In what may have been the first time I ever pushed away my popcorn at the movies, I will never forget that fatefully uncomfortable day I first saw Borat’s cringe-inducing rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner at a rodeo and extended scenes of blurred-out unmentionables on the silver screen.

Bruno set the backstage for what quickly became a date-turned-disaster when I saw it (read: sat in the theater with my hands over my eyes) a few summers ago. Needless to say, we were both too stunned to even look at each other.

And though I abstained from watching the Oscars Sunday night, I watched as Sacha Baron Cohen made me speechlessly uncomfortable once again, as his Middle-Eastern-dictator-alter ego, Admiral Aladeen, spilled “Kim Jong Il’s ashes,” (actually pancake mix) out of a gold urn and all over Ryan Seacrest’s shiny Burberry tuxedo.

Cohen’s upcoming film, “The Dictator,” will “tell the story of a dictator (Admiral Aladeen) who risked his life to ensure that democracy would never come to the country he so lovingly oppressed,” according to Paramount Pictures.

Seemingly inspired by former Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi with a little Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and others mixed in, Cohen’s newest mockumentary will undoubtedly touch on the almost unfathomable realities of many Middle Eastern and North African countries. Realities like human rights atrocities (The U.N. Commission on Human Rights is listed on the film’s promotional website as “hilarious site”), autocratic regimes and good shopping sense (Admiral Aladeen quotably told Ryan Seacrest that he was wearing Kmart socks on the red carpet — “Saddam Hussein once said to me: socks are socks. Don’t waste money.”)

The possibility of Admiral Aladeen’s appearance on the Oscar red carpet caused quite the kerfuffle in the past few weeks. I’m no celeb expert, so sifting through the hundreds of sub-par gossip websites was no easy feat. But what I could gather from the rumor mill was that the Academy told Cohen he couldn’t appear as the Admiral. The media threw a royal hissy fit, and the Academy backpedaled.

Time and time again, Cohen has pushed taboo subjects into the American spotlight with a brazenness that is shock-worthy. But many wonder if touching on these subjects in such controversial times is going too far.

Nadia Tonova, the director of the National Network for Arab American Communities, wrote in the Huffington Post this week that Cohen’s “damaging lunacy” was perpetrating negative stereotypes about Arab people in this country.

It’s undoubtedly a difficult time in this country to be an Arab American. In recent times, the New York Police Department’s unwarranted surveillance of Muslim people and the release of FBI training materials that contained wrong or stereotyped information about Islam are evidence to the unfair treatment of Muslim people in this country.

On those points, I agree with Tonova. But I think she might be underestimating people a little bit. Of course, at least I hope, Americans don’t believe Arab people find human rights “funny.” I’d like to think people don’t actually believe Arab countries keep “pandas, white tigers and Amnesty International officials” in their zoos, as Admiral Aladeen’s fictional country does. The fact that this film contains so much information based on modern political regimes is concerning — their portrayal is obviously exaggerated but centers on that true premise of ruthless, self-indulgent political leaders with lavish lifestyles and little concern for their people. Americans laughed at Gadhafi’s absurdity — his countless homes and his crush on Condoleezza Rice — because we couldn’t believe him; he seemed so surreal. And Cohen is repeating this phenomenon by forcing us to see how the realities for many in other parts in the world may seem like comedy in America because they are so surreal to us.

Robert A. Saunders, who wrote about the “many faces of Sacha Baron Cohen,” included an excellent point made by HBO spokesman Quentin Schaffer: “Through his alter-egos, (Cohen) delivers an obvious satire that exposes people’s ignorance and prejudice in much the same way ‘All in the Family’ did years ago.”

These days, there isn’t often any intersection of mainstream entertainment with matters of wide social significance. I hope that his satire is in fact “obvious” to his viewers, because I do believe there’s a lot to be learned from — or at least as a result of — Cohen’s “cultural learnings of America.”

_Megan is a senior in Media._