January is usually the doldrums for film releases. Everyone's reeling in Oscar and Golden Globe euphoria, and no one has the energy to pay attention to anything new. The studios dump their misfires to avoid embarrassement and so they can write them off on this year's taxes. But every now and then a lost gem makes its way through. This year, Albert Brooks' Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World is my January dark horse favorite. It's certainly not as funny as many of his other films, and will probably be remembered as a minor work, but the movie has a lot to say about America and its relationship to the world, and reminds me why Albert Brooks still matters.

Replace "comedy" in the title with "freedom" or "morality" and you will see the central metaphor of the movie. An American, knowing nothing of the traditions of the middle east, attempts to apply our standards of what's funny to another culture, and learns that the jokes just don't translate. Brooks can't fathom why the muslims won't laugh in the same way George Bush doesn't seem to understand why so many Iraqis resist the western ideals he's trying to promote. Aren't these things universal — laughter and the desire for freedom? The answer, Brooks seems to say, is no, and the desire to promote any idea cross-culturally will simply fall on deaf ears, and probably create great collateral damage in its wake.

Yet we keep trying to make them laugh, like banging your head against the wall. But I'm not surprised, because this "failure to communicate" runs rampant even in our own country, where everyone pretty much speaks the same language but nobody's saying the same thing. Marriage, God, family — these are concepts that many Americans feel we should all understand in the same way, and if you repeat it enough times or win enough political battles or just make the most noise, maybe we'll agree on the same definition. Little attempt is made to understand another point-of-view or lifestyle or moral code. Instead, the prevailing attitude of most people — on the left or right — is to just keep shouting. It's the equivalent of Brooks continuing to tell American jokes, hoping that one routine or another will eventually work. Like in America, listening isn't part of his strategy. He lies on his bed in the Hyatt, watching a sitcom in another language, with a look of confusion and bewilderment. "This stuff is just not funny. I'll never get it so I'll just ignore it," he seems to be thinking. Click. "I'll just keep telling my own jokes, and someday they'll laugh."

It is not just social mores in our country, but also our entire political process that seems to now function around the "shouting loud enough and maybe it will change things" ideology. Take, for instance, the recent Samuel Alito confirmation hearings. What better example could you want than a bunch of senators repeating the same jokes over and over again, but just not getting any laughter from the candidate? No matter how many times they asked, they just weren't going to get an answer on abortion, and so the entire process lost dignity as it morphed into a forum for politicians to appease their constituents. Once we reached the end, we begin to wonder: What was the point of the entire charade? We still don't understand what makes Alito laugh (or how he would vote) but, I guess, the senators told their joke, made their attempt, and entertained us all in the process.

In Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World, Brooks is required by the government to return with a 500-page report on what he's learned. The recurring schtick is that he's more paranoid about the page count than quality, and so his research just becomes a way to fill pages. By the end of the film, he's only gathered enough information to fill two sheets, the content of which we never learn. But doesn't this too seem like an apt metaphor? After billions of dollars spent and thousands of lives lost, hundreds of fact finding missions and probably millions of pages written in newspapers and magazines, what have most Americans learned about the middle east? Pretty much the same as Brooks: They're different from us, and we just can't understand why.

But what is our effect on them? The office where Brooks works doubles as a call center for Americans who need help with their computers or washing machines; Brooks walks by the Taj Mahal without noticing it in front of him; when an Indian refuses to talk to Brooks because he is American, he doesn't seem to understand why. This is not so much the portrait of an "ugly American," but rather an American that is unaware — oblivious — to anything taking place beyond the border. Indeed, we are a country that outsources our customer relations, so a woman in Topeka who needs help with her toaster will talk to a guy in India, and the two will try to negotiate some type of communication. Why? Because it's cheaper for the corporation, and despite how crazy it may seem, that's the way America does things now. Forget what's right or sensible — it all goes out the window for what's going to make the most money. It's a type of insanity, and in this context, the ability to walk past a monument like the Taj Mahal doesn't seem that unrealistic. Most people don't care that the person they're speaking to on the other end of the line is on a different continent, or consider how strange and "new millennium" an experience that is. They just want the answer about their toaster, and continue through the conversation to get the information they need. The cocoon that many Americans live in makes it staggeringly easy to ignore and pass through these moments without a second thought, just as Brooks staggers through India, trying to find words to fill up those 500 pages, but not perceiving a bigger idea behind it all.

The long-term effects of this attitude are yet to be seen. It's not so much that we're xenophobes here in America, but rather just asleep. All this difference washes over us, and we wonder, like Brooks: Why won't they just laugh? Don't they get it? And so, the yelling gets louder and more money is spent and more energy is put into a process that seems aimless. In the movie, at the end of the story, Brooks has inadvertently launched a war between India and Pakistan, and he isn't even aware that this was the effect of his trip. Is this going to be our effect in the middle east? Pundits have repeatedly said that civil war is going to break out in Iraq. Will America, like Brooks, be as clueless, chatting idly in a suburban home, proud of its work but ignoring the actual damage it has caused? It's tough to say, but it doesn't seem all that far-fetched. Or maybe the conclusion will be like another moment in the Brooks film. At one point, he gets a group of Pakistanis to appreciate his routine. We sense that they don't understand what he's saying, but they laugh anyway, because that's what they're supposed to do. And so, maybe the middle east will become the democracy that George Bush hopes it will be. But he probably will have won this victory in the same way Brooks tickled the Pakistani funny bone, and the hearts won't be in it.


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