Borat Big Hit in the South
As a big fan of HBO's Da Ali G Show, I was exciting! to see Borat. Sacha Cohen, at least on the series, had a way of exposing the dark racist (and every other -ist) American underbelly with exquisitely placed judo moves. So Kate and I saw Borat on opening day. After all, the reviews were near monolithic in the opinion that this was the funniest and most subversive comedy since Andy Kaufman or something.
I have to say that we both left the theater feeling vaguely ill. Sacha Cohen compromised the intelligence of Da Ali G Show for a broader, clearly duller audience. Here are my reasons:
1. Over-reliance on the cheap adolescent idiocy pioneered by Tom Green and Jackass. Not to say that this kind of thing doesn't have a place, but it's not genius. Some of it is just plain nauseating.
2. The Borat character on Da Ali G Show is an obviously overdrawn caricature of a "foreigner," whose very believability is the central trick played on his unwitting interviewee. That is, if you buy Borat as representative of some reality, then you are the dupe. The Borat in the film, on the other hand, asks the audience to accept him as a parody of a Kazakhstani (or a Muslim or pick-your-backward-culture). In other words, Borat switches hats from a critique of the foreigner of the American imagination to an American critique of an imaginary foreigner. Rather than destabilizing these prejudices, Borat reinforces them.
3. Borat is representationally meaningless. The lines between fiction and documentary are drawn so thin that you do not know quite what to laugh at. When Borat exposes someone's prejudices in the documentary style, the joke is on the real-life subject. When this is fictionalized, the joke is on...whom? Let's take an example. At the rodeo, by explaining his "culture" first, Borat gets a man to admit that he would also like to see all homosexuals in the U.S. burnt at the stake. Clearly Borat's trick is to act as permission for this man's dark shadow to rear its head. Good stuff. At the end of the film, Borat stands in line to meet Pamela Anderson at a book signing, during which he tries to put her in a supposed Kazakhi "marriage bag" and carry her off. Since this scene is in no way filmically distinct from the Cohen's other public stunts, we don't know whether or not this is staged. Turns out it is. But in this case, the joke only reinforces dominant prejudices through the representational (rather than non-representational) character of Borat. The scene in which Borat and his producer get in a fight and then end up running through the hotel naked and into an managerial conference meeting is also a bizarre mixture of gratuitous fictional plotline and a presumably real-life stunt. I'm getting my Baudrillardian undies in a bunch, but the "joke" of Borat is defanged by its refusal to afix itself to any reality. This ambiguity makes it possible for Borat to appeal to the conscientious and the prejudiced alike: the film reads both ways. What we are left with is a laundry list of free-floating insults - because in the end, the context of who said them for what reason ceases to matter. This is what critics mean when they say that Borat is an "equal opportunity offender." We wind up with a kind of shock jock comedy where the language of prejudicial taboo is slung around for its own sake, not to make any kind of moral point but because it is by itself "offensive."
These are the reasons why Borat can be at the same time so "subversive" and also go down so easy. I remember entering the theater right behind some hooting frat guys who had "heard that this movie" was "so offensive." Their squealing swinish glee should have been a signal to go home then. I truly wish I had. I hope the real trick of Borat was Cohen's masterful gathering of a roaring homophobic, anti-semitic, misogynistic audience amidst which I could sit shellshocked. I hope that was the plan. If so, it far surpasses any prank that Andy Kaufmann ever dreamed up.
I have to say that we both left the theater feeling vaguely ill. Sacha Cohen compromised the intelligence of Da Ali G Show for a broader, clearly duller audience. Here are my reasons:
1. Over-reliance on the cheap adolescent idiocy pioneered by Tom Green and Jackass. Not to say that this kind of thing doesn't have a place, but it's not genius. Some of it is just plain nauseating.
2. The Borat character on Da Ali G Show is an obviously overdrawn caricature of a "foreigner," whose very believability is the central trick played on his unwitting interviewee. That is, if you buy Borat as representative of some reality, then you are the dupe. The Borat in the film, on the other hand, asks the audience to accept him as a parody of a Kazakhstani (or a Muslim or pick-your-backward-culture). In other words, Borat switches hats from a critique of the foreigner of the American imagination to an American critique of an imaginary foreigner. Rather than destabilizing these prejudices, Borat reinforces them.
3. Borat is representationally meaningless. The lines between fiction and documentary are drawn so thin that you do not know quite what to laugh at. When Borat exposes someone's prejudices in the documentary style, the joke is on the real-life subject. When this is fictionalized, the joke is on...whom? Let's take an example. At the rodeo, by explaining his "culture" first, Borat gets a man to admit that he would also like to see all homosexuals in the U.S. burnt at the stake. Clearly Borat's trick is to act as permission for this man's dark shadow to rear its head. Good stuff. At the end of the film, Borat stands in line to meet Pamela Anderson at a book signing, during which he tries to put her in a supposed Kazakhi "marriage bag" and carry her off. Since this scene is in no way filmically distinct from the Cohen's other public stunts, we don't know whether or not this is staged. Turns out it is. But in this case, the joke only reinforces dominant prejudices through the representational (rather than non-representational) character of Borat. The scene in which Borat and his producer get in a fight and then end up running through the hotel naked and into an managerial conference meeting is also a bizarre mixture of gratuitous fictional plotline and a presumably real-life stunt. I'm getting my Baudrillardian undies in a bunch, but the "joke" of Borat is defanged by its refusal to afix itself to any reality. This ambiguity makes it possible for Borat to appeal to the conscientious and the prejudiced alike: the film reads both ways. What we are left with is a laundry list of free-floating insults - because in the end, the context of who said them for what reason ceases to matter. This is what critics mean when they say that Borat is an "equal opportunity offender." We wind up with a kind of shock jock comedy where the language of prejudicial taboo is slung around for its own sake, not to make any kind of moral point but because it is by itself "offensive."
These are the reasons why Borat can be at the same time so "subversive" and also go down so easy. I remember entering the theater right behind some hooting frat guys who had "heard that this movie" was "so offensive." Their squealing swinish glee should have been a signal to go home then. I truly wish I had. I hope the real trick of Borat was Cohen's masterful gathering of a roaring homophobic, anti-semitic, misogynistic audience amidst which I could sit shellshocked. I hope that was the plan. If so, it far surpasses any prank that Andy Kaufmann ever dreamed up.
posted by thebaffler at 4:50 PM
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