Borat

luka said:

i didn't say any of those things baboon has attributed to me. i like him,we're mates. and i haven't deleted any messages either, thats an optical illusion. lets get back to Borat.

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lol. You bastard.

Borat is hilarious, but one has to acknowledge that the joke is not solely on the featured Americans. Even if the viewer is aware that what is presented as Kazakh culture is fictitious I would argue that the stereotypes presented still sully his or her perception of what constitutes it.

Guybrush said:

Borat is hilarious, but one has to acknowledge that the joke is not solely on the featured Americans. Even if the viewer is aware that what is presented as Kazakh culture is fictitious I would argue that the stereotypes presented still sully his or her perception of what constitutes it.

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it's pretty full on stuff but its a stereotype of all new european countries, its got bugger all to do with any actual country, its more or less about what we don't actually know, which is why people are taken in by him, its quite clearly really dumb stuff.
anyway the americans with borat have always come over as pretty understanding really.

i have a feeling if it had been a young attractive eastern european woman things might have been different though.

Its fairly amusing, but its not some damning indictment or anything (or if it, its certainly not one that hasn't already been made time and time again). He's literally a one trick pony, no? For someone "incredibly bright" his humour has failed to evolve since Ali G, in essence everything he does is precisely the same trick. It doesn't really matter whether one knows that Kazakh culture isn't as he portrays it, its that he asks you to laugh at an idiotic middle easterner/Eastern European as well a whoever he is interviewing. Its not quite as K-Punk presents it, not quite, its a lot more complex than Spike Milligan browning up in the 70s... There's still something about it which makes me uncomfortable. But a lot less so than Little Britain.

I think it's much less complex than what went on in the 70s... The 'complexity' just amounts to hypocritical disavowal...i.e. it isn't US who are trading in idiotic stereotypes for laughs; what's funny is that OTHER people (more stupid than us) can take such stereotypes seriously. Of course that allows him to use the stereotypes while disingenuously distancing himself from them. Baron Cohen and Ricky Gervais imagine (and are clearly indulged in this) that meta-pretexts are 'complex', but they are really just the bog-standard comedy cliche of the day... (the atrocious second series of Extras used ludicrous characters - notably the absurd agent character - as the flimsiest of pretexts for all kinds of unpleasant material).

The point was not that it was bad BECAUSE he's an Oxbridge smugonaut; it's that it's only because he's an Oxbridge smugonaut that he's allowed to get away with it. If Bernard Manning said that he was 'laughing at stereotypes', he'd rightly be derided. But because S BC went to Cambridge, he must be 'bright', mustn't he, and he couldn't possibly be racist, because only ignorant, poorly educated people are racist aren't they...

Ali G was funny for ten minutes... but surely Baron Cohen would have at least admitted that the joke was at the expense of the Ali G character himself (white people pretending to be black, which was at least a recognisable social phenomenon)... with Borat, we are being asked to think that the humour is not at the expense of East European/ Eurasian Muslims at all, no.. (and quite honestly, it would be difficult to think of a group in Britain at the moment less in need of attack than East European muslims?)... The fact that it is in no way based on what Kazakhstan is really like is very far from being an excuse... That's what racism is.... As if Jim Davidson's routines were based on a real engagement with caribbean culture...

Borat is Avid Merrion without the laughs (note that Leigh Francis had the wit to have Merrion come from a fictional country).

I wrote that post after I saw Baron Cohen on Jonathan Ross, which I can honestly say ranked with some of the most embarrassing things I've ever seen on television. As is clear, I don't like Baron Cohen, but I felt embarrassed FOR him. Ross clearly wasn't stupid enough to be persuaded by the stereotype, so there was no possible humour...unless we really are supposed to be laughing at an idiotic stereotype of Kazakhstan, which I thought we weren't... without 'stupid people' who (unlike us) could fall for the stereotype, it simply was the equivalent of Spike Milligan browning up... but with added smugness and dishonesty... At best, Borat is just serves the function of making people feel superior... At worst, well...

Whether or not I agree with you, very interesting post. You've made me think.

Here is a videoclip of Stewart Lee discussing this subject on BBC's "This Week":
Stewart Lee on BBC's "This Week"

gek-opel said:

It doesn't really matter whether one knows that Kazakh culture isn't as he portrays it, its that he asks you to laugh at an idiotic middle easterner/Eastern European as well as whoever he is interviewing.

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But Kazakhstan is neither in Eastern Europe nor the Middle East.

The Black and White Minstrels Revisited

Could we even consider to atavistically trace this bore-ass replicant to before the 1970s, to, specifically, 1968, and the release of Blake Edwards' coyly racist, Peter Sellers-starring The Party, with its then casual racism towards Indian immigrants, but now updated and displaced onto Muslims [whether East European, Middle Eastern, or Asian]?

Uncanny, or just plain dumbed-down derivative?



At least the cameleon Sellers was an actor; Borat, like Gervais and Merton, rely on the predatory oneupmanship of the put-down witticism, quip, and riposte to distract from their one-dimensional, contempt-for-everyone aloofness. At least The Party did, however unwittingly, poke fun at Hollywood bourgeoise liberalism, but Sellers as mute naif-Indian, like Borat as loud-mouthed naif-Muslim, simply reinforces the intolerance and racism underlying Western multiculturalism: the [third-world] Other is only tolerable as simple-minded obedient carricature, as passively conforming stereotype ...



