Now 24 hours past seeing Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan on opening day, I'm sure that I'm going to write a glowing review of this movie. It is an outstanding and fascinating piece of art which is very funny, and works really well on several levels. Oh, it's gonna be a heck of a review.
But this isn't going to be it. Here, I want to zero in on just one specific aspect: How the unwitting Americans came out. What I saw on the screen doesn't seem to quite jibe with what I'm reading in many stories about it. I keep reading that Cohen made fools of the Americans, setting them up to expose their dark sides, their racism and homophobia, etc. For example, Entertainment Weekly says "the people Borat talks to become the symbolic heart of America - a place where intolerance is worn, increasingly, with pride." But that's mostly not what actually showed up on the screen, by my best instant analysis.
That does seem to be what the Jewish Sacha Baron Cohen cleverly intended when he went undercover as Borat. The whole design of the Cohen approach is to throw extreme social curveballs engineered to offer his dupes every opportunity to make bigoted Neanderthal level comments, encouraging such things with his own cheerful expressions of extreme bigotry. It would appear that Cohen intended to slice and dice cheap American patriotism and deep-seated bigotry, or some such.
But in the actual practice, the Americans he tricked into being in his film mostly acquitted themselves very well. None of these Americans seemed malicious or vicious, or even hateful. They were all pretty nice, and very open hearted.
Probably the Americans I would judge the worst in this film were the feminists. They had agreed to an interview, and didn't react very well when Borat insisted that Kazakhi scientists had proved that women have little brains like squirrels. The girls got a little indignant and huffed off mid-interview. This would be a misdemeanor offense at worst, but besides being humorless they were perhaps unnecessarily rude to a guest. That's about the worst treatment he got from anyone in the film.
The only overt hostility was mostly from the opening street scenes in New York, but was still measured and reasonable. Borat went down the street aggressively trying to give friendly kisses to random men. Look, if a fully adult man who you've never seen before shows up with a cameraman and tries to lay his lips on you, then he's asking to get bitch slapped. But in fact, about the worst Borat got was a suggestion or two that he should consider having sex with himself. That seems totally proportionate to the calculated and uninvited touching.
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Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Ty
"He went on about hoping that Bush would kill every man, woman, and child in Iraq, which was cute for his part, but the crowd absolutely did not cheer that. They were paying attention"
You weren't paying attention. Watch the movie again. Borat refers to Bush drinking the blood of every man, women, and child in Iraq, and it got thunderous cheering from the audience. They WERE paying attention, and loved the comments. That's part of the biting social commentary.
2 - C-Funk
If you think Borat made Americans look good, I think you might be hanging out with some pretty abominable people. Not all the Americans in the the film behaved badly, in fact the dinner table guests exceeded all diplomacy in the way they handled his bad manners. The rodeo guy, the frat boys, and most of the New Yorkers (who were so shocked by a simple greeting that they would threaten violence) do not make Americans look good, and I was absolutely horrified to see how some of your countrymen conducted themselves. Having said that, Cohen has probably filmed hundreds of hours of footage to garner these extreme reactions, so it's impossible to say how reflective this behaviour is. I think Cohen's primary goal was to make a funny and different comedy, and secondly to expose some of the US and A's dark underbelly. I think he succeeded brilliantly.
3 - Um
"The only other American saying much bad was the guy at the rodeo - and I wouldn't consider his remarks especially egregious."
The rodeo guy also said, "that's what we're trying to do" in response to Borat's description of the Kazakhstani practice of hanging gays.
I'd say that's pretty egregious.
4 - Al Barger
Ty, I'll have to see it again to gauge the reactions at the rodeo, but I suspect that you're seeing what you wanted to see rather than what was on the screen. It took a few seconds for parts of the crowd to catch on, but by the time he got to killing the lizards, there was pretty nearly zero applause.
He might have gotten some applause in the middle to marginally bad stuff before people caught on, but they simply were not trying to cheer a bunch of bloodthirsty stuff. Clearly, audience reaction shifted rapidly as they picked up on where he was going.
Um, "that's what we're trying to do" at the rodeo sounds kinda bad when you carefully study it on film, but it doesn't really mean squat. What, do you think this guy seriously wants to do violence to homosexuals? That was entirely a setup. The clever Jew tricked the old cowboy into making a dumb passing comment or two agreeing with Borat's foolishness. That doesn't mean the cowboy has wickedness in his soul.
