The 3 Bullshit Cutters

Here is my take on 3 of the best characters in the entertainment industry currently shining a light on the absurdity of the human condition through their work; House MD, The Mentalist, and Sascha Baren Cohen (Borat, Bruno, Ali G).

I'd group both House and the Mentalist in the same category. They are characters who operate outside of the set of social norms and use their positions and personalities to cut through the bullshit in order to uncover some underlying truth. For House the truth is a medical fact which is both obscured by and linked to the bullshit. For the Mentalist, the truth is a set of circumstances and actions surrounding a crime. Here, human behaviour is composed of a set of strands which are unravelled. Of the two characters, House is the more sardonic, but both are deeply disillusioned by many of their fellow human beings and have crossed some threshold which has liberated them from subjection to social norms. The scales have fallen from their eyes. Incidentally, despite their generally pessimistic outlook on human behaviour, I view them as deeply compassionate and principled.

Baren Cohen's characters likewise reveal the set of human foibles, but his approach is to become a pantomime version of humanities prejudice embodied in a character which reflects and amplifies the foibles of those he encounters. He heightens the existence of charicature present in society and so just as effectively as House and the Mentalist reveals the often absurd conceits and contradictions we operate under.