Last night, my wife and I took her younger brother and niece to see "Borat." The buzz has been tremendous, and though I had some reservations based on what I had heard, the kids were eager to watch the film and we were, well, willing.
I can think of only two other films that I found so viscerally upsetting: "Natural Born Killers" and "Pulp Fiction." I saw them both in the theater, and left both literally shaking with rage at the filmmakers. "Borat" joins these other two in a small category I have for Films I Did Not Merely Dislike But Actively Loathed. I’m quite confident I’m in a distinct minority among my friends and readers, but so be it; you can share your impressions in the comments.
I include Borat along with the above-mentioned Oliver Stone and Quentin Tarantino films for a simple reason: all three pictures were, from a creative standpoint, magnificent. I left the theater last night convinced of Sacha Baron Cohen’s subversive talent; what I question is his apparent radical lack of sympathy for his fellow human beings. Look, I get the point he was trying to make; Cohen was eager to expose what he sees as the dark, bigoted, hypocritical underbelly of Red State America. (And man, was he selective in the targets of his satire — he’s every bit as much a propagandist as Michael Moore.) But while I can appreciate satire, I dislike it when it comes tinged with active cruelty. What I don’t like about Sacha Cohen’s hit picture is the same thing I don’t like about Tarantino’s films: while they are exceptionally watchable movies, they are shot through with a nastiness, a puerile sadism, that reminds me of little boys plucking insects’ wings.
Did I laugh at Borat? Of course. But laughter is not an endorsement of the concept. If you made me sit through a ninety-minute porn flick, I’d probably get turned on — and that physiological response would hardly be an endorsement of the film. I could watch a bad horror flick and "jump" at the scary bits, but my momentary fear wouldn’t prove the quality of the movie. Laughing at some of the scenes in Borat was similar for me; it felt more like an uncontrollable reflex than an actual appreciation for the work itself.
What made me angriest, in the end, was Cohen’s extraordinary arrogance. Like many immensely talented artists, he seems to view ordinary human beings as props rather than as his brothers and sisters. Deception, manipulation, public humiliation are all acceptable as long as the end product serves to make his rather obvious and banal point: human beings are awkward, judgmental, hypocritical, and flawed. I may be the only person who watched this film whose heart went out to the crowd at the rodeo, to the Chi Psi brothers in the RV, to the Southern dinner party, to — particularly — the Pentecostals. As nasty as some of the remarks were from the fraternity lads, for example, I found myself far more sympathetic to the objects of Cohen’s derision than to the filmmaker himself. In the end, all of his subjects, for all their unpleasantness, displayed the gentle naivete and gullibility so characteristic of Americans. Cohen, for all of his impressive skill and his willingness to take risks, displayed something even uglier: a genuine hostility towards humanity.
To be sure, many great satirists have been misanthropes. Perhaps it’s why I loathed Mencken and Karl Kraus when I read them in college. (For me, sincerity is the most underrated of modern virtues and ironic detachment a particularly tiresome vice.) Perhaps Cohen now has joined the ranks of the great misanthropic satirists. His talent is immense, his work undeniably provocative and funny. But I absolutely cannot get past the sadism and the heartlessness that seems shot through the fabric of his work, and I am still angry at him and his picture this morning.
Discuss in the comments.
That’s precisely why I can’t and won’t watch that movie. I can’t even sit through the clips online.
You think Michael Moore is a PROPAGANDIST? I’m confused. Fahrenheit 911 is a documentary of pure facts. (It is quite restrained, actually). MM Offered a reward of ten thousand dollars to anyone who could prove that anything he reported on in F911 was false or misleading.
Have you SEEN Fahrenheit 911? Maybe you haven’t seen it.
Propaganda isn’t always false, Kathy. It’s about using art to make a political point. I loved Fahrenheit 911, but I would hardly call it a balanced view, any more than I’d call the “Left Behind” series a thoughtful, multi-sided discussion of the End Times.
But no thread drift here. No more mentioning of Michael Moore; stay on Cohen and Borat.
I haven’t seen “Borat” but “Pulp Fiction.” was a great film.
If you want to get angry see “9 Songs” that film had my blood boiling.
Found you a couple weeks ago, and have been enjoying your stuff. I have not seen Borat, and hoped I wouldn’t have to for all the reasons you detail.
Whether I do or don’t, a standing ovation for this review. Amen.
Thank you. This is why I will not go to see that movie. I’m glad somebody else feels the same way I do.
I’m a little uncomfortable with dismissing the comments of the fratboys as “gentle naivete and gullibility.”
Unless we say that women and minorites don’t count as humanity, how were they not displaying “a genuine hostility towards humanity”???
I’m a little uncomfortable with dismissing the comments of the fratboys as “gentle naivete and gullibility.”
The fratboys may have just been showing their true selves, but there are a lot of other folks in this movie that weren’t so unsympathetic.
It seems to me that what is really being laughed at here is the social conditioning we go through that is so strong that we will be led to endorse horribly bigoted ideas, simply because we’re too nice to not play along with a guy who comes off as basically kind-hearted and naive. Do the people Borat leads in singing “Throw the Jew Down the Well” really hate Jews that much? Maybe, but I think that for the most part, they’re really just too uncomfortable telling off a poor rube like Borat.
It is, I grant, a movie that does not have much empathy for these people. But, well, perhaps therein lies one of the subtle arguments of this movie: should empathy have bounds? After all, these people are often showing tremendous empathy for Borat himself, perhaps beyond what they should.
(But as for “Natural Born Killers” - well, yeah, that really was awful. Oliver Stone is a grotesque carbuncle on cinema’s behind.)
I am going to have to refresh my memory on the definition of Propaganda !