Cohen might have INTENDED "biting social commentary," but to the extent that it depended on getting the Americans to go along with dumb stuff, Borat largely failed to provoke the anti-social reactions he might have hoped for.
C-Funk has the best overall outlook, noting that the primary goal was making a funny movie. Cohen did very well at that, but don't read too much into it.
However, it's just completely ridiculous to describe the Americans in this movie as "abominable." That word would describe much better the way Cohen abused the profuse goodwill of the Americans to attempt to trick them into making asses of themselves.
The scripted stuff was hilarious, and a lot of the candid camera reactions were funny- but not because they showed Americans acting badly. It was mostly fairly sweet humor from watching the Americans being gentle and diplomatic in the face of extreme social provocation.
For example, consider the visit to Bob Barr where he feeds him a piece of cheese, then cheerfully tells him that it was made from his wife's breast milk. Watching Barr's carefully controlled reaction was funny, but was this supposed to indicate that Barr was somehow stupid or bigoted?
By the way, editor monkeys cut out the links to my Borat pages back at MoreThings, but you might want to skate over and check out my BORAT PHOTO GALLERY.
5 - Ty
"Ty, I'll have to see it again to gauge the reactions at the rodeo, but I suspect that you're seeing what you wanted to see rather than what was on the screen. It took a few seconds for parts of the crowd to catch on, but by the time he got to killing the lizards, there was pretty nearly zero applause.
He might have gotten some applause in the middle to marginally bad stuff before people caught on, but they simply were not trying to cheer a bunch of bloodthirsty stuff. Clearly, audience reaction shifted rapidly as they picked up on where he was going."
Funny you say that, because I think YOU are seeing what you wanted to see rather than what was on the screen.
6 - Marabuntah
Your reviews of this film and your failure to comprehend Sonic Youth (I just read your response to Spin) proves your ranch-bound, hide hardened noodle is not ready for cultural commentary, even if it has seemingly taken place on this backlot of the internet. You are a dolt, and a musical conformist, ignorant, unimaginative, and anti-intellectual...The only reason the Americans in this film seem nice, is because you too are 'nice'...what a putrid trough of tepid scrawl I've drunk today. Do not write anymore, stick to manual labour and sports.
7 - Al Barger
Marabuntah, I'm sorry that Borat's Americans and I are not up to your standards of patience, tolerance, and intellectualism. We must try to do better so that one day we may be worthy to shine your shoes.
8 - Tom Peters
Notice people like Marabuntah offer no arguments - just name calling. Typical! The problem is that people like this are anti-american at their core and nothing will dissuade them otherwise. They throw labels around as if they had some god-like power see into everyones souls. It just happens that unless you agree with them 100%, you will be labelled with some sort of label like 'bigot','anti-intellectual', or whatever visionary label of evil they see fit to throw at you. This is nothing but typical leftist moralistic posturing resulting in nothing useful. Boring! People like Cohen and Marabuntah think they point to greater truths and enlightment in their arguments - instead they engage in the same type of stereotyping tacticts that they accuse their enemies of engaging in. Hyporcisy at its greatest! Borat is just one big joke played on us 'dumb' Americans - stereotypes aside of course.
9 - marabuntah
Al, sarcasm is not an argument.
Tom, you've responded with a bloated wad of your own weasel words. Oh the poor Americans, victims of anti-americanism; and aren't those left-wingers all stalinists and what not. If Borat takes advantage of good willed Americans what do Americans do to good willed Borats? They mince them, literally.
Stereotypes? I notice your post is littered with them, and that you only allow stereotypes which support your own views. You probably didn't notice.
Seriously Tom, learn some grammar, a little logic, and re-read your posts. That paragraph is its own self-indictment.
10 - Christophe
"...and it got thunderous cheering from the audience. They WERE paying attention, and loved the comments."
I have yet to see the movie but that could also be due to the magical and wonderful powers of editing, not with the audience really reacting to his comments.
11 - Al Barger
Marabuntah, sarcasm is not an argument- but then there was no argument on your part for me to respond to. Further, I saw absolutely no indication of any Americans showing any desire to "mince" Borat, metaphorically much less literally.
Now Mr Peters, I'm right sympathetic to what you're saying about cheap lefty moralizing as practiced by some Borat fans, such as Marabuntah here. It's just not well founded, and represents a cheap grasping for an unearned sense of moral superiority.
However, I would caution you against overgeneralizing that kind of idea by making presumptions about Sacha Cohen's intent. I could imagine him emerging from character after the marketing blitz, and becoming insufferable by making analysis like Marabuntah. But on the other hand, he might not be taking that viewpoint.
