Borat

[the undisputed truth]

But you've no problem doing so when you leave the cinema?

depends what the movie is.

And nowhere do we see Borat decrying intolerance or racism, but instead wallowing in it.

So are you suggesting I take the film at face value and Borat as a real person ? In which case I would say he is too ignorant to be racist. He's just going through the motions of conversation in a different culture having been conditioned by his environment not knowing that he is being racist.

Racism is good when its entertaining and financially lucrative.

It has it's uses but to me it is another social construct and one which I don't buy into.

As you like movies to assume you're stupid, better bring your favourite spoon next time.

Each and every. I don't go to marvel comic book film adaptations and expect gritty realism. I expect comic book fare. Any other expectation i take with me will surely have me leaving disappointed and unsatisfied. Likewise with Borat. It's a pisstake mockumentary. It'll probably go in one ear, rattle around, cause a,few laughs and the odd cringe then out the other til the next input of a crap film. I don't think I'll be dwelling on it too much or getting too worked up over it either.

 

[nomadologist]

Being a PC fascist doesn't really do much more to fight racism than Borat does.

It may have been more meaningful NOT TO GO SEE IT.

 

[nomadologist]

Oh yeah, and in America it considered equally crass to try to equate two different instances of violence or racism. We've come that far through the PC "police ideology" mode and back. Making analogies between two different kinds of historical examples of racism serves absolutely no purpose but to make, say, slavery and the holocaust the same phenomenon thereby devaluing them in all their individual horror.

See, here this sort of thing is usually done right before a Jewish person tells a black person that Jews should get reparations for the Holocaust but black people shouldn't for slavery. I've been a room when this has happened. It was disgusting. The logic was, "they were the same thing, but the slaves had no money so they don't deserve any back." I've been in rooms where black people have said that slaves deserved reparations but Jews don't. Equally disgusting. (See what I did there?)

This was not from uneducated people. This was not from someone who thought they were racist. Is anyone surprised by a racist comedy? I mean really. Have you seen "White Chicks"? or any American comedy for the past 70 years. What is uniquely racist about Borat? Nothing. Snore. Next time don't give them your number to crunch.

 

[nomadologist]

If you're really so sure about political determination, then why be so inflamed by the fact that the Hollywood machine keeps churning out racism? Make better movies that sell better. Or at very least, don't go buy the fucking product for god's sake. Hollywood has a bottom line, and you're sitting on it. Reminds me of when the religious right insists on making a big scene about the immorality of a film, which in the end, is really just free PR and delicious box-office boosting controversy for whatever film they're trying to "ban."

 

[nomadologist]

If everything is already politically determined, the only access you have to dissent is your market-share. Is what I'm trying to say.

 

[Guybrush]

I understand that the definition of "racism" varies depending on whom you ask, but surely using it to describe cultural prejudices is not wholly accurate, is it? Denotations of words change over time and I don't necessarily have a problem with that, but I do in this instance. The casual use of the "racist" slur troubles me because there are still plenty of adherents of the "original race ideology" out there, and if you -- imo needlessly -- erode the word used to describe them you make countering their arguments more difficult.

My suggestion, therefore, is that those who want to describe "cultural rasicm" settle for another term (xenophobia doesn't cut it, I think, because "cultural rasicm" doesn't entail hostility).

 

[nomadologist]

My suggestion, therefore, is that those who want to describe "cultural rasicm" settle for another term (xenophobia doesn't cut it, I think, because "cultural rasicm" doesn't entail hostility).

Seconded. Crying "racism" everytime something sensitive comes up that's a joke about the socially constructed notion of "race" is inherently condescending. It infantilizes and really forcefully re"victimizes" victims of racism. I have to wonder what these same people must think about sex-positive feminism.

I also have to wonder if they've ever used porn. Wait, no I don't! So the hypocrisy here is odd to me.

 

[nomadologist]

And further to K-punks argument - about the film's purported "exposure" of rednecks, etc, as - SHOCK HORROR OH MY GOD - racist ... Isn't the film here making patronising assumptions about it's audience's knowledge about the incidence of racism in society? Or are we to take it that those watching the Borat film are systematically stupid and therefore need to be spoon-fed reminded about the film's shock-horror racist exposes? Why should any of us be SHOCKED to "learn" that jocks and frat boys and rednecks are racist?