You know, the two movies I HATED THE MOST are Pulp Fiction and Natural Born Killers (Oh wait: The Worst Movie EVER is “7″) and I bet I will hate Borat too. I think we are of one mind about those flicks. (I experienced “Natural Born Killers” to be actively EVIL, if such a thing can be said about a movie).
Tara, I’m not endorsing the boys’ offensive words. But they were also drunk and mugging for a camera. I heard a lot of silly bravado from them, but I also saw them as victims of a brilliant con man. Even in their drunken ugliness, I sensed a soft undercurrent of innocence. I don’t endorse what they said, mind you — but am convinced that what Cohen was doing was fundamentally worse.
I wonder if you would have hated this as much if he had exposed the dark, bigoted, hypocritical underbelly of Red State America in a way other than comedy? I thought his indictment of some segments of America were spot on. Everyone who comes off looking terrible has done it to himself.
CW
I don’t mean to promote thread drift, but since you brought it up, I want to ask about Pulp Fiction. I can understand having a violence threshhold above which you can’t enjoy a film; but that’s something very different from actively loathing a film. So can you say more about why you actively loathed Pulp Ficiton — in comments, or in another post? I strongly suspect I’m not the only one who’s curious.
(Incidentally, I haven’t seen either Borat or Natural Born Killers, so if possible a self-contained explanation, not relying on seeing them, would be awesome. I mean, surely you wouldn’t want me to go out and see films you loathe just to undersand why you loathe a different one right? :) Thanks.)
Borat is just a Jackass ripoff that thinks it has a brain. Just crude misanthopy withoout the mitigating pain and suffering of the filmmakers.
But Moore is a propagandist? Huh. Can you susbstantiate that somehow, or is that just what all the cool kids are saying these days?
To avoid further thread drift, let’s just say that anyone who can say with a straight face that Fahrenheit 9/11 was a “documentary of pure facts” (a description so over-the-top I initially interpreted it as sarcasm) should read this.
As to Borat, I’m having a hard time mustering too much sympathy for those poor, racist, sexist fratboys he made look like racist, sexist fratboys. I’m a lot more worried about this.
I haven’t yet seen Borat, but have viewed the barrage of promotional footage, some of which I found hilarious and totally offensive at the same time. I think you’ve articulated something fundamental about the film: that it is uncomfortable to watch. Not that art needs to be comfortable, but as someone who believes in the immediate need for positive cross-cultural education and communication, I feel that Borat, as entertaining a film as it may be, is also creating and reinforcing a lot of unproductive stereotypes across the board. I won’t deny the appeal of the movie, but it strikes a sensitive chord in me. Borat’s brand of humor promotes callous insensitivity in a time when we need to nurture cultural sensitivity more than ever.
Here’s an interesting article presenting a Kazakh POV:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/11/12/america/web.1112borat.php
If Borat was really about exposing and denouncing the problems of misogyny and racism — as he claims to be — perhaps he wouldn’t be participating in promotional events like “Win a date with a Kazakh hometown hottie at the Maxim Lounge in Miami!” This does not sound like the sort of thing someone who genuinely cared about the bigotry of the U.S. would do.
My issue is that plays on the racist and xenophobic fear of strange, “backwards” countries and their people. Having Muslim and Kazakh friends, it really irks me. My Kazakh friend has already had to deal with assinine comments about being an anti-semite and drinking horse urine. UGH.
I stumbled onto your site, actually, because of your Chinchilla. It came up on Google. I read your little schpiel (sp?) on Borat simply out of curiosity.
I have to admit first and foremost, I agree with you on principle, but I disliked Borat for another reason. Borat’s character is annoying as all get out. In my opinion, it is an example of how irritating, stereotypical, and pathetic have become the new classically funny.
There is nothing original about Borat. He took a view of how he thinks other people would stereotypically percieve someone from “one of them there -stan countries” and just went around being a complete douche. Anyone could have done it… ANYONE. Moreover, Borat is irritating, just the character himself gets on my nerves. The voice and broken english are biting (probably because I know how well spoken Cohen typically is when not in character). I almost can’t put into words how badly concieved a character I think Borat is, completely one-dimensional comes to mind.
Oh, and I would like to make a comment about the whole MM thing with whatever bullshit movie he is pushing now. Mr. Moore is another person I put in the pathetic category. He is just as “spin” as washington, willing to manipulate any statistic and any sentence to serve his purpose. Its no more accurate than the attrocity that was Loose Change.
Folks, all future comments mentioning Michael Moore get deleted. All Borat, all the time in this thread.
Weirdly, I had plans to see Borat with a friend tonight, and while I was reading this post she called to tell me she had a family emergency and had to cancel.
I’ve been torn about seeing it. I don’t enjoy watching people - even stupid, cruel, closeminded people - made to look foolish. The main reason I’ve been interested in seeing it is because that rodeo was in Salem, VA: a suburb of Roanoke, my hometown, as well as the town where my mother works. When it happened, it was all over the news. People were very upset. I have never seen any of Cohen’s shows, and I’ve mainly been mildly curious to see for myself what all the fuss was about.
I’ve been kind of worried that I’d find it upsetting, and that my friend would love it and think I was a little silly. I’m a little relieved that I won’t be seeing it tonight.
A coworker of mine made an excellent point, similar to Catty’s above. He asked, “What happens now if an actual journalist from a little-known foreign country wants to interview some Americans? No one will speak to him, and in fact they might be cruel to him, assuming he’s ‘punking’ them too. It’s not going to help people try to learn about other cultures at all.”
Oh, and add me to the list of people who’d like to hear more of your thoughts on Pulp Fiction. In film school, it’s one of the movies we studied extensively, and I’m very interested in why you loathe it.