Cohen COULD decide to look at it that he put the Americans to the test, and deciding that they came out pretty good. He offered them the opportunity to f-up, but they mostly didn't.
Thus, I would suggest withholding judgment about Cohen's mental machinations, which we just aren't in a position to know. I'll assume charitably that Cohen does not mean to blanketly smear the people who appeared in his moviefilm- until and unless Cohen clearly says otherwise.
Christophe, there's definitely the magic of editing to consider, but I don't think there was any such thing relevant in the rodeo scene. People were cheering along with the friendly foreignor, and as he started talking crazier, the applause died out. That might not fit with the anti-American narrative that some folk want to make out of the film, but that's how the Americans actually reacted.
Again, this is at a rodeo in Virginia, so that'd probably be among the more rightwing end of Americans. Even the cowboys aren't actually giving up the kind of bloodthirsty display that some folks are intent on presenting as US, though. They basically went from supportive of the visitor, to confused as he's carrying on, to pissy with the guy for screwing with them by the end. At no time was there any kind of big surge of support coming from that crowd for anything like the kind of bloodlust of which Americans are frequently accused.
12 - Rodney Welch
Apparently, the USC frat boys do not quite agree with Al that they came off as "really nice fellows," which is why they're suing. In a lawsuit that is so awkwardly worded it sounds as if it was written by Borat himself, it says the film “made plaintiffs the object of ridicule, humiliation, mental anguish and emotional and physical distress, loss of reputation, goodwill and standing in the community.”
I think the three saw the movie and thought of a quick way to horn in on all the dough it's raking in. Can't you just hear those thugs? "Dude, even if the studio settles, we'll still be set! Cancun, here we come!"
13 - Al Barger
Rodney, the frat boys suing Cohen now is far more disreputable behavior than what they did in the film. They were obviously drinking, and were just venting a bit with a drunk on. Whereas, now they know the full score, have had time to think on it- and then respond with this punk-ass move.
For starters, this suit is clearly going to make these guys MUCH bigger laughingstocks than they already are. Is this move going to impress ANYONE?
I note that it was just this thing of playing victim that made them look foolish in the film, complaining about being abused by women and given less rights than minority groups. Much more so than the film itself, this move tells me that two of the three frat boys really are retards. But surely they're not stupid enough to think they're actually going to get PAID.
Then again, maybe they already have been. If I were a little more Borat-like, I might suspect that this lawsuit was a put-up job, a clever promotional ploy by the Jew Cohen- much like the bankers who misspelled "bank" on some new Kazakhi money and knowingly put it into circulation anyway a few days before the premiere of the movie. Co-incidental slip up, or Jew banker conspiracy to promote Cohen's double-secret Zionist propaganda? You decide.
14 - Leni Riefenstahl
Did you see Borat performs "throw the jew down the well" in Tucson or any other non-fox produced Borat performance ? I think not cause if you had it's pretty obvious you wouldn't have written such a ridiculous and funny post.
15 - Rodney Welch
Leni -- Al would probably say the crowd in that infamous video was merely being friendly to the nervous foreigner, and just because they were stomping their feet and clapping their hands should in no way be taken as an indication that they were anti-Semitic -- not even the woman who helpfully throws in a hand gesture for "You must grab him by the horns."
But I really shouldn't speak for Blogcritics' correspondent from Planet Bizarro. His own response, I am certain, will be much funnier than anything I could make up.
16 - Al Barger
Leni- Whatever someone else has done in other non-movie encounters with Borat does not change what these people did. You and Mr Welch can just chortle about how crazy and wrong I am- as may be- but that chortling does not constitute proof that I am wrong or an explanation.
I have an audio recording of the Tucson performance of "In My Country There Is Problem." I have not SEEN the performance though, and won't pretend to definitively know the minds of those folks. Listening to the audio 100 times or so though, my guess is that the audience was more or less in on it. It sure SOUNDS like they know it's a comedy routine.
Perhaps I'm naive or just too generous with my countrymen, but I'd find it far more likely that the cheering and carrying on there was a crowd supporting a comic than that a crowd in a random cowboy bar would turn out to be a bunch of Nazis sincerely cheering on the extermination of Jews.
It's like Borat says bad things, then you simply presume that the bad old Americans all agree with him, and condemn them for stuff coming out of COHEN'S mouth. But Cohen, he's just joking, see? Why would you presume that the Americans don't get the joke?
