Columns

Look at Borat, then at yourself

By BILL MAXWELL
Published November 26, 2006

Borat.

Here is why I paid $8 to see Sacha Baron Cohen's film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan: So many people, even some whose opinions I ordinarily respect, denounced the film as being "disgusting," "juvenile," "chauvinistic," "racist," "anti-Semitic," "homophobic," "anti-American," "misogynistic," "anti-Christian" and several other contemptuous designations that I was not going to miss it for anything. And, of course, whenever a film, or any work of art, stirs vehement rejection among right-wing pundits, I must see it.

Borat, in my estimation, is a splendid mockumentary because it tolerates no sacred cows. Everything is up for ridicule, as it should be in unapologetic satire. And Borat is quintessential satire, on par with Swift's Gulliver's Travels. If you do not believe me, reacquaint yourself with Lemuel Gulliver's experiences with the petty Lilliputians, the foul Brobdingnagians and the brutish Yahoos and then watch Borat again.

The plotline of the flick is simple: Borat Sagdiyev, a Kazakhstan journalist, along with his producer, Azamat, is sent to the United States to report on what makes our nation great and admired. He lands in New York City and stays there briefly, until seeing Pamela Anderson on the Baywatch TV show. He falls in love with the sex goddess and decides to motor across country to California where she lives. He intends to marry her.

As they trek south and then west, Borat and Azamat encounter various parts of the American mosaic. We see clever and sometimes unwitting confrontations with real Americans in their real environments. Borat is totally ignorant of American culture, which causes him to say and do outrageous and politically incorrect things. Most of the action, by the way, is secretly filmed, giving the movie its authenticity, hilarity and edginess.

In the South, Borat experiences the region's legendary hospitality and its unreconstructed racism at the same time. And there, he befriends a kind, overweight black prostitute, whom he marries and takes back to Kazakhstan.

He stumbles into a Pentecostal church service and pretends, like others in pews, that "Mr. Jesus" forgives his sins and saves his soul. He also wanders into an antique shop where the owners glorify the Confederate flag and "Southern heritage." Borat accidentally breaks nearly $500 worth of Southern collectibles.

Remember, we are seeing real people in their real shop.

Moving west, Borat goes to a rodeo and meets a man who wants to kill all homosexuals. He sings the Kazakhstan national anthem to the tune of the U.S. national anthem and angers everyone in the stands, even after he received applause for supporting the killing of all Iraqis.

Here, of course, American jingoism and faux patriotism are on display.

Borat and Azamat inadvertently rent a room in a B&B owned by a wonderful Jewish couple. Borat is convinced that the Jewish couple is trying to poison him and his companion and that the Jews can change forms, from people to roaches. After tossing money on the floor to appease the roaches, Borat and Azamat run from the B&B in terror. Later, Borat tries to buy a pistol to kill the Jews.

Here, the moviegoer must know that in real life, Baron Cohen is a Cambridge-educated, devout Jew who keeps kosher. His mother and his 91-year-old grandmother are said to love the film, including the Jewish references and insults. The Borat character speaks Hebrew in the film when he is pretending to be speak Kazakh, by the way.

The drunken, white frat brothers, real people, who give Borat a ride in their motor home and the black hip-hoppers, real people, he meets on a street named for Martin Luther King Jr. all treat the foreign-talking journalist kindly while simultaneously acting boorishly and judging others harshly.

As with everything else in the film, these encounters are realistic, bare-knuckled comments on American culture. Several people in the film and many in the real nation of Kazakhstan are crying foul over their portrayals.

To find out what Baron Cohen, 35, thinks of what others are saying about him and his flick, I went to an exclusive interview in a recent issue of Rolling Stone magazine.

As to being sued by the Kazakh government and being accused of being a bully, a bigot and an anti-Semite, Baron Cohen said: "I was surprised because I always had faith in the audience that they would realize that this was a fictitious country and the mere purpose of it was to allow people to bring out their own prejudices. And the reason we chose Kazakhstan was because it was a country that no one had heard anything about, so we could essentially play on stereotypes they might have about this ex-Soviet backwater.

"I think part of the movie shows the absurdity of holding any form of racial prejudice, whether it's hatred of African-Americans or of Jews. Borat essentially works as a tool. By himself being anti-Semitic, he lets people lower their guard and expose their own prejudices, whether it's anti-Semitism or an acceptance of anti-Semitism."

Sounds like classic satire to me.

Here is my advice: If you cannot laugh at yourself, your ethnic group, your religion, your profession, your body weight or what is wrong with America, stay away from this film. You will not like it because you will not get its meaning.

[Last modified November 26, 2006, 01:12:14]