Borat Does America

First of all, let me apologize for the scarcity of posts this month. I’ve been struggling with a new apartment, a job change and a lack of Internet. If not one of those reasons abates the frustration you almost certainly must be feeling by now, then most likely you stopped visiting here weeks ago and therefore I no longer need to appease you. For those of you, however, who have stuck around, it’s good to be back. And, until I hit another slump in writing (as I most certainly will), I hope our newfound relationship together will bear some fruitful discussions (though it most likely will not).

I had so much to discuss in the last few weeks – my thoughts on The Departed, the final few films in my Halloween horror movie marathon, and Todd Field’s long delayed return to filmmaking after spending the last few years contributing voices to the Aqua Teen Hunger Force (oh wait, you can read that here) – but after sitting so long on these topics, I found that my passion for sharing my thoughts on them had greatly diminished. At some point I still would like to discuss The Departed in depth, as it is the most acclaimed movie of the year, but for now suffice to say that I was largely disappointed by it.

However, I recently viewed another film that has also been receiving numerous accolades from critics, namely Borat. Honestly, I wasn’t terrifically excited about this film. Having been a fan of the sketch comedy show Da Ali G Show years prior to this, I scoffed at the notion of translating this character onto the big screen (remember how big a failure Ali G in Da House was?). However, given the amount of praise it received upon its release, I started to cave in to the hype and conversely went into it with an amplified set of expectations.

In the end I left with mixed emotions concerning the film. On the one hand I felt that it delivered much of what it promised – i.e., there’s a lot of raunchy humor and plenty of people come off looking like complete jackasses. On the other hand, I almost felt as if it could have reached for more. What’s the point of translating a character such as this into a feature length film if not to widen the playing field and allow for a more dynamic presentation? So why does much of Borat end up feeling like little more than a series of sketches from the television show strung together by a thinly knit plot?

To be sure, the jokes are funny and a lot of the observations that his interactions with Americans produce are as insightful as they are scathing, but it doesn’t expand upon what the show had to offer other than making it longer and, arguably, a bit more arduous. In fact, many of the scenarios utilized so effectively in the television series – the etiquette class, the dinner party – are simply recycled here merely in different settings and involving different people. They still retain their sidesplitting level of humor, but I’d speculate that a newcomer to Borat would appreciate them far more than a long-time fan.

Not to sound pedantic, but I half imagined Borat to fill the role of a modern M. Hulot, or Charlie Chaplin. Why not? Sacha Baron Cohen derives the ultimate purpose of his lovable, bumbling idiot from the tradition set forth by these two comic geniuses – i.e., using his naïveté to expose the peculiarities and incompetence of the modern world. Cohen could have positioned him outside the action, allowing more reaction from the people he interviewed rather than drawing all attention toward the supposed peculiarities of his own culture. Yeah, we know from the show that his sister is a prostitute and that he’s slept with her, but Cohen acts as if this were intrinsically funny rather than realizing that it’s his unwitting participant’s reaction to this revelation that really matters. Cohen goes for the jugular rather than embracing the subtleties. He prefers the vulgarities of his character and resigns himself to appease the demographic that the film paradoxically seeks to humiliate.

That said I was nevertheless thoroughly entertained by the film (though not in the way I would have liked to have been). The one problem that I couldn’t shake, and for that matter, always disconcerted me during the original television run, was how the people innocently caught up in Cohen charade felt about the negative portrayal they were given. Not surprisingly, the characters who come of as the most detestable – the drunken frat boys who insult both women and minorities – are suing 20th Century Fox claiming that they signed a waiver to appear in the film under false pretenses (you can read the entire story here). Whether that was true or not makes little difference now, since nothing will eradicate the damage they’ve done to their respective characters.

Personally, I feel no sympathy for them. When you harbor perspectives as malignant as these assholes do, you deserve to be befuddled by an anti-Semitic reporter from Kazakhstan. Cheer up boys; maybe no one will remember who you were. Or, to put it in words I believe my South Carolinian brohams will understand: “don’t let a Kazakh journalist define who you are!”