17 - S.T.M
Plus, Cohen is Jewish ... he can do it. And it IS funny. And he's been known to take the piss out of everyone.
18 - Rodney Welch
The link in my previous post takes you to the video, Al.
I wouldn't say they were Nazis; I'd say they were people for whom Jews really don't exist. I seriously doubt the Tucson crowd would have been supporting this comic if he sang "Throw George Bush Down the Well." But Jews -- well, hey, who cares, right? So yes, it does reveal an insensitivity on the side of the people in the bar -- a group insensitivity, and that is what Borat does so successfully in these spmewhat misanthropic comic sting operations: he gets people to reveal who they really are. Some, as in the movie, are really good people: the driving instructor, the car dealer, the Alabama family. They're just unfortunate victims of a joke. But the frat brothers, the guy at the rodeo, the gun store owner, this crowd in Tucson -- well, this is nothing if not the ugly side of America.
19 - t.a.b.
The point of Borat is not his ability to expose the secret sexism, racism, homophobia, etc. of Americans. Even if you can find people who hold these views in such a distilled, uncomplicated form, usually they will still be too smart to express them on camera.
Instead, Borat facilitates the enactment of the general American attitude towards foreigners, especially those from less developed countries. This attitude is not usually overtly hostile, as the author has noted, citing the friendliness of Americans towards Borat. However, when the Americans in the film take it upon themselves to be friendly to him, to induct him into their culture, and to overlook the offensive things he says, they perform a condescension that is inherently degrading to the foreigner. This may seem a contradictory claim, but bear with me.
Their willingness to excuse him implies that they do not consider him to be on their level culturally, intellectually or morally. When he makes obviously imbecilic comments, comments that they would never unquestioningly accept from an American, they assume that that is just "how people from Kazakhstan behave." Hence the reason why they do not respond with hostility. After all, he poses no apparent threat. Their paternalistic attempts to teach him the "right" things to do contain an implicit valuation of American culture over Kazakhstani culture. These lessons are not framed as "one man to another" but rather "American to Lesser Culture."
In my estimation, this is the underpinning of the entire concept of Borat. By exposing Americans' paternalistic view of foreigners (through their unwillingness to hold them to the same standards as their fellow Americans), he reveals the source of a serious impediment to intercultural understanding.
(One might also note that there are, in fact, instances where Americans openly agree with Borat's outrageous statements. The commentary becomes particularly biting when one realizes that some Americans have more in common with this fictionalized, exaggerated foreigner than the Kazakstanis themselves probably have.)
20 - Branan
Thank you for talking some sense! I'm a little less forgiving:
BTW: in the rodeo scene the booing is added in post. If you watch the background you see people either laughing or distracted.
There is little doubt that Sacha Baron Cohen is a master improvisational actor. His technical skills and intelligence are not in doubt but his intentions are cause for alarm. I laughed more then a few times and hated myself shortly afterwards. I have not seen smug, classist elitism like this since - well - I wasn't alive back in Dickens' Victorian London - so, never.
First, let's dispense with the absurd notion that Sacha is an equal opportunity offender. He has never made himself the butt of the joke - he's far too smug and cowardly for this. Instead he hides behind a brilliant disguise and makes fun of poor, racist, ignorant, and - yes - deeply ethnic Borat.
Related to this point, he dare not offend those we might naturally wish to defend due to political correctness, guilt or sympathy. In the film's most offensive sequence Borat enters an antique store owned and managed by an elderly white couple. Borat (In reality the Jewish Cohen who wrote a college paper on the Jewish victims of America's Civil Rights Movement) sees a few Confederate flags and asks the old owner about them. The man says it symbolizes his heritage. This provides Sacha with the anger and excuse to completely wreck their store. He causes nearly $500 worth of damage and then insults and humiliates them further by offering pubic hair as compensation. Sacha does this because he knows no one will rush to defend these poor people. On this point he is tragically correct. When he enters the genuinely dangerous Atlanta Ghetto he suddenly puts on the kid gloves and plays the buffoon. His elitism is curiously absent because he knows he could seriously get his ass kicked. Besides, no one wants to feel guilty about laughing at young black people (they might get angry) so he makes Borat the object of laughter at this point. Best to pick on the white and elderly - very brave man......
read the rest here:Rotten Tomatoes
21 - Rodney Welch
Did you see The Smoking Gun? The fat frat boy is going to have a hell of a time defending himself.
t.a.b. -- You make some good points; Christopher Hitchens echoes that p.o.v. in Slate, and there's merit to it. A lot of the people ARE just being nice; the Alabama family, for example, is blameless, as are the Jewish couple who operate the Bed and Breakfast. But I can't say that the whole point of the film is that Americans are all nice and friendly to a fault, because it does also show people at their inexcusable worst. It's a broad worst-and-best travelougue. It's also worth noting, I think, that you could try the Borat scheme in any country, anywhere, with any group of people, and get similar results. The truth of the matter is that people in private really can have some unconsciously horrible -- and unconsciously decent -- attitudes. At the risk of sounding overserious, the film holds a mirror up to the country, and it doesn't show just one thing, but several.
