The Return of Ali G: Is Sacha Baron Cohen’s Iconic Character Still Relevant?

When the character of Ali G first debuted on television, archetypes resembling him were relatively common on British screens. However, according to social psychologist Amy Kean, such caricatures are no longer considered culturally relevant or acceptable in today’s climate.

“Ali G, Little Britain, Catherine Tate—all of those comedians and sketch shows of that era—made the accent itself the punchline,” explains Kean, an expert on accentism who has drawn from her own experiences of being bullied for her Essex dialect during her school years in the 1990s.

“I remember going to school back then, and people would relentlessly mock anyone whose regional accent or voice didn’t conform to the standard of the majority.”

Throughout his career, Sacha Baron Cohen has leveraged the Ali G persona to unsettle high-profile interviewees, exploiting societal biases and preconceived expectations to expose their vulnerabilities.

During a 2020 appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Baron Cohen recalled a memorable interview with Donald Trump for Da Ali G Show. He noted that the production’s lead producer was a highly articulate, well-spoken Englishman whom Trump had assumed would be conducting the segment.

“I remember Donald Trump looking at me, and I’m wearing a sweatsuit,” Baron Cohen recounted. “His face immediately fell. He was furious that he was about to be interviewed by someone from a working-class borough rather than this sophisticated Etonian producer.”

During a recent discussion regarding the character’s upcoming revival on CBS, Baron Cohen stated that his primary objective is straightforward: to make audiences laugh intensely. However, he quickly noted that a sharp dose of satire is inevitably woven into the performance.

In a recent essay published in Time, Baron Cohen defended his creations, arguing that his characters have always served as vehicles to expose societal prejudice, bias, and intellectual laziness. Regarding Ali G specifically, he asserted that the joke ultimately lies not with the character, but with the predominantly white, male establishment he seeks to challenge.

“The fact that Ali G is outdated and problematic is precisely the reason I brought him back,” Baron Cohen wrote in the essay.

“The world he is returning to is, in many respects, far worse than the one he departed twenty years ago. The very prejudices my characters are designed to expose have not merely persisted—they have metastasized. They are now amplified by the most powerful propaganda engine in human history: social media, and its monstrous offspring, artificial intelligence.”

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