cost that this movie imposed on us. And when I see the cost, I mean, like, of course, like, you know, the, the offensive characters of, of that Sasha Baron Cohen puts on. And it's not just the Ali G character. It's also the, the ex Mossad character that he plays. And it's also this new character who's like a far left professor who is, is, is basically like a parody of all of Sasha Baron Cohen's critics in the sense that he's calling out Ali G. But meanwhile, he's like this frothing at the mouth extremist who is hypocritical because he then takes part in the same cultural appropriations as Ali G. And by being, he's an extremist who also happens to be the only character in the movie wearing a kefia. So like, you know, whatever kind of value, whatever kind of chuckles this movie has, none of them pay off for us having to be, you know, having to endure all of that. Right. Yeah. Yeah, exposing politicians who have already exposed themselves through the mega movement. Like, so it, it almost like, um, it's like when you shoot the, the pop, pop gun, and then it just goes, yeah, it's like, oh, George Santos is bad. What? Yeah. Yeah. Um, Saratai, the Ali G character, uh, has received a ton of criticism from black audiences over the decades. Uh, in fact, commotion did a whole panel about those criticisms, which you should definitely check out on the YouTube channel if you haven't already seen it. But it's worth, you know, noting that this new Ali G movie reportedly has black writers on staff, and it also does feature cameos from Rihanna and Asap Rocky. Uh, so there you go. How did you feel about the Ali G that shows up in this new film? I think for me, like, the question isn't whether Sasha Baron Cohen knows that Ali G is a white man of her breeding black culture. We understand that. We get it. It's been decades. But I think the question is whether the comedy actually makes that distinction meaningful. And also, let's be so for real. So much of that character is wound up in how Sasha in Sasha Baron Cohen's ability to look racially ambiguous as a man that he himself has named Ali, and that's a huge part of that. And I think that if the laughs are still depending on black speech and still depending on black style, being the shorthand for ignorance, for stupidity, and then just covering it up by saying, Oh, but he's mocking a white person. I don't think that resolves that tension. I think that L Jones put it perfectly like what work is blackness being asked to do inside the jokes that we hear in this movie from this character from this person. And I also think that hand picking a small selection of your closest black friends does not a permissions department make, and I think that Rihanna and her colorist husband are not issuing a waiver on behalf of the entire diaspora. There's a Ben Carson joke in this film. So I refuse to believe that Sasha Baron Cohen and the team of writers doesn't really understand that in some level. I think what I want is sharper humor about appropriation. Have we seen a wigger over the age of 50? I can count on one hand how many I've seen. I can't imagine how interesting a movie that really thinks about the racial and class hierarchies that make this character possible. What it looks like to revisit that 20 years later, I just think there's a lack of growth in Oled. Yeah. Things have changed quite a bit in 20 years, and yet that character feels stuck in amber somehow. Barry, we mentioned a little bit of the satire and whether it works or not. You sort of need to have a clear critique of society, politics, and the culture at large, and I'm wondering if that worked in this film for you. No. I feel like Cohen has really bubbled himself. He thinks that he's doing something very important and dangerous and calls back to his original earlier work. I mean, we see his essay in Time magazine, we see the profile in 60 minutes. He clearly thinks he is leading some kind of bright satirical crusade that needs to happen right now, but nothing here. It all sinks like a stone. And frankly, for somebody who kind of has modeled himself as somebody like a progressive crusader for anti-hates and ostensibly liberal values, I could not help but think that he has matte-walshed himself here in a way. This is about-- What do you mean by that? This is about as funny and important as something like MI racist, the faux doc from last year, from the Daily Wire contributor, which is the very right-leaning conservative outlet. That took a lot kind of appropriated Cohen's own mockumentary style to put forward its own MAGA agenda and Cohen has kind of full circled himself back here into being everything that he wants so mercilessly mocked. Somebody who has refused to acknowledge that the world has moved on