Nobember
24, 2006
Borat:
A Comedy of Discomfort and of Even Outrage
The controversial film, Borat,
featuring an awkward character by that name from
Kazakhstan on a discovery trip of the US, is currently
being screened in cinema houses across North America.
It has been created by the prominent British TV
producer, writer and actor, Baron Cohen, best known
for his character “Ali G” featured in
numerous TV shows.
Sacha Baron Cohen, a TV comedian, is the son of
firmly Jewish parents and is the crafter of the
film. He has conceived the theme, contributed to
the script and starred himself as Borat Sagdiyev
the chief character of the film.
A burlesque mockumentary, Borat is highly offensive
in several sequences. In some he may even be regarded
as revolting by the squemish. Many scenes were unscripted
in the format of ‘Candid Camera’ and
Cohen’s own show ‘Da Ali G’, and
most of the participants were not actors but ordinary
people who had no idea that they were being filmed.
The scene of Borat’s village in Kazakhstan
was actually shot in rural Glod of Romania. The
native language that Borat (Cohen) speaks in the
film is not Kazakh but Hebrew, and his sidekick,
Azamat, speaks Armenian.
The story starts with Borat leaving his home in
Kazakhstan for the “US and A” to prepare
a documentary, on behalf of his government, on the
life and culture of America to be shown as an educative
film to Kazakhs. He brings along his producer, Azamat
Bagatov. From this point on the film features unstaged
and unscripted episodes of Borat interviewing and
interacting with ordinary Americans who take him
to be a real TV personality of some far-off land.
While in New York he sees a sequel of Baywatch and
immediately falls in love with Pamela Anderson.
He decides to go to Hollywood to meet and marry
her. He thus learns to drive, buys a dilapidated
ice-cream truck, takes Azamat with him and starts
his journey by road. Azamat is unwilling to travel
by air as he is afraid of a repeat of 9/11, which
he believes was the handiwork of Jews (a satire
on the myth).
During the cross-country trip he continues to gather
footage for his documentary. He meets politicians,
feminists, gay pride parade members, Afro-American
youth, disrupts a meteorologist in mid broadcast,
sings a contorted version of “The Star-Spangled
Banner” at a rodeo in Texas, rents a room
from Jewish innkeepers, refuses to eat their food
for fear of being poisoned by the Jews, attempts
to buy a hand gun ‘suitable to kill Jews’
and when refused for not being an American citizen,
he buys a bear instead for self-protection. He attends
a high society dinner in the South where he brings
to the hostess his feces and asks her how to dispose
them.
He walks like a stiff-legged 6-foot Pinocchio and
stumbles into people and situations like a clueless
nitwit. He stumbles into a chock-full antique shop
and clumsily falls and breaks some expensive pieces
of China. He has no money to pay to the owner, so
he offers him his own collection of the locks of
pubic hair to compensate him for the loss.
He gets into a fight with his sidekick, Adamant,
as he finds the fellow indulging in self-sex with
a picture of Pamela in front of him. The fight takes
the form of wrestling in the nude in their hotel
room, in the alleys and crowded elevator and eventually
into a packed ballroom of mortgage brokers. This
segment of the film is perhaps the grossest. And,
it does not help the narrative al all.
But, the fight makes Azamat abandon Borat, take
his passport, all their money, and even their bear
and the truck. Borat’s spirits are further
dampened when he learns in the company of some drunken
college students that Pamela was no virgin as he
had conceived her to be. Then he attends a revival
meeting of evangelical Christians and learns to
forgive both Azamat and Pamela. On reaching Los
Angeles by bus, he finds Azamat by chance and the
two of them resume the search for Pamela. They find
her at a shopping mall called ‘The Block’
in Orange, Southern California. She was signing
autographs there. Borat approaches her and tries
to trap her in a Kazakh wedding bag to kidnap her.
Security personnel rescue her from Borat, who later
on marries an obese Afro-American prostitute and
returns with her to his native village.
I did find the film funny in parts but on the whole
it struck me as gross, highly offensive and in bad
taste.
Superb marketing of the film as a funny but highly
thought-provoking product, a satire on the current
American way of life and a remarkable exposure of
the hypocrisy prevalent in this society, raised
audience curiosity and expectations. Hence, the
unprecedented rush in the first two weeks of the
release of the film. But, it is unlikely to sustain
the audience attraction.
Film critics and a section of the media dominated
by Cohen’s community have played a key role
in building up the film as a great comedy and a
marvelous satire on the current American social
norms and cultural values.
For instance, Ty Burr of Boston Globe had this to
say in his review of November 3: “The enlightened
cynicism of H.L. Mencken and Jonathan Swift courses
through this movie’s veins, along with the
social curiosity of Alexis de Tocqueville, the scientific
eye of a wildlife biologist.” Mencken, Swift
and de Tocqueville must be turning in their graves
on being dragged into a hyperbole about a burlesque
film!! Has anyone of these outstanding writers and
thinkers even mentioned any potty jokes. Borat takes
his feces in a plastic bag to a polite lady who
shows him how to flush the stuff through the toilet!
In another scene, he is shown sitting comfortably
with the excrements of his bear lying around him.
He mentions his father as a rapist and his sister
as the fourth most popular prostitute of his country.
The film is loaded with his sexist observations,
scenes of self-sex, and explicit shots of genitals.
There is nothing funny in this and certainly nothing
thought provoking like the writings of the eminent
persons mentioned above.
Cohen has actually belittled Kazakhstan, one of
the six Central Asian Muslim states that gained
independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union,
and presented not just Borat but the entire population
of the region as crude, brute, stupid and thoroughly
uncivilized. No wonder the Kazakh government is
spending millions of dollars to erase the erroneous
impression. No wonder also that the film will not
be offered for screening in Kazakhstan, it has been
banned in the Soviet Union and the UAE. More countries
are likely to follow this considering the film’s
racist undertones, its vulgarity, nudity and offensive
language and tendentious thematic contents. But
for a few sequences that are really funny, the film’s
satire on various facets of modern American way
of life is not much remarkable either. Only a jackass
might like to see the film a second time. Its artistic
excellence will be visible to those who could see
‘The King’s New Clothes’.
arifhussaini@hotmail.com
