Ali G’s grand return has not exactly been met with an overwhelming cause for celebration, at least not from various corners of his home soil in the U.K., where a campaign has been launched aimed at stopping the character’s latest outing from hitting cinema screens.
On Wednesday, NewsCord — a news comparison and media monitoring platform — started a campaign urging cinemas around the world to refuse to screen the film, emailing major chains with the request on behalf of those who register. As of Friday, it claims to have been instructed to send more than 36,000 emails.
The campaign accuses Cohen of using satire as a “cover for enforcing racist stereotypes,” citing a newspaper report from 2000, just two years after Ali G first hit British TV screens, in which Black British comedians claimed the character was an “alibi for racism.”
“Black people don’t dress like that anymore. Even white people imitating Black people don’t talk like that anymore. Sexualizing black women and casually mocking working class women is not accepted anymore,” she wrote. “Baron Cohen’s so-called ‘humor’ is a crude compound of all these things.”
While it’s unknown whether Cohen expected the level of backlash to “Ali G: Who Iz I?” that has arisen, it’s clear he at least anticipated some negative retaliation. In a tweet linked to the trailer for “Ali G: Who Iz I?,” he wrote: “In an age when a single comedian’s career can be ended by a single un-PC joke, I thought I’d play it safe and bring this guy back.”
Variety has reached out to Amazon and Cohen’s reps at CAA for comment.