beyond him. Yeah. Yeah. I saw a little bit of the film and I was watching someone like George Santos do horrible things with no shame clearly. And I thought, well, we are kind of in a post-shame world right now. So a movie like this, it might really not work in our current context. But Rad, the Hollywood reporter recently published an interview with Sasha Baron Cohen, or Sasha Baron Cohen. It's a wide-ranging chat. It addresses why he brought Ali G back, his reaction to the criticisms of his character. I'm curious what stood out to you about his answers in that interview. the part where he said, "I am not self-aware." Like, they don't know, like, and, you know, like, that's a direct quote. But I mean, he said it in the context of like, his collaborators think he's an adrenaline junkie and he didn't see it that way. But I think that speaks to so much of what you see in that interview, because as you said, he addresses like this criticism and this conversation about how like the Alley G character is so dated and has been deemed offensive by so many people and kind of the times have moved on from it. And he's like, "Well, let me bring him back then." Like, that's your response to that, right? And then, you know, and then by bringing him back and then seeing the response to him bringing him back where people are once again offended, he then says, "Yeah, but a lot of this could be a coordinated boycott run by people who don't want, run by people who are attacking him because he's Jewish," right? Which is, look, I mean, I know that there are people-- - It's Russia, it's the Russian. - Yeah, yeah, exactly. And look, I mean, it's a good technology. I know there are people who will sort of boycott this movie or who don't want to take part in anything he's involved with because, of course, ever since what's been going on in Gaza, he has only spoken up on the rise in anti-Semitism and, of course, he's done work with the ADL, right? But at the same time, for him to then use that as the excuse to not legitimize the criticism against this character, to not take any of that criticism seriously, and which is something you see in the movie because in the movie, Ali G confronts critics, he confronts black people, but then, at the same time, he makes those-- he has laughs at the expense of those people. So he's not legitimizing criticism in that way. And then, of course, he has that parody character that is supposed to be representing all the criticism towards him, right? The frothing at the mouth, the extremist. So all of that, again, speaks to, I think, the lack of self-awareness in terms of what he's trying to do. Sarah Ty, Black, what about you reactions to his interview? I think what struck me was so how disingenuous it was, how many, like, strawmen arguments there were. He's, again, invoking his Black friends, method man, my husband, and my uncle, Spike Lee. I think that Black folks were allowed to disagree with each other, and, again, cultivating a very select group of Black-rich people to affirm your problematic opinion is problematic. And I think he's-- the change I see from now to then is that he's talking more about wanting to expose extremism from, quote, unquote, both sides. And that's where I wish the foam were sharper. It's like both sides of what? Because it really feels like both sides of him. And I'm wary of a comedian who, like, prides himself on exposing other people's blind spots when he should be a bit more curious about his own. Like, who gets to interrogate the man behind the camera, especially when, in recent times, he's been conveniently very cagey about his own personal politics. And is now, like, treating criticism as evidence that his satire has succeeded when the fact is some people understand exactly what you're doing. And I think it's weak. Things are urgent. Things are violent. We don't need to see a Masad agent with an anti-rape device when we're hearing calls for Palestinian prisoners to not be experiencing sexualized violence at the hands of the IDF. Like, these are urgent things that are happening right now. And if you want to make a joke of it, you better make it good. Well, that's, I think that's very fair. Barry, we're talking on Friday morning, this new Alley G movie is only in theaters until Saturday. There's no confirmed date on when it will hit streaming platforms. This feels unusual. Is it? And what do you make of the decision to only have this film out on theaters for two days? Yeah, I mean, it doesn't speak to a heck of a lot of confidence on the part of the distributor, MGM Amazon. On one hand, you can kind of see them trying to play up that as a benefit as kind of an exclusivity, like you better catch it now, because maybe it'll disappear and you'll never