I loathed Pulp Fiction because I felt as if I was watching the work of a frightened, clever, adolescent boy. How so? My first impression (I saw the film once, in 1994) was that Tarantino must be absolutely terrified of death. He copes with his fear by constructing a fanciful narrative in which death is sudden, omnipresent, inevitable — but, also, played for laughs. Was it a clever film? You bet. But it was also a film for me in which the brutality utterly and completely outweighed the artistry; whatever redemptive qualities the movie had were obscured by the blood, the ugliness, and the adolescent, know-it-all patter that struck me as mammothly self-indulgent.
Hugo,
I think you get at the heart of the conflict when you write that Cohen “has joined the ranks of the great misanthropic satirists.” I don’t happen to agree with you in your evaluation of that tradition — I think it’s a worthy tradition — but I understand why it troubles you so much. He is misanthropic, manipulative, unsympathetic. No question about it. Just because, say, the frat boys have pretty gross views on race and gender doesn’t mean that someone like Cohen, or anyone, has a moral right to deceive them into humiliating themselves.
That said, I think that good artists should be judged by a different moral standard than the rest of us. I think societies function better, in the long run, when they have some space for people like Cohen who flout the rules of decent conduct in the pursuit of their artistic vision.
I don’t question your personal aversion to the movie, and I think it reflects well on you that you’re so viscerally put off by the sadism and manipulation of it, but I do think that your aversion shouldn’t be generalized to a cultural critique. Not just because I think there’s value in having some artists who make fun of racists and sexists, but also because sometimes it’s enough for art to entertain us and bring joy and new stories into our lives (I’d defend Pulp Fiction on these latter grounds).
What troubles me a bit about Borat is that since it relies so much on redneck types to serve as examples of racism and sexism, it tends to let the rest of us off the hook for own prejudices and our own unwillingness to stand up to bigotry. I don’t know what I would have done, for instance, if I were in the bar when Borat sang “Throw the Jew Down the Well” — and I’m Jewish! But I’m also a go-along-to-get-along kind of guy. To the extent that Cohen makes me wonder about things like that, I think he’s doing something really interesting. When he’s just letting me feel good about the fact that I’m not a homophobic rodeo organizer, he’s not as interesting, though I still see some value in humiliating homophobic rodeo organizers.
-Dan
Haven’t/won’t see the movie, but agree with your point based on the clips I’ve seen. In the clip with the square dancing old folks, he exploited the tendency of people to BE NICE to strangers. The targets of his satire were showing patience, sympathy, hospitality to someone from another country who doesn’t perfectly understand the language. What I’ve seen of his Ali G show was similar - his guests would think they were dealing with a guy who doesn’t understand something, so they’d patiently try to explain. He’s a jerk. I’d start fantasizing about someone just slapping his ass hard, in the face.
I didn’t see the frat boy clip, but I also felt sympathy for the rodeo audience. I’m a leftie, if it matters.
some of which I found hilarious and totally offensive at the same time
Then the promotional footage is about representative of the movie (which I just saw last night, without having seen any promotional footage first). Some parts were funnier than they were disturbing (e.g., the New Yorkers, whom I could totally empathize with, trying to dodge the kisses on both cheeks), while other parts were more disturbing than funny. It was also weird to watch, because I wasn’t sure who was an actor (I assumed the whole “Kazakh” town was a set filled with actors, but I see now it’s an actual town where ordinary people got paid to do weird things), who was in on the joke (presumably at least Pamela Anderson was? because if she really didn’t know what was up, and wasn’t playing a part, well, eep), and who was being filmed without knowing the real score.
I think the most disturbing parts were not so much the scenes like the ones with the frat boys (who were basically eagerly competing to be as racist and sexist as they could) as the ones where people seemed to be going along with virulently racist stuff to be polite. And Daniel’s right that that kind of thing isn’t confined to Red America.
I had the same reaction to Pulp Fiction (loathing), so I imagine I’d feel the same way about Borat. And yesterday I read an article about the way Cohen lied to and took advantage of the villagers in Glod, which stood in for his character’s home village in the movie. I really feel for these people. For their sake alone I won’t go see the movie.
Hi Hugo and all,
I normally lurk and enjoy your blog without commenting, but I thought I’d throw some thoughts out there about Borat. I’ve been really curious about seeing the movie-partly because of the reviews it’s getting, and partly because my best friend is from Kazakhstan (where she majored in cellular biology, by the way). But after reading your post, and the below article, I wouldn’t go near this film with a ten foot pole. If you think what Mr. Cohen did to American subjects in his film for comedy is bad, please read about the poor villagers in Romania who had no clue they were being exploited and made fun of for the film (and received nearly nothing in compensation):
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=415871&in_page_id=1770&in_page_id=1770&expand=true#StartComments
Thanks for all the links to the Romanian village story, people! Four in one post!
Ugh, I hated it. Similarly I can’t stand radio DJs who crank call people to make them look foolish. It just makes my skin crawl.
Having not seen the film in its entirety, I cannot comment on any particulars about the film. Given its presentation and obvious mockery of certain groups of people, I am inclined to agree with Hugo in that Cohen’s satire is done at other peoples’ expense. I think, however, that this film (and the others that have been mentioned) are merely a reflection of attitudes within our culture. They manifest themselves with the kind of arrogant, hateful nastiness most often seen among teenage girls who mock, chastise and belittle those deemed “beneath them.” The cruelty knows no bounds, so it quickly shifts from mildly funny to outright bigoted, usually without a break or pause. It is the kind of attitude that fosters and breeds bias and prejudice, all under the guise of self-righteously “critiquing” the “real” bigots.
