I got tired of wall-to-wall Pope on TV this morning, so I turned on Comedy Central. Borat was on for the last 15 minutes of so. I’ve seen it before, and wasn’t really paying to much attention. I remember, however, the several references to his sister, “the second-best prostitute in Kazakhstan”. Ha ha, pretty funny.
Bing! Ah! Now I get it! I think I just got the real joke:
[spoiler]The obvious question is, "So, who is the Best prostitute in Kazakhstan?
Yeah, the joke is that when it comes to sexually servicing men in their small, backward third-world country, she’s not even the best. She’s been named second best.
Yeah, I hear ya! I do find it a little disturbing that I actually took the time to make a thread about this. But the actual thought just popped into my head while cooking bacon.
Also, how would you quantify it or rank? Second-best begs the question how that’d be determined? Or is Kazakhstan the kind of place where that’s universally accepted by consensus?
Would the best prostitute have a score of 100? Does skeezing have a Bell curve?
Well, probably difficult to do it objectively… but when have we ever stopped that from determining the “best movie” or “best restaurant”.
Just to say that this actually happens, I could name you the “best prostitutes in Germany” from the last few years… as a kind of “publics choice award” from a certain audience. It is played as a joke in the movies… who knew it is actually a fairly common thing;).
It’s kind of like the Sklar brothers joking that their the 