... and how could the film be satirizing Americans when the vast majority of reviews of the film in the US have been glowingly positive? Because its not Americans in general that are being ridiculed but [as K-punk points out] those dumb, stupid (and working class) ones who have the gall to really believe. They can believe for us, so allowing us to freely and legitimately perpetuate the racist stereotype ...

hundredmillionlifetimes said:

At least the cameleon Sellers was an actor; Borat, like Gervais and Merton, rely on the predatory oneupmanship of the put-down witticism, quip, and riposte to distract from their one-dimensional, contempt-for-everyone aloofness.


... and how could the film be satirizing Americans when the vast majority of reviews of the film in the US have been glowingly positive? Because its not Americans in general that are being ridiculed but [as K-punk points out] those dumb, stupid (and working class) ones who have the gall to really believe. They can believe for us, so allowing us to freely and legitimately perpetuate the racist stereotype ...

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Quite.... Cohen is one of the most ugly and repellent aspects of the current full spectrum dominance of British culture by public school twits...

K-Punk's arguments sound good but I haven't seen it yet and those at Lenin's Tomb sound good too...

And I haven't seen Borat yet so I can't comment.

This is also one of the funniest TV pranks ever so I've gotta give credit where it's due.

"let's do it, but with more energy..!"

Norman Gunston's in there too but apparently someone else was doing something similar before, right?

And Norman was making fun of his own background...

k-punk said:

I think it's much less complex than what went on in the 70s... The 'complexity' just amounts to hypocritical disavowal...i.e. it isn't US who are trading in idiotic stereotypes for laughs; what's funny is that OTHER people (more stupid than us) can take such stereotypes seriously. Of course that allows him to use the stereotypes while disingenuously distancing himself from them.

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do you not see the use of vehicles such as this (to emphasise people's prejudices and draw out the darkness lying beneath their day-to-day defences) as a legitimate form of humour? in any circumstance? what are your opinions on brass eye? i would certainly see brass eye as superior and more focused, but im not sure how different they are in form

i havent seen the borat film, but i rated the old sketches highly, for the reasons i mention above. i enjoyed the surreal use of the character to make those such as bigoted fox-hunters, etiquette instructors and the like to look foolish, to highlight what madness lies within our society. perhaps that does boil down to satisfaction in my percieved superiority, but if so then the same could perhaps be argued regarding any piece of critique which emphasises a persons actions or words which i find to be ignorant and objectionable. are there not interesting parallels to be drawn with pleasure taken from engaging with journalistic criticism, if we are to examine the role that superiority plays in taking pleasure from artistic and academic endeavour?

i agree that there are, in amongst all the positives which i see in his work, a number of jokes which i would prefer werent there, but thats not to say that i see the entire exercise as meaningless and without value

i agree that his actions are certainly irresponsible, and to some degree repellant. but i dont see them as devoid of any artistic merit. i am, as always, interested to hear your thoughts

elgato said:

do you not see the use of vehicles such as this (to emphasise people's prejudices and draw out the darkness lying beneath their day-to-day defences) as a legitimate form of humour? in any circumstance? what are your opinions on brass eye? i would certainly see brass eye as superior and more focused, but im not sure how different they are in form

i havent seen the borat film, but i rated the old sketches highly, for the reasons i mention above. i enjoyed the surreal use of the character to make those such as bigoted fox-hunters, etiquette instructors and the like to look foolish, to highlight what madness lies within our society. perhaps that does boil down to satisfaction in my percieved superiority, but if so then the same could perhaps be argued regarding any piece of critique which emphasises a persons actions or words which i find to be ignorant and objectionable. are there not interesting parallels to be drawn with pleasure taken from engaging with journalistic criticism, if we are to examine the role that superiority plays in taking pleasure from artistic and academic endeavour?

i agree that there are, in amongst all the positives which i see in his work, a number of jokes which i would prefer werent there, but thats not to say that i see the entire exercise as meaningless and without value

i agree that his actions are certainly irresponsible, and to some degree repellant. but i dont see them as devoid of any artistic merit. i am, as always, interested to hear your thoughts

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The initial Ali G sketches effectively deflated pomposity. This, I'm sorry to say, is rich people laughing at poor people, tedious anti-Americanism, and a use of 'irony' to allow Cohen to say the unsayable (and with precious little wit). I was wrong to believe it would be good. Replace 'Kazakh' with 'Bangladeshi' or 'Ghanaian', and this film would be unreleasable, and rightly condemned. But that's hardly the only problem, as one of the 'jokes' seemed to be when Cohen called a black man 'chocolate face'. But because he's in 'character' as a Kazakh man who he's also patronising, then that's OK then.

On top of that, it wasn't clever. 'Man Bites Dog' achieved the same effect (initial laughter, then horror that you were laughing in the first place), but it was the POINT of that film. Here, it's a very, very unfortunate by-product.

In a decent world, RIP Sasha Baron-Cohen's career.

Plus (and I'm as guilty as the next person of this), the effects post-modernism and irony are allowing us to make very long, hard work of the simple fact that this film was odious, cowardly and racist.

*effects OF*

borat = boor rat or boring twat then ? Another less than subtle in joke.

Having said what I said, and read more press on the film, I can at least say that it's been very, very interesting to see the divided reaction, and the different motivations ascribed to SBC. Partic. when I myself changed my opinion halfway through the film.

baboon2004 said:

Have you ever seen Stewart Lee? If you think Bill Hicks is on another level, then just wait to see Mr Lee in action. The only comedian I've ever seen who I'd have to call a genius.

.

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stewart lee got a lot from bill hicks... it's silly to champion one and deride the other...

Strangely enough i just came across these yesterday.

Stewart Lee - Whats wrong with blasphemy ?