Backlash against Sacha Baron Cohen‘s new Ali G movie is mounting, with campaigners launching a petition to ban the film from cinemas.
Baron Cohen released the first trailer for Ali G: Who Iz I? last week, marking his return to the satirical character after a 20-year absence.
The 54-year-old actor, in his directorial debut, filmed the movie secretly over the course of a year with the mockumentary following his character’s life ‘since the world went to c**p’, alongside his pregnant girlfriend – played by Morgana Robinson.
But criticism for the Amazon MGM film, due for release in cinemas on October 23, has been widespread.
A day after the trailer’s release, NewsCord – a UK news comparison and media monitoring platform – started a campaign urging cinemas around the world to refuse to screen the film.
The campaign group have said they have emailed 15 major chains globally with the request on behalf of those who register. As of Sunday, the campaigners report they have been instructed to send 41,000 emails.
Backlash against Sacha Baron Cohen’s new Ali G movie is mounting, with campaigners launching a petition to ban the film from cinemas
The campaign accuses Baron Cohen of using satire as a ‘cover for enforcing racist stereotypes’, writing on X:
‘Ali G is a cover to laugh at Jamaican culture. The character enforces harmful stereotypes of how a Jamaican man behaves in society.
‘Ali G smokes weed, is a misogynist, and does nothing meaningful in life. He does this because he thinks this is what a Jamaican does.’
‘The world laughs at Ali G. But the real butt of the joke are Black people and specifically Jamaicans,’ they added. ‘This is evident in a number of Baron Cohen’s films, where a race or religion is the victim of the “joke”.’
They added in an Instagram post: ‘Black British comedians called the character “an alibi for racism” in 2000; Jeanette Winterson asked what separates it from the Black and White Minstrels; Kazakh and Arab organisations documented the harm of the catalogue behind it. Sony Pictures UK is selling it with the line “He iz back. We ain’t liable”.’
They added: ‘The screens belong to the chains, and a booking is a choice.’
Phil Clapp, head of the UK Cinema Association, told Variety in response to the campaign: ‘Cinemas are there to engage and entertain the widest possible audience. They are not there to act as censors or arbiters of public taste.
‘So where a film has been given a certificate by the BBFC [British Board of Film Classification], they will decide whether or not to play it solely with the likely response of their audience in mind.’
Baron Cohen released the first trailer for Ali G: Who Iz I? last week, marking his return to the satirical character after a 20-year absence
A defiant Baron Cohen himself also addressed the growing backlash, writing on X: ‘In an age where a comedian’s career can be ended by a single un-PC joke, I thought I’d play it safe and bring this guy back.’
Reports have suggested that the UK cinema chain Picturehouse had responded to the campaign and confirmed their outlets would not be screening the film.
However, Variety has since reported that Picturehouse’s email was a standard customer response to any release query about a film that hasn’t yet been booked by the company and didn’t appear on its schedule, with no decision yet made.
Baron Cohen teased the return of the comedy legend with a surprise appearance at Wimbledon in July, where he donned his character’s trademark look of bling jewellery paired with a tracksuit and sunglasses.
Last year, it was first reported he was ‘bringing back his iconic comic creation, 27 years after the character first appeared on screens – where he was staged as the “voice of youth” on Channel 4’s The 11 O’Clock Show in Autumn 1998’.
Subsequently, he became the title character of Da Ali G Show in the early 2000s, before starring as the titular character in 2002 film Ali G Indahouse.
A day after the trailer’s release, NewsCord – a UK news comparison and media monitoring platform – started a campaign urging cinemas around the world to refuse to screen the film
Cambridge-educated comedian Baron Cohen decided to retire the character in 2007 as he became more recognisable, restricting the effectiveness of his antics.
In recent years there had been whispers of a comeback, but in 2023 Alf Lawrie, the head of factual entertainment at Channel 4, shut down the rumours, saying the show would never have come to fruition with modern rules.
He mused: ‘You can’t make Ali G, Borat or Brass Eye now because the rules have changed. You can’t hoodwink people on the same grand scale.
‘TV has become a slightly more regulated environment than it was 20 years ago.
‘When you were making Borat 20 years ago, you could pretend quite seriously that he was from Kazakhstan and until it aired people had no idea otherwise. These days you can’t mislead in the same way…
‘We’re far more respectful of our contributors now than we used to be. But it means the nature of some satire has changed.’
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