No doubt Cohen’s intent probably was not to shine a light on this aspect of our culture, but he does so nonetheless. It is much easier to say “Not I” and label others than admit that all of us have such tendencies.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=415871&in_page_id=1770
This article sheds a completly different light on Borat. I refuse to go see it.
Gosh, there is so much in this thread that deserves a response! I’m going to risk starting with a little smackdown. Hugo wrote:
Hugo, I really won’t let this pass. If Borat was an obscure cult film that played in a few art cinemas and nowhere else, then, OK. If you had written “I may be the only person who watched this film in that cinema …”, then OK. And if you want to accuse me of taking seriously something that was not meant seriously, then, again, OK.
But otherwise you seem to suggest it is plausible that, of the millions of people who have seen this film, only you had any sympathy for Borat’s victims. That is very implausible (and arrogant and self-righteous to boot), and it certainly isn’t necessary to support anything else you’re saying here.
Jeremy, I said “I may” not “I was”. Big, big difference. Until I posted this, I had heard nothing, absolutely nothing, about Borat that wasn’t fawningly laudatory.
I don’t know what to say except that your excusing of the frat boys’ expressions of hatred is profoundly disturbing. The fact that bigots and sexists are also ‘normal’ people who, in other situations, could be kind and admirable, is part of what makes sexism and bigotry so hard to fight, and in your desperation to excuse those who perpetuate hatred, it seems to me you are not helping.
Related but separate: If all that Baron-Cohen’s work does is pique people to think about their go along get along attitude in the face of the expression of bigotry, that will be a great thing. Heaven knows it is easier not to protest and risk being conspicuous and being an object of ridicule, but history knows the cost of good people being unwilling to risk anything, even their face or their stature, to challenge hatred.
hugo, thanks for your post. i’ve had misgivings about watching this film & as a result will likely give it a pass.
i’m just not into humour that relies on humiliating other people as it’s basis. even if those other people are ones whose viewpoints, religions, beliefs, behaviour &c i neither share nor condone.
as someone said above, if all this serves to do is make me feel superior to the poor misguided loser schmucks in the film, then that doesn’t help me examine my own attitudes & beliefs all that much.
i mean, really, is racism or sexism going to be eradicated in anyone as a result of this film? i kinda doubt it.
I don’t know what I would have done, for instance, if I were in the bar when Borat sang “Throw the Jew Down the Well” — and I’m Jewish
Apparently, you would have been well aware that it was a joke:
Hugo:
Not big enough to address the point. “I may…” still implies “it is plausible that I was…”. And given Borat’s immense success I maintain that it is not in the least bit plausible that you were the only person who felt the way that you did, even if you weren’t personally aware of any such people. You’re a great guy in many ways, but you’re really not that great.
I want to second the other people in this thread who say that we need reminding of the awful things ordinary people can do just to “fit in” or “be nice” or “be one of the gang”. Read this:
(That was originally a post on Slashdot, though I can only find it archived here and here.)
And if that doesn’t make you think, read this.
I loved Pulp Fiction, Natural Born Killers, AND Borat
As far as the “gentle naivete” of the Americans portrayed in the film, I find that a strange choice of words. Since when is racism and insensitivity “gentle”? If he had genuine Klan members portrayed on his film (simply more exagerrated versions of some of the people portrayed) would you characterize them as “gentle”? Every individual on that film deserved to be portrayed as they really are: the rodeo crowd, the frat boys, the Southern people, and the yelling church members. There was no manipulation there; simply a camera put on an interaction between a pretend Kazakstani man and those who interact with him. They all had the opportunity to present themselves differently, but didn’t. I don’t blame Borat for showing us people’s reactions to him; I commend him for it, and respect the film far past the humor it provides.
This may be slightly off-topic but I want to know what the deal was with the horse & rider in that fell in the trailer. Was there a real person on that horse (from the blip in the trailer it looked like it could have been a dummy)? What made it go down? Were either of them hurt?
I don’t know, Starfoxy. Let’s just say that as a lover of animals, I was troubled by a number of things in the film. Letting a chicken loose on a subway and repeatedly shutting it in a valise was not okay. And yet Pam Anderson, a hero of mine for her animal rights activism, plays a prominent role.
In defense of misanthropes, because I am one: We love humanity more than anyone. And that’s why we hate people, because no one does more damage to human beings than human beings.
Those frat boys got off easy. Had one of them told me he wants to own slaves to my face, I would have thrown the beer bottle at him.
Tara, I’m not endorsing the boys’ offensive words. But they were also drunk and mugging for a camera. I heard a lot of silly bravado from them, but I also saw them as victims of a brilliant con man. Even in their drunken ugliness, I sensed a soft undercurrent of innocence.
Indeed. And good Germans and people who attended lynchings no doubt had undercurrents of innocence as well.
I’m still confused about how Quentin Tarantino got mixed up in all of this. I think that could use a little more explanation.
You may be right, Amanda. But I, for one, would rather find a way to attack the bigotry without attacking the bigot. I refuse to believe that hateful ideas are inextricably linked with the identify of he or she who holds them.
Sara, I dragged in Tarantino because he is a director whose talent I admire and whose actual films (all two I have seen) I find offensive, ugly, repugnant, and infuriating. I can acknowledge genius and find the product of that genius to be very upsetting. That’s exactly how I feel about Sacha Cohen.
The alternative to that, Hugo, is not to minimize and pretend the boys were just “mugging”.
Over and over again, you make the mistake of confusion compassion, and a willingness to see the humanity in even the worst people, with liking, befriending and making excuses for them.
If you read the original post, mythago, I say that a. what the boys said was nasty and b. I felt more compassion for them than for Cohen. I will not defend what they said, but to paraphrase Lear, these lads were “more sinned against than sinning.” For that view I do not apologize.
