Whoawhoawewa!

I've seen Borat: Cultural Learnings of America to Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan two times already. I happen to think it's an outrageously hilarious satire and goofball comedy all rolled into one.



But it's also a shocking and sobering glimpse into a bigoted, homophobic, and generally stupid population of folks who live right here in America. I'll give most Americans the benefit of the doubt and assume the people who showed their true, nasty colors in Borat are a minority. But if the scene where Cohen's character, a wide-eyed and obtuse Kazakhstani journalist who searches for cultural enlightenment in America, rallies up a huge crowd of spectators at a rodeo, getting them to cheer him on as he exclaims "May George W. Bush drink the blood of every man, woman and child in Iraq!" is any indicator, we're not talking about just a minority... but a mob mentality that exists in some parts of the country and is just waiting for someone like Borat to stir things up.

There's one climactic scene in the film, which I don't want to give away, that portrays some radical Christians in an odd light. So I was pretty curious as to how the Christian community was sizing up the star of the film, Jewish comedian Sascha Cohen. I came across this article.

I then preceded to email the author, Dr. Mark Newman, about what I thought of his analysis. While I didn't want to argue with him about the purely vulgar and silly comedy in the film or Cohen's behind-the-scenes tactics, I did think that his complaints about the more satirical bits were strange (scroll down to the final paragraph of his essay).

We've been talking back and forth about the film and I think we've both been enlightened. For me, I came to the realization that unfortunately there are a lot of folks -- even educated ones! -- in which many of the jokes will fly right over their heads. They'll laugh at the "Running of the Jew" because they think it's funny a Jew is being persecuted, not because of the absurdity of racism or ethnic hatred. And thus, Cohen's mockery of all the things most of us agree are offensive might get a good laugh for the totally wrong reasons.

Of course if this is the case, it doesn't change my opinion of the film. In fact, it only augments it because it just makes Cohen's point all the more relevant: that those backwards ideas and cultural misunderstandings in countries like Kazakhstan are still surprisingly widespread here in the States, the leader of the Free World.

Newman writes from a Christian perspective; he believes there is such a thing as appropriate humor and inappropriate humor. I'm not going to try to convince him otherwise. But when it comes to comedy, nothing is off limits. That's the nature of the art. It's the values it expresses that matter -- and I think the values that Cohen promotes are the same values that Newman promotes. The humor that offends me is the kind that sneakily exploits racial stereotypes and thus perpetuates the acceptance of them, not the kind that makes fun of them (i.e. Borat).

I gave Newman the Mel Brooks quote, about comedy being the best way to bring people like Hitler down, as opposed to rhetoric. He didn't buy it, though. All I know is when something I believe is made fun of, I react a lot more adversely to it than if someone tries to debate with me about it or persuade me that it's wrong through even the most well-reasoned argument. Newman thinks the comedy in Borat is more open to misinterpretation than straightforward rhetoric. The thing is though, Borat is R. If there are people over 17-yrs-old who don't get that racism is bad... then we're in a lot of trouble!

As you may know, Borat was yanked from tons of theaters right before its opening weekend, much to the surprise of moviegoers who'd bought their tickets ahead of time. Distributor 20th Century Fox freaked out at the last minute because they did some test screenings and found out a bunch of people knew about Santa Clause 3 coming out (not being gay, just opening up in theaters), but not so many were in the loop about Borat. So despite the massive online hype about the film, it wasn't put in wide release until a week after it opened in just a few, select theaters. It was a huge smash hit, beating Santa Clause during its limited, first run. And apparently, it's still selling out at the Drafthouse. Take that Fox.

I wonder if Newman thinks it's better for America that we keep watching movies like Santa Clause 3. No room for misinterpretation there.

PS -- Had a funky problem with the comments, so the ones from the last entry got deleted (sorryyyy). But they were and still are very much appreciated.