Very simple answer. Yes, there are people who will be shocked to learn that jocks and frat boys are racist--the very jocks and frat boys who comprise the audience's target demographic, and who, I would wager, will make up the largest portion of the movie's viewing audience in the US.

 

[nomadologist]

Questions:

1) Is Dave Chappelle racist?

2) Is South Park racist, sexist, and classist?

3) Is The Simpsons sexist and classist?

4) Is Little Britain sexist and classist?

5) Is The Birdcage homophobic?

6) Is Brokeback Mountain homophobic?

Just curious.

 

[hundredmillionlifetimes]

Have I touched on some previously unknown, unrecognised nerve, nomadologist?

Being a PC fascist doesn't really do much more to fight racism than Borat does.

It may have been more meaningful NOT TO GO SEE IT.

This discussion, as I recall, was not about censorship or PC "fascism," as you term it, but about the racist status of the Borat film. The problem here is that you are claiming that Borat's film is actually PC ie is anti-racist, whereas I am arguing that this is not actually the case, that the film is encouraging racism while pretending to be anti-racist, invoking all the Politically Correct beautiful liberal formulas of multicultural tolerance. And I'm not sure that not seeing the film would have helped my arguments, such a scenario instead being - understandably - utilised to refute them.

Making analogies between two different kinds of historical examples of racism serves absolutely no purpose but to make, say, slavery and the holocaust the same phenomenon thereby devaluing them in all their individual horror.

But the comparison was not being made for purposes of equating such phenomena, but precisely in order to contrast them. Take, for instance, the oft-repeated comparison between Nazi treatment of Jews and Zionist-Israeli treatment of Palestinians. It is perfectly legitimate to, as Badiou suggests, abstract from the holocaust when we seek to pass judgement on the Israeli policies towards Palestinians. And we can do this, not because we can simply compare or equate the two, but exactly because the holocaust, in contrast, was an incomparably stronger crime. Rather, it is those who evoke the holocaust in such terms who are effectively manipulating it, appropriating and instrumentalizing it for current political purposes. The very need to raise the holocaust in defence of Israeli mis-treatment of Palestinians secretly implies, as Zizek argues, that "Israel is committing such horrible crimes that only the absolute trump-card of holocaust can redeem them." Holocaust is here being used to legitimize murderous Israeli activity in the occupied zones because no matter how genocidal their behaviour becomes, it still could not possibly be as bad as the Nazis, and that makes it okay ... Borat's racism is not in any way equivalent to that of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion so therefore its okay!

Yes, there are people who will be shocked to learn that jocks and frat boys are racist--the very jocks and frat boys who comprise the audience's target demographic, and who, I would wager, will make up the largest portion of the movie's viewing audience in the US.

A shock that they will find thrilling, that they will vicariously enjoy. Why do you think, for instance, the military shows (shocking) war movies for training purposes? To turn recruits against combat and war?

 

[nomadologist]

I was claiming that you were PC, actually. Not the film. And I never said any kind of racism was ok.

Given that is your position, Hundredmillion, how would you answer the questions above? I am genuinely curious.

 

[nomadologist]

They actually have them play video games now. During basic training and before combat.

 

[hundredmillionlifetimes]

But but isn't A Clockwork Orange a film about violence that depicts violence and even "glorifies" it in some way.

Yes, though the film's defenders will point to its Brechtian distanciation, to the dispassionate detachment of the camera, the soundtrack, the mise en scene, its uneasy, unsettling ambiguity, and to the fact that its not masquerading as a reality-tv documentary.

Is anyone going to boycott that film because the main character, albeit somewhat sympathetically portrayed in some scenes, is a nasty shit?

The film's director did just that Indeed, if Kubrick's request to Warner Bros, who owned and controlled the negative, had been fully respected, the film would have been withdrawn from world-wide circulation back in 1973; but Warner's just settled for Britain, as Kubrick resided there. Yes, Kubrick did have serious regrets about the first 20 minutes of the film, which is why he banished the movie from all further consideration, refusing even to discuss it with anyone right up to his death.

Doesn't that film use violence to discuss violence in our society?

Yes. [And it demonstrates how far the culture has moved on, when, a few years ago, upon the film's re-release, it was treated as tame and quaint by today's youf' ...]

 

[D84]

A shock that they will find thrilling, that they will vicariously enjoy. Why do you think, for instance, the military shows (shocking) war movies for training purposes? To turn recruits against combat and war?