be able to see it again. Which, okay, sounds great. But you can also sense that there's a serious case of buyers remorse when it comes to this film. It's actually quite surprising to me that Amazon MGM, which has shown no compunction in the past of putting theatrical sized efforts straight to streaming and not giving it a theatrical platform whatsoever, giving this kind of some tossed-off release. It speaks without actual knowledge of the situation to some sort of contractual obligation or language in the contract of we're going to put it in theaters. So let's just put it in a few theaters. So if you are going to one of those two show times in Toronto or across the country where it's playing, Godspeed. Well, we got to leave it there. You can catch Allie G, who is I in theaters until Saturday. And I guess we'll have to see when it comes to streaming. I guess if it comes to streaming. In the meantime, we're going to switch gears quite a bit to this. Those made to be with you. That's right. It's an odd sort of marriage, isn't it? It's not natural. Men are not like that. Hey, Fish Rospind, you did any human improvement this week. Straighten me right out. That's a clip from the new fantasy romcom wicker starring Olivia Coleman, Alexander Skarsgard and Peter Dinklage, Sarah Ty. What is the premise of wicker? Wow. The great, great Olivia Coleman here plays this very ruddy Fisher woman in this muddy, vaguely medieval village where everyone seems to have an opinion about her appearance in her relationship status or lack thereof. No interest in her happiness, joy, fulfillment. She's very much treated as undesirable. So she commissions this local basket weaver played by Peter Dinklage to make her a husband out of wicker. And because this film has its priorities in order, that husband is Alexander Skarsgard. He's affectionate. He's attentive. He's helpful around the house. And it throws the whole village into a crisis. The men don't appreciate being compared to a man made out of a basket. The women start noticing what's missing from their own relationships. It's a very body, very body romantic, fable adaptation of a fable about desire and longing and belonging, and especially the social policing of women's happiness. And yeah, the scandal here is that this man made of wicker is making the men in the village look bad. I mean, Barry, it's pretty safe to say this is an adult romance. There's, as Sarah mentioned, a lot of, you know, love making, let's say, between the wicker man and Olivia Coleman, a lot of cussing. But it's also been described as satirical and absurdist. How does this combination work for you? Yeah, I think it works pretty well. I kind of wish that it was a little more horny in a way. Like, it does kind of sidestep. I mean, like, we understand why Fisherwoman is so enamored with wicker man and why the husband start to feel jealous. But it does kind of like, it's a gentle kind of hornyness. You wanted the mechanics of basketball. I want, I mean, I feel like we got pretty close. We get as close as we can in this kind of film. But, you know, there is that satirical element kind of running through it and a criticism of the patriarchy in general. But what I did appreciate about the film is that it is, it steps outside of itself quite a bit. It acknowledges the ridiculousness of it. It is a very thoroughly modern medieval tale, if we can call it that. And, you know, it features some great actors just having a lot of fun doing some very occasionally dirty things. I like when you just see her foot at the top of the screen. You'll have to see it to understand what I'm saying. - Rad, I mentioned the film stars Olivia Coleman, Alexander Skarsgard, Peter Dinklage, Elizabeth DeBickey, lots of like really big names, heavy hitters, and he stand out performances from the movie. - I mean, look, I think you go to this movie because you love Olivia Coleman, right? I mean, she's phenomenal. She could be sleepwalking through this movie and it's still a great performance because she's so good at being like spicy and raunchy and yet still work our sentimental side. And, you know, we're absolutely for rooting for her as she's getting it. So, like, you know, like it's like, I mean, her performance really makes this movie. And even when the movie seems to go in different directions, we're trying to search to do for more in terms of making its premise work and it doesn't always work, she can really anchor all of that. In terms of other performances, like I adore Peter Dinklage and Elizabeth DeBickey, I don't know that they feel like they're a little more ill-served by the material. And then Alexander Skarsgard, I mean, his only job is to make your favorite basket weaving material hot and, you know, I think he