Sunday, October 15, 2006
Can Italian Americans or Italians Applaud
"Borat:... Glorious
Nation of
The
ANNOTICO Report
It
seems that the Humor of Humanity, and the Comedy
of Life, is a fertile enough field for Amusing Material, that we needn't
rely on ridicule of race, religion, nationality or gender.
Yet
we Italian Americans and Italians know that Not
to be true, but decidedly something devoutly to be wished for.
Therefore
I can not bring myself to laugh when British
comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, formerly known as the
pea-brained TV interviewer
"Ali
G", who I thought to be very funny, now appears
as Borat in "Borat:
Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit
Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan", which justifiably has the Kazakh
officials up in arms over the outrageous buffoon who has usurped their national
identity.
Replace
Borat with Gino, and
The
It is the NINTH
-largest country in the world by area, Only behind Russia, Canada, China,
US, Brazil, Australia, India, and Argentina, but its semi-desert (steppes) make
it only the 62nd country in population, with approximately 15.3 million, or 15
per sq. mile.
The beginning of
the 18th century marked the zenith of the Kazakh Khanate. The area was a bone
of contention between the Kazak emirs and the Persian Kings
for many centuries.
In the 19th century , the Russian Empire spread into Central
Asia The "Great Game", a term used to describe the rivalry and
strategic conflict between the British Empire and Tsarist Russia for
supremacy in
Russian
"colonial rule" and its efforts to impose its systems and language,
and the importation of large number of colonists
that competed for land and water aroused the resentment of the Kazakh,
beginning in the 1860s, with the most serious uprising,occurring
in 1916.
In 1920, the area
of present-day
The period of
World War II marked an increase in industrialization and increased mineral
extraction. In 1953, Nikita Khruschchev
initiated the "Virgin Lands" program
to turn the traditional pasturelands into a major grain-producing region for
the
Demand for
political and economic reforms, came to a head in the 1980s. In 1986, mass
demonstrations by young ethnic Kazakhs protested the
Communist System. Soviet troops suppressed the unrest, but in 1991
CRITIC'S
NOTEBOOK
In
`Cultural Learnings,' jaw-dropping prejudice flows
from our mouths into a faux-Kazakh's ear.
By
Carina Chocano,
Times
Staff Writer
October 15, 2006
AMERICANS
who know Borat love Borat.
They love him more than the government of
For the uninitiated, Borat Sagdiyev
is a gawky, overeager Kazakh TV reporter in a bad suit and worse mustache who travels across the
Crass,
anti-Semitic, homophobic, misogynistic and outrageously impolitic, Borat's cluelessness about how
other countries live, talk and think is rivaled only by his ability to sniff
out grandiloquence and prejudice. Though they have traits in common
? notably their encyclopedic ignorance and
obliviousness to social norms ? Borat is more likable
than Ali G. For o! ne thing,
he would rather be liked than respected or admired, and his innocence makes his
satire stealthy and powerful. If Ali G skewered all that is ridiculous about
big media's obsession with "youth culture," from his own absurdly
baroque persona to public figures so disconnected they can't spot a parody when
it's right in their face, Borat goes after bigger
game. The idea, ostensibly, is to extract lessons in sophistication from the
most powerful country on Earth for export to a country most Americans couldn't
locate on a map. But the outcome is somehow never quite what it should be. He
ventures deep into unmediated
In the movie, which opens Nov. 3, Borat travels to
Over the last couple of seasons, regular viewers of "Da Ali G Show"
have watched Borat plumb the mysteries of American
house buying, dating, etiquette, wine tasting, campaigning, target shooting,
country music singing and baseball, to name but a few. His encounters with
average, small-town Americans, Southerners more often than not, are gems of
fish-out-of-water buffoonery. Cohen has a gift for physical comedy and an
inspired sense of the absurd and can turn something as mundane as accepting a
stemmed wineglass into an absurdly protracted and awkward exchange.