I find your arguments persuasive but I stumble on this one. Art/film/etc is just too protean to be covered by such a simple prescription. There is never any one "message" in any given work. There are often many themes and ideas, often running in opposite directions. That's why it's art and not philosophy.

Such war movies may serve an ancillary propagandist purpose when the viewers are encouraged to be macho and cheer on the slaughter, but they can also be horrific in a context where people are encouraged to look down on violence.

I'm not a moral relativist because I plump for the latter position. It's just that different readings are possible in the minds of the readers given their different contexts - one reading is the right one but different people interpret differently (they have different tools etc) and like god the mind of the author(s) is often unknown - sometimes even to the author(s).

 

[nomadologist]

By all means, everyone--if what Hundredmillion says is true, go see Borat in theaters. If you can, write a lot of magazine articles about it, make sure it gets very broad coverage, and be sure to take an explosively controversial stance on its politics. Write academic papers about it. Make sure everything you do feeds the fantasmic orgy so that it hits fever pitch and the Sasha Baron Cohen machine can chug a long for a few years longer before he starts doing Vegas. The bigger he gets now, the more likely the Criterion Collected Works will sell more and send him coasting into early retirement. GO SEE THIS MOVIE. In this politically determined world of fantasmic inflation, it would make perfect sense.

 

[D84]

Yes, though the film's defenders will point to its Brechtian distanciation, to the dispassionate detachment of the camera, the soundtrack, the mise en scene, its uneasy, unsettling ambiguity, and to the fact that its not masquerading as a reality-tv documentary.

But neither is Borat - it's a prank film masquerading as a documentary for it's unsuspecting victims

The film's director did just that Indeed, if Kubrick's request to Warner Bros, who owned and controlled the negative, had been fully respected, the film would have been withdrawn from world-wide circulation back in 1973; but Warner's just settled for Britain, as Kubrick resided there. Yes, Kubrick did have serious regrets about the first 20 minutes of the film, which is why he banished the movie from all further consideration, refusing even to discuss it with anyone right up to his death.

Ah but that didn't stop you from watching it...

 

[nomadologist]

Also, is Hundredmillion saying that being PC necessarily precludes being racist? Interesting.

 

[nomadologist]

Have I touched on some previously unknown, unrecognised nerve, nomadologist?

I live in Bushwick, Brooklyn, next to the notoriously dangerous Bushwick Houses projects. Yes, racism is a "nerve" for me. My friends have been mugged and severely beaten. I have been threatened on the street and called a "white bitch" for simply walking home. Not even with my headphones on, or ipod out, or expensive clothes on, or anything. My whiteness was sufficient to warrant the assault.

I heard a story from my first floor neighbor yesterday about how at his music practice a few blocks away at 1AM, they heard a blood-curdling scream over the amps. They looked out the window and saw a very large man with a scarf over a woman's face while he strangled her--needless to say, the girl was white, the assailant was not. The cops said "there's nothing we can do" after he ran off. My apartment was broken into while I was home a few weeks ago, on a predominantly Dominican block, while I was home. If my boyfriend hadn't been there to scare away the teenaged boys (from a few buildings down), I don't know what would've happened. I've seen them carrying boxcutters. My landlord refuses to put bars on the windows. I am about to wind up in a very long legal battle about it. I live in this neighborhood because it is the nicest one I can afford to live in. Bed Stuy would be worse, I'm sure.

Yes, you hit a nerve all New Yorkers have worn down pretty raw.

 

[nomadologist]

I forgot to mention the time gunfire broke out 15 feet behind me and the nearest man said "ey mami you better run" so I did, all the way home. That seems such a distant memory. Luckily it was probably "just another" two-bit crack dealer who got in over his head and owed a supplier money but needed to feed his babies who was marked to receive that one, and not me. Didn't even read about it in the papers, because it happens so often here, and if your name isn't Astor or Greenberg or Simons no one thinks you matter. Go to the ER in this neighborhood? Not if you can't wait behind 5 or 6 traumatic gunshot wound victims at any given time and a million children and infants who can't go to the regular pediatrician because the copay is too high on medicaid so parents have to bring their kids into a "second" waiting room for people who will cost the hospital money to treat. Once they process my paperwork and realize I have private insurance, they've twice tried to shuttle me to the top of the line.

Huh, Borat? Oh it's a movie. With jokes.

 

[nomadologist]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/li...ews.html?in_article_id=416121&in_page_id=1773

This is what happens in the US when you say stupid shit.