does it, you know. Yeah, and he does. Okay, we have to move on from that. We've got one more topic I really wanna get to, but we're gonna have to take a quick break right here. At Humana, our Medicare Advantage plans are easy to understand and easy on your wallet, like offering more benefits than you get from original Medicare alone, and including dental, vision, and hearing coverage in every plan. And the best part is every plan has a zero dollar or low monthly plan premium, which makes it easier to save too. So this Medicare planning season plan well with Humana. Humana's a Medicare Advantage HMO and PPO organization with a Medicare contract in enrollment. What if you had a manager who never sleeps? Schedules built in seconds, not Sunday nights. Time cards that catch their own errors before payroll. Job posts, candidate screening, and interview booking handled. That's HomeBase, the manager you can afford, all in one app on your phone, wherever you are. Higher your manager today. Go to joinhomebase.com and start your free 14-day trial. No credit card required and see the difference by Friday. Homebase. Schedule. Manage. Pay. Okay, we're back. I'm Emil Niazi sitting in for Elimin Abdul Mahmoud. This is commotion. Saratai Black is here. Rad Simon Pillay and Barry Hertz. We've got one more topic I really want to get into. Take a listen to this. Who are you and why are you killing everyone? Okay, so that's a moment from last weekend's episode of The Simpsons. It marked the return of the character you just heard there. Who, which is a pretty big deal. Barry, very briefly, what made up who so controversial to some critics of The Simpsons and why is this character back? Yeah, so I mean, Hank is area who voiced up who for many years on The Simpsons. There was a documentary that came out about 10, 12 years ago called The Problem with Up Who and basically kind of the cultural appropriation problem of a white guy voicing a character of that descent and the stereotypical impact that it led for generations on people of Southeast Asian descent. Hank is area with later expressed public regret about it. It felt that he had to go around apologizing to everyone of Indian descent for what he did. Fair cause. I think a lot of people's conceptions, especially younger viewers of The Simpsons, on people of Indian descent, kind of a starting point was Apu. So The Simpsons kind of went through a reckoning and they put the character on ice and there was a discussion that we'll revisit it. We have good ideas when we can get it right. And I guess it took them 10 years. And the show is still on the air, which is also I think news to perhaps some viewers here. And they got performers who could actually do a proper kind of representative performance. So we have voice actors, Sandeel Mouhotra, who plays up the new version of Apu. Apu's wife, Manjula, is played by Janina Gavankar. And now they're going to be part of the regular cast. Apu is going to be back in kind of the Springfield milieu. And spoiler alert for the episode, it's revealed that his absence is explained in a very sitcom-y fashion, which I won't quite reveal here. And he's back because they just really missed him or what? I think they're he's back because, frankly, crassly Simpsons need some headlines to keep itself in the cultural conversation. But good on these performers for getting in the door, good on them for doing it in the best way possible, unlike some aforementioned performers on this show. Yeah. So, you know, Radberry mentioned lots of Indian kids felt the the impact of Apu, but, I'm Pakistani, you know, Tamil. But it doesn't matter if you're Indian or not. I think kids on the playground used that character, used that accent to make fun of anyone who looked South Asian, anyone who happened to fit their conception of, you know, what the other was. How did you feel about the way Apu was brought back and how he was portrayed in last weekend's episode? Yeah, I mean, look, like, yes, I'm definitely someone who's had to endure my white friends being like, thank you. Come again, right? Yeah. So, you grew up with that. But at the same time, obviously, I watched this episode knowing, like, specifically because I haven't watched Simpsons in at least a decade, but knowing that Apu is back. Yeah. And that moment you played there, where he's like, I am a poo that reveal still gave me a rush because, in the end, I still loved Apu, right? Character and all. Like, I still had a lot of affection for that character because he was often a very well-written character. I mean, he had a lot of great storylines, you know, and there was, and again, I mean, the good and the bad of it was that he was the only representation of South Asianness, right? And the bad of it