Still, we’ve been round and round on this issue. I accept that many folks find my openness to those who hold misogynistic or racist views undermines my professed feminism. I am still struggling to find a way to hold in tension a commitment to justice, and a willingness to treat every person with love and dignity.
Hugo, I’m curious if the other Tarantino film (ie. not Pulp Fiction) you disliked so much was Reservoir Dogs, because I saw the latter and I thought there was a moral to it, or at least a moral one could take from it, namely that if you decide to join the company of violent men and enter a world where everything is decided by violence then you will very likely die a sudden, unexpected, violent and meaningless death. Which I think is a healthier message than anything you’ll get from your average gangsta rap.
Yes, it was Reservoir Dogs. If there was a moral message, it was hidden from me by the blood and the ugliness. Forgive me for not having a discerning eye.
No, the point of resevoir dogs is that in the company of vioent men, virtue becomes vice. Mr White is destroyed by his own compassion, while the “professional” Mr. Pink gets away.
I’m a fan of Sascha Cohen, and especially of Borat, but I was pretty disappointed by the movie. I agree with Hugo for once. He came off as vicious and mean-spirited.
I’m less impressed with the case of the poor peope of Glod. Frankly it seems to me that they are just trying to shake the money tree. It does suck that they were ony paid E3 a day, but I don’t beleive that they were insulted. They were playing fictional characters in another viiage in another country. No body assumes that the peope of Glod are rapists. It doesn’t seem plausibe that they thought they were in a documentary: they admit that they saw things being staged, the kids with rifles, the animals in the house. If you’ve ever seen a movie being made, youd see the absurdity of that: each of those crowd scenes woud have taken a miion takes…there’s no way it coud have been mistaken for a documentary, they were acting, pure and simple. Sascha is being sued by a whole buncha people now, and the Glodniks wanted their slice of the pie.
I was actually surprised that I liked Borat as much as I did, because normally I hate hidden camera stuff; it makes me cringe. But Borat did that much less than I expected. For one thing, I was so horrified by the frat boys that I can’t really feel bad that he took advantage of them. I didn’t see innocence in them as much as smugness and complete unawareness of their own privilege. Their only innocence was in assuming they could say things like that to a stranger, and personally, I’m glad to see that innocence taken advantage of. For another thing, despite all the ways that Borat exposed people’s ugliness, consistently throughout the film people welcomed him and honestly attempted to help him; maybe he took advantage of that, but at the same time that he was showing them in an ugly light, he was also showing Americans’ openness to strangers. (Even the racist guy at the rodeo - he was incredibly offensive about Muslims, yeah, but not to Borat directly; and while the Pentecostals honestly scared me, they welcomed Borat with open arms.)
Oh, and regards the chicken: I can’t get too upset about briefly shutting a chicken in a valise under the controlled circumstances of a movie shoot when there are millions of chickens crammed into factory cages doing nothing but producing eggs all the livelong day.
Having gone over to read the article about the villagers, I do find that kind of manipulation much more distressing than anything he did to the Americans portrayed in the film.
In the original Ali G series (not Ali G in America which was not as funny), he used to have a nice comedic-switcheroo trick, where he would line up various experts, elites and bien penzants, and then act as ignorantly as he could. The humour was in how few of English society’s movers and shakers realised it was a joke, thus demonstrating their outrageous elitism and low regard for ordinary working class Englishmen.
It’s a shame that Sasha Cohen has been reduced to ‘taking the p#ss out of the yanks’, which is just about the stalest form of humour an English comedian can indulge in. It was already getting old when Oscar Wilde did it!
Or perhaps he was trying for something a bit more subversive but just couldn’t pull it off…
I find it hard to have any sympathy, really, for the frat boys. They were drunk? Well, they knew they were going to be on camera, and they took the drinks. They said awful, racist and sexist things, under the assumption that their words would be playing in Kazakhstan, or something, and now get held up to ridicule in the US? Well, don’t they give a damn how the US looks to the rest of the world, that they say such things on camera? Since the only thing they’re suffering is to be shamed for saying shameful things, it’s hard for me to feel much sympathy, sorry. Not everyone acted like that for the camera. The African-American guys on the street corner, not so far from the frat boys in age, were friendly and welcoming to “Borat” without doing any trash talking about women.
But then, the frat boys were especially easy not to sympathize with. Some of the other people struck me as more complicated mixes - welcome, smugness, nervous unwillingness to confront bigotry, sometimes gradually apparent uneasiness as “Borat” pushed the boundaries. And I actually found myself liking the Pentecostals more than not, even though they’re far from how I’d express my own faith.
I submit that if any of those frat boys is going to become a decent person at some future point they’ll have to come to terms with the fact that they deserved the mockery this film gave them, and a fair bit more besides.
Hmm - in many societies, getting “drunk” is merely a socially-tolerated means of having the opportunity to tell someone off, whether their targets truly deserve it or not, without major social consequences (e.g. a worker telling his/her boss off). And from what I’ve heard, a number of these people aren’t that inebriated when they do tell someone off (they just act like it) - just the fact that they have engaged in the process of getting “drunk” in front of witnesses (i.e. consuming alcohol in a social setting) is good enough to attain that opportunity.
Now, with that in mind, when these frat boys made these comments during their bout of drunkenness, are we to fully empathize with them when they say that their comments were made under less than lucid mental states, or are we to also suspect that they used in some fashion a “social drunkenness” loophole as a springboard for stating their overt criticisms and avoiding “responsibility” for their words?
I also disagree about the underlying innocence of the frat boys. They could see the guy had a camera for god’s sake. The fact that they expressed the kinds of views that they did on camera makes them pretty hardened i think. I also don’t think the filmmaker owes it to anyone to be empathetic or understanding of his subjects, especially not of bigots. I would honestly have been much angrier if empathy HAD been expressed towards people like this. Unless he somehow tricked them into going on camera, or filmed them without consent I don’t think he did anything wrong.
I haven’t seen Borat: the movie, but I am familiar with Sasha Cohen’s work from the UK, where he has long been on our screens…yeah, a lot of his jokes may be infantile or adolescent but I think that is because that is what his audience finds funny (or more precisely, I think he is trying to capture a certain audience that finds crude humour funny, to draw them in). Essentially the humour moves towards exposing the ridiculous illogicality of certain views - namely, oppressive views. This film is going to get seen by a huge audience, many of whom may share the views he’s exposing. I think that is what will hit home with people and hopefully make them pause for thought, where a thousand websites and textbooks won’t. So I can’t hate Borat, even if I don’t agree with everything he does…
Just a side note. A lot of people have said here that they would not see the film because it sounds like the sort of thing they disagree with. Do you wish you had never seen it Hugo? Or do you think that sometimes art should be uncomfortable or offensive?
I do appreciate what you say about extending humanity to the bigots (we’re all made of the same atoms, literally, not to mention EVERYONE has the capacity to hate and be bigoted) but I don’t think everyone is as enlightened. Maybe this film can reach people you or I never could.
Saw Borat tonight. It was brilliant. Get a sense of humor. How was anyone exploited? These people were not tricked into making racist or sexist or homophobic comments. They believed they were chatting with a real foreigner and said what they said. Some of the people came off well. Some not so well. That’s what was interesting- the variety of different reactions.
Pulp Fiction was far more artistic than brutal.
And sincerity is so, so, so overrated.
I have to submit that you were too busy having your sensibilities being offended by Pulp Fiction that you missed a lot of what was happening in it. You are correct, it is a world where death lurks around every corner and happens swiftly and randomly. You do realize that that sort of world does exist, right? Well, if you don’t… it does. However, the point if the movie is NOT that that sort of world exists. Pulp Fiction is about changing circumstances. The point is that sometimes a man sees that he’s been doing wrong, and should leave that space. Not only that he starts to becomes merciful and saves a man’s life which, at the beginning of the film, he would have shot without hesitation. The point is that his partner, who laughs at his change of heart, dies a pointless death on the toilet. Not only that, but we see the “highest of the high” come to a truce with the “lowest of the low” after they go through a trial together.
This is not to say that there isn’t a lot of brutality and uglyness in the Pulp Fiction world, but if that’s all you see you really need to look again.
I also say the same about Natural Born Killers. Look again.
I completely agree. I thought it was incredibly funny, but it did make me uncomfortable in some places. I don’t think that the Pentecostals were portrayed in a particularly bad light, or even the rodeo crowd, for that matter (but the rodeo manager won’t get much sympathy from me). I also felt a bit for, and was impressed by, the etiquette coach, as she kept her cool and came off as gracious to him. And the African American boys also came off as friendly and fun. But the frat boys will get no sympathy from me whatsoever. I thought that overall the movie was a brilliant commentary on our culture–both the welcoming, friendly aspects of it and the underlying ugliness.
Kate, I do think art should provoke. But provocation is one thing, manipulation and hurt are another. In virtually every instance, Cohen exploits those who seek to welcome him as a guest. Whatever else they say, the frat boys throw their arms around Cohen and embrace him. The hospitality of a bigot is still hospitality, and to throw it back in the faces of those who welcomed you is not a kind of art that interests me.
Look, I’m not telling anyone else what to do. I’m not picketing the film. I’m a zealous believer in free speech. I have no right to demand that Cohen not make such a film, but I also have the right to be offended by deception, exploitation, and an uneven cruelty that seemed particularly targeted towards the white, the rural, the Southern, and the faithful.
You may be right, Amanda. But I, for one, would rather find a way to attack the bigotry without attacking the bigot. I refuse to believe that hateful ideas are inextricably linked with the identify of he or she who holds them.–Hugo
Let’s say hateful ideas aren’t inextricably linked with identity (I think I agree, but the devil will be in the details). The question here then becomes: What are good ways of extricating the bigotry from the identity? I’d hazard a guess, without having seen Borat, that those particular frat boys, and perhaps others like them, will have a different take on their own racism and sexism. Being humiliated can have the effect of inspiring some humility (though I’ll admit it can also have the effect of creating more hate and anger).
The “cruelty” towards “the white, the rural, the Southern, and the faithful” is perhaps uneven in this film, but not in reality. (And it wasn’t even cruelty, in my opinion.) This is not oppression of whites, of Southern rural people, and of religious people. This is an incredible satire from the oppressed towards the oppressor. That is why it is so fantastic. “The white, the rural, the Southern, and the faithful” are known, individually, and collectively, to favor limiting the rights of (and thereby oppressing) many groups in this country, throughout history and in the present. To claim that a movie playing off of that oppression (and the very real hate expressed by many of these individuals) is itself oppressive or exploitative is ridiculous.
I am still struggling to find a way to hold in tension a commitment to justice, and a willingness to treat every person with love and dignity
hugo, therein lies the rub doesn’t it? i think the trouble that i’m having with a lot of this conversation is the all or nothing aspect of it, that can view the frat boys with either empathy and compassion or censure, but not both.
i guess the way i look at this is that i can consider what the frat boys said to be heinous & unconsionable (note: i haven’t seen the film, am only imagining based on the conversation here & what i’ve known frat boys to spout) BUT — i can also choose to not use their discomfiture for my own entertainment. and that’s largely just where my sense of humour lies; i don’t think it’s funny to make fun of or put down people, regardless of who they are. 8yo daughters of reprehensible right-wing politicians or drunk frat boys being bigoted idiots, or whomever.
but that has a lot to do with my own FOO issues. i grew up in a large family where humour was all about putting someone else down, and constantly angling for an advantage over another. gets tiresome, and very much in the way of forming healthy bonds with other people.
you know what i find interesting about this discussion — around the left-wing blogosphere i’ve read a great deal about the concept of fat acceptance. and i have to be honest that it has really changed the way i look at fatness in our society. and one of the key points that seems to be brought up over & over is how our society attempts to eradicate obesity by shaming fat people, and how ineffective that is.
and i believe that’s a really good point, and that there is truth & validity to it.
so why do we think we eradicate racism & bigotry by shaming people?
last comment: i read a quote awhile ago that really resonated with me. it went something along the lines of “when i was younger, i was impressed with cleverness. now that i am older, i’m more impressed with kindness.”
Trishka, you cannot in any reasonable way equate being fat with being racist or sexist.
I think one way we help eradicate racism and bigotry is precisely by shaming people. I’m not actually an advocate of shame, but if you make it socially unacceptable to express racist, bigoted, or sexist ideas, you help prevent the spread of those ideas. Racism (for instance) is like a disease - growing up in this country, you are basically bound to catch it to some degree. Making its expression shameworthy is like a quarantine measure.
Balanced against that, for me, is the idea that shame does not make people stronger, but weaker. I would prefer that people are discouraged from expressing bigotry by more gentle confrontation (what I might call “loving confrontation” if I were as earnest as Hugo).
I probably won’t see Borat - I’m not that interested in it. But I think that more radical forces than I espouse can be useful and I’m not necessarily opposed to them. (To give another example, I think PETA are a bunch of crazy extremists, but I appreciate their ability to push the debate.)
I think her point was that our society tries to get rid of a “disagreeable aspect” of overweight people by shaming them and it only increases their problems. So she’s saying that shaming racists & bigots won’t get rid of their attitudes just like shaming fat people won’t get rid of their fat.
It’s a wierd argument - being overweight is a multifaceted issue that can depend on biology, habits, or just the standards of the person who says their overweight. Some people have a high level of control over their weight, many do not. Some people make moral judgements about self control others make statements about health that imply moral judgements and other simply react to the “aesthetic” standard that they compare an overweight person’s appearance to.
If Cohen had shot his scenes of the “Khazaks” being “poor and backward” with an intent to shame them into being more progressive and prosperous, that would be a direct correlation.
Tricking or leading groups of people say things that are judged backward or bigoted by general societal standards to shame them or others into not saying backward or bigoted things might work. It’s a communal values versus individual action thing, which is where shame traditionally is the most effective. Why do most people choose their words carefully when talking about sensitive issues? We know how embarrassing and shameful it would be to offend others. Some people don’t care and shaming them may make them more hostile, but what other method would you suggest? Shame operates through some level of accountability and empathy.
whoops - I posted right past Tam’s - my comments were a response to Wolfa’s reading of Trishka’s comments.
But I agree with Tam about shame - it isn’t a “positive” technique but it can be very necessary society in enforcing moral actions and empathetic language out of less conscience-sensitive people.
vacula interpreted my post correctly — i wasn’t equating being fat with being racist or sexist, but rather examining the effectiveness of using shaming as a techniqe to change something we don’t like in people.
Tam, i’m thinking about what you said about how shame works effectively for people. this is a interesting point:
Why do most people choose their words carefully when talking about sensitive issues? We know how embarrassing and shameful it would be to offend others.
do we choose our words carefully because we don’t want others to see us as behaving offensively, or because we genuinely wish to not offend out of concern for the feelings of others? i’m not sure it’s entirely all of one or the other. i think that shame maybe works for the appearance aspect but not so much for the desire to actually be that thing.
and in response to this: Some people don’t care and shaming them may make them more hostile, but what other method would you suggest?
well, i’m not sure what exactly to suggest; someone like hugo who has experience actively working to alter people’s perceptions & bigotry without shaming them may have some ideas.
but i do think that doing something that you know doesn’t work and will likely have the exact opposite effect - just because you don’t know what else to do, is generally not a good idea.
this is a good discussion!
I think it’s interesting to note that it seems like Hugo (sorry for putting words in your mouth here, if I am) would say that it’s never a good idea to shame people in order to get them to recognize the shamefulness of their behavior, because (and I don’t quite understand why) there is a difference between the shameful actions and the person making them that is important enough to not induce shame at all–but why should this be the case?
Isn’t it likely that having lots of different ways of bringing racism and sexism and the like to light in people’s lives would be better than having fewer ways? Maybe some people will only respond to shame. Or perhaps some people will more strongly/more quickly respond to shame. Shaming some people into not being bigots might not be the best solution all of the time, but maybe sometimes it is the best. I’d say (having not seen the movies) that racist/sexist frat boys are a prime candidate for having shame work to getting them to see their own faults, while shaming might not work so well in other contexts (i.e. trying to ’shame’ out-and-out KKK members is likely not going to work, or trying to shame a 7-year old whose parents are KKK members probably isn’t the best way to get her to not become a racist, etc.).
Why is it all or nothing, as far as techniques we might use?
I think the whole idea of a complete, utter dichotomy between ‘who a person is’ and ‘a person’s actions’ that Hugo continues to refer to is misplaced. Yes, we’re not simply any one se of our actions. But our actions are shaped by us and, in turn, shape us. Separating the ’sin’ from the ’sinner’ seems ad hoc, and is likely a vestige of Platonic/Aristotelean Christianity (at least) that even Christians might want to disgard. What the heck does something like “god hates the sin but loves the sinner” mean, anyway? He doesn’t just hate the sin–he hates *you* committing the sin–that’s why *you* go to hell (or get removed from his presence or whatever), not your sin.
A person who is a devout racist of some type isn’t inextricably a racist–she may learn not to be–but that (to me) doesn’t entail that we treat her as somehow completely removed from her racist beliefs, as if she is somehow a person that isn’t the sum set of her beliefs. Even if you believe in an individual soul, doesn’t that soul interact with the world? Isn’t that soul, in some sense, racist if the person is? I just don’t get the separation on which Hugo’s ideas about this stuff seems to rest.
hugo, (never been here before, first name sorry),
Your reaction is very personal and doesn’t seem rooted in much. Pulp Fiction and Borat and Natural Born Killers are three distinct films. Your attempt to tie them together as just inherently cruel, misses one thing. Two are fiction, one is, like Jackass, mostly staged for potential amusement and / or horror.
I haven’t seen Borat and don’t plan to do so, but mostly because of the annoyance of the character, the one trick pony joke and fakery. It presents itself as having a VERY IMPORTANT MESSAGE, but doesn’t, it would appear, deliver. Because, at it’s base - it can’t. It’s very selective and very fake.
- Temple
Your reaction is very personal and doesn’t seem rooted in much
Dude, it’s why it’s on my blog.
If you read the original post, mythago
I did, Hugo. Does that mean your subsequent posts don’t count?
I won’t excuse the frat boys, but the news about the Roma villagers is truly disturbing. It’s shit like this and the Maxim hotties promotionals that make me wonder whether or not we’re giving the guy too much credit. I haven’t seen the movie yet, but I’ve seen the shows. Part of me believes that, judging from these less defendable stunts, his intended audience is more frat boy than his targets.
While people are quite rightly concerned about Baron-Cohen’s alleged exploitation of the people of Glod, it’s worth pointing out that the Daily Mail isn’t exactly a bastion of journalistic integrity - it’s notoriously hostile to immigrants, and plenty of contempt for the Roma has been expressed in its own pages. I have to second Lynn’s observation that most of Borat’s encounters elicited more complicated reactions in the viewer than simple contempt - I felt rather warm towards many of Borat’s targets. When he encountered genuinely nice people (that lovely older couple at the bed and breakfast, the yard sale ‘gypsy’), his schtick was so clownish and over-the-top that it was clear that Borat himself was meant to be the object of ridicule, not the people he was interacting with. Conversely, when he met people who really are frightening bigots (the frat boys, the rodeo guy), he was rather subdued, giving them just enough rope to allow them to hang themselves.
What troubles me is the way such over-the-top anti-anti-Semitism can so easily glide into anti-Gentilism and class condecension, thus provoking the very thing that it mocks. Not good.
I have seen Borat. I don’t agree to his methods as he is deceiving his subjects. So, if your point is that deceiving subjects is bad, I wholeheartedly agree. But the movie does this for a reason: the latent hatred and racism can only be exposed in today’s world by somewhat tricking the subjects who deceivingly keep their active ingredients to themselves. However, they don’t always keep their racism to themselves, but it has now become part of a trusted world of like-minded individuals. By posing as a possibly like-minded individual, “Borat” creates the wrongful impression of a closed (or small) circle and people come forward with their ideas they’d not expose if they knew they’d be on national TV or, of course, part of a box office hit such as this movie.
Most importantly, this movie is relevant because of the clear verbal statements it conveys. The content itself is far from extraordinary or new.
I really experienced that in the South (”The South” meaning, the “Deep South” of the USA), an appointment with White people is automatically - and without any further consideration or any further contact ever (!EVER) - cancelled the moment that a black person becomes part of it. Now, this is a problem seeing as if my wife is an African American, and I do relate to this. If your mind is upset about “sadism”, would your mind include people like me at all? Of course not. You are only concerned about the US-version of “White People” and “White Privilege”. That is why the reversed view - what is seen as sadistic from point of view of a victim of racism - doesn’t cross your mind. I can’t change it, but it is part of your make and self definition, hence, the active loathing of this film.
So far, people thought I was telling something crazy, particularly in Switzerland, but also in the US, when I talked about Southern discrimination and racism. It is very nice (HIGH FIVE) to see some Natchez White Folks showing on screen that they twiddle with that Borat character’s bagged feces, but get up and leave when a black person enters the house (HIGH FIVE). It 1:1 matches real life experience no one believes me. Now what :-)
It does take a fair amount of offered prejudice in order to get another person to admit their prejudices. And this movie is about prejudices that people are otherwise not ready to admit. That such prejudice is more than relevant can be seen when reading simple, very simple statements such as this:
“White households had incomes that were two-thirds higher than blacks and 40 percent higher than Hispanics last year, according to data released Tuesday by the Census Bureau.”
If you use the words “more than arrogant” in this context, I am afraid that you may have to revise your definition of arrogant, maybe to compare with “super arrogant” and “extraordinarily arrogant”. But then, of course, you’re a white American boy and not likely to “”"understand”"” (this being a publically accessible webpage).
As long as all it takes in this world for you to align your prejudices with the rest of the world to “actively loathe” this movie, hm well, maybe you could also actively loathe my office plant that just died?
Wolf, I’ve spent time in the South (if lots of time in rural horse country, Albemarle County, Virginia, counts as the south); I’ve gone there with my mixed race wife (African-Colombian), and we’ve been welcomed and embraced. I’ve got extended family in Vicksburg, Mississippi, and seen less racism there (it’s a lovely, steamy city) than in Los Angeles.
The folks at the dinner party were reacting less to a black woman than to what was surely the last straw: the presumptuousness of a rude, inappropriate guest bringing in an uninvited third party.