Cohen has been compared to Peter Sellers, and like Sellers' most famously
inept, terminally unaware characters, he knows how to! shatter
composure with frustration and lower defenses with absurdity. By pretending to
exist entirely outside civilized discourse ? actually, by pretending never to have heard of it ? Borat slays inhibitions like cheap tequila. But what makes
the awkward adventures of the fake Kazakh so startling is that though he may be
fake, the nice people he so effortlessly prods into
revealing their not-so-nice sides are real. As Borat
travels through the country like a half-deranged, anti-Semitic, misogynistic,
sex-obsessed Huell Howser,
the picture that emerges is strange and strangely consistent on what defines
the American national character.
Strangely taken in stride
BORAT'S interviews fall into roughly two categories. He seeks out
self-consciously genteel, almost impossibly schematic "life coaches"
of one kind or another ? people
whose job it is to tell others how to date, tell jokes, find work, etc. ? and barrages them with questions, requests and opinions th! at, despite being completely
outrageous, consistently fail to get a rise or a reaction stronger than
"We don't do that here in
He also hangs out with "normal people" who happily reveal their
prejudices. Shopping for a house, in one TV episode, Borat
asks a real estate agent about a windowless room with a metal door for his
mentally disabled brother, whether he may bury his wife in the yard if she
dies, and whether black people will move into the neighborhood. At the wine
tasting, he asks if the black waiter is a slave, to which the
"commander" of the Knights of the Vine society in
And he does all of it with a wide-eyed, kiss-you-on-the-cheek, "
Are they media-coached to the point of catatonia? So secure in their cultural
superiority and so clueless about the world around them that they actually
believe that this nice, besuited television reporter
from
This, I think, is where ! the
genius and horror of Borat's explorations really lie:
The joke is not on the
That scene from the movie, which takes place at a rodeo, is a prime example of
Cohen's almost lunatic gutsiness (according to
reports, the joke nearly got him killed). The scene, of course, killed too ? though it made me wonder what
percentage of Borat's legions of fans see past the
crazy stunts and poop humor and into the heart of Cohen's trenchant satire.
Certainly, the screening I attended was packed mostly with a low-humor crowd
that isn't necessarily representative of his admirers. The median age seemed to
fall somewh! ere between
first shave and learner's permit, and the scene was fittingly rowdy. (Caught up
in the anticipation, a skinny kid two rows in front of me extended an
impromptu, top-of-the-lungs invitation to any girl wishing to occupy the seat
next to his ? any girl at all. There were no takers.)
Cohen is nothing if not a master at making the medicine go down all but
unperceived. Along with a modest handful of comedians (Jon Stewart, Stephen
Colbert, not too many others) who have succeeded in delivering what is most
troubling about the Bush era by reviving satire and eschewing the knowing
sarcasm of the Letterman-Miller-Maher years, he has executed a perfect
pancake-flip inversion on the relationship between the audience and the source
of humor. The best comedy is no longer derisive or an expression of contempt; it's cathartic, a nervous release.
Wherever Borat goes, he encounters a real threat ? not to him, but to his
creator. Cohen was educated at
What Borat's many American teachers (the etiquette,
dating and humor coaches; the wine experts; etc.) have in common is an
unshakable belief in their manifest destiny. ("He could be Americanized in
no time," says a society lady in the film, who is in for a very rude
awakening that nonetheless fails to awaken her.) What his other friends ? the people at the rodeos
and gun ranges, gun shops and ball games ? seem to
share is an expansive tolerance toward xenophobia and racial bias.
In one famous episode of "Da Ali G Show" that takes place at the
"Country West Dancing and Lounge" in Tucson, Borat
gets onstage and easily engages a crowd in a rousing rendition of his own song,
"In My Country There Is Problem," which culminates in a cheerful
chorus of "throw the Jew down the well, so ! my
country can be free." Maybe it's that "free" that incites an
instinctive clapping of the hands. Maybe everyone in the bar, even the
cross-eyed toothless youngster in the corner, is in on the joke. Maybe the kids
at the mall get it too. Either way, Borat's
"cultural learnings" may not "for make
benefit glorious nation of
carina.chocano@latimes.com
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