being that, you know, everyone just assumed the caricatures and the exoticism of him, and especially when you have a white guy voicing him, you know, like, they just limit your what they assume of you, but by that character. So seeing now him return with this new voice, Sonoma Holtra, I mean, you know, I love that this voice, you could feel more of the nuances in the accent. I think you could feel some of the care he's putting into that delivery, and you could feel like there's more emotional notes in his, in his, in his delivery that wasn't necessarily there in the Hancus area thing. So it gives me hope that this is someone that can care for the character going forward. And so a lot of this was like, my nostalgia of rushing into hope that this will go, that this will work out well. And what do you just quickly think about, you know, people online complaining that that doesn't sound like the old up who and, you know, wish that that accent would return? I mean, like, I mean, so they're actually asking for more of the caricature fit of accent, which is, you know, on the one hand, that could be nostalgia, but on the other hand, it could be ignorance. And then they're not exactly considering all the things that were, I mean, all of this criticism came up from a documentary called The Problem with the Pooh by Hari Kondabolu. And so, you know, like they obviously are not grappling with the effects that that documentary points out when it comes to this character. Mm-hmm. I mean, there's a lot to grapple with here. I mean, you know, no coincidence that Allie G and Up Who are in the same conversation here today. But before I let you go, I would love to get a recommendation from each of you, something that you are reading or watching or listening to. Sarah Ty, let's start with you. My recommendation is Pylian, another film where Alexander Starrer plays a very beautiful, very freaky man, although with considerably less warmth than the wicker husband. In this movie, he's a biker who takes this shy, young gay man played by Harry Melling aka Dudley Dursley as his new submissive. It's very funny, it's very horny, it's very tender, and it's like wicker, it's interested in the difference between kind of discovering what you desire versus getting what you need and everyone's wonderful in it. Oh, well, I always want to watch Alexander Skarskars. I'm very, what's your recommendation? No Skarskars in this, but lots of desire. It's the new Seth Korean film possible love. It is in theaters this weekend in Select Cities. It'll be on Netflix later next month. It's the return to filmmaking for Lee Chang-dong, who was last seen with 2018's Burning, which is kind of a masterpiece. This is a very kind of novelistic, layered, epic length examination of class and desire, and the thin line between documentary filmmakers and the real world, playing into a couple other titles that are in the mix right now. Okay, Rad, last word to you. Well, I want to co-sign the possible love record because that was my favorite movie of the Earth outside of you could see everything, which is of course the two films linked in certain thematics. But apart from that, I mean, if you have kids at home, take them out to the new Leica movie, because Leica, of course, being the company that gave us Coraline and Kubu and the Two Strings, which were very foundational movies for my kids, they have the biggest movie they've ever made called Wildwood, which is kind of a chronicles of Narnia staged fantasy with all of the the beauty of that Leica craftsmanship. It's bigger than ever, so somewhat to its own detriment, there's too much story, but it's still as beautiful and it's still that kind of movie that helps your kids grapple with kind of heavier themes that most kids entertain, it doesn't let them grapple with. Well, perfect. I'm always looking for something to take my kids to. Well, we got to leave it there, but thanks again to all of you for joining me. Sarah Ty Black is a film critic in Toronto. You can find their work at the Globe and Mail, CBC Arts and here on commotion. Barry Hertz is the film and deputy arts editor at the Globe and Mail. Rad Simon Play is a freelance film critic in Toronto. You can find his work at the Globe and Mail and right here on commotion. And that's it for the show today. This week, commotion was produced by Stuart Berman, Thai calendar, Nathan Chisholm, Jess Lowe, and Nicki Manfredi. Our digital producers are Vanya Matabja, Ray Mona, and Sabina Wex. Our engineer this week was Sam Hoshami. Our director is Danielle Grogan, Gene Kim, and Danielle Grogan are our senior producers this week. Our executive producer is Beza Sefa. I'm Ameliazi, sitting in for Elamin Abdel Mahmoud. Commotion is back on Monday. C-A/podcasts.