Branan -- You state "he dare not offend those we might naturally wish to defend due to political correctness, guilt or sympathy." Actually, by going after those glum, super-p.c. feminists, he did exactly that.
22 - Rodney Welch
This just in: At least one American reacted violently to Borat.
23 - Al Barger
A lot of good points being made here all around.
Let's start with t.a.b., who says "Their willingness to excuse him implies that they do not consider him to be on their level culturally, intellectually or morally." Well, Borat is NOT on our level- intentionally and very much by design. That's not some kind of fake presumption on the Americans' part. How SHOULD the Americans have reacted in order NOT to be subject to judgment for crimes of condescension?
Branan- I'm inclined to be more generous to Cohen than you, but you certainly have some legitimate points of criticism. I hadn't thought about it, but yeah Cohen used the idea of the shopkeepers dealing in Confederate memorabilia as a moral excuse to destroy their shop. Besides which, it appears that pretended not to have money and paid less than half of the actual damages- from what I could make out of the film.
We'd all probably have to study it repeatedly to read the tea leaves of public reaction, but the rodeo crowd certainly had mixed reactions. They weren't a mob speaking as one, but thousands of separate individuals trying to make sense of what was going on in front of them. Some of them would be laughing presumably because they had picked up that it was a joke.
No, Cohen was not an equal opportunity offender. You noted how he played kid gloves with the black guys. Note also how he doesn't at all address Muslims, and while he gleefully libels the good folks of Kazakhstan, he carefully avoids the obvious point of making Borat a Muslim. He "follows the hawk." The one fairly gentle roasting of the feminists doesn't begin to make it fair and balanced. Clearly, he had his comedic guns pointed squarely at red state America.
But it's not true to say "He has never made himself the butt of the joke." That is the important saving grace of Cohen. He ritually debased himself in a direct and physical manner that you couldn't abstract away intellectually- particularly in the notorious nude wrestling scene.
He made himself- Baron Cohen- look worse than any of the hick Americans. Maybe the frat boys got drunk and talked a little stupid, but that was Baron Cohen laying there with Larry Davitian's fat, hairy, 50 year old nuts laying on his chin.
Overall Branan, this is one of the couple of best, most insightful Borat essays I've seen. It's definitely too good to be buried in a comments thread. Perhaps you should become a Blogcritic, and post this as a stand-alone story.
Rodney, if Cohen has only had his ass kicked once doing this stuff, then he's gotten off lightly. He asks for it again and again. When smelly, unwashed Borat goes laying his lips uninvited on strange men in the subway, or going up to a guy in a bar wanting to buy his clothes and have sex with them, that's really asking for it, isn't it?
Oh, but let me guess: This is proof of the great deep-seated violent homophobia of America, right?
24 - Rodney Welch
Well, actually, I don't think the people on the subway were real. I think those were actors. I'm not saying people wouldn't react violently to Borat on a New York subway, but these people sounded to me like they were barking memorized lines they might have heard from another movie. (It wouldn't surprise me at all if the same were revealed of the guy who ran away from him on the street, and that scene with all the little kids being frightened by Borat's bear was obviously staged. I think there are laws gainst carrying a bear around with you in an ice-cream truck.)
Otherwise, though, Al, it seems as if you want it both ways: on the one hand you want to say (and did) that the movie makes America look good, then when presented with any evidence to the contrary and basically say so what.
25 - Martin Lav
I find it reprehensible that Cohen can attempt to bring out the true bigotry in people while he himself deviles another culture while portraying it under false pretenses.
What would Cohen and his fellows of same persuasion say if a an Arab masqueraded as a Jew and did the very same thing, while using their own set of stereotypes. I wonder if it would be seen as comedic relief.
And let's face it Americans are one of the most beloved people the world over and it should be no surprise to any foreigners that we are very tolerant to a fault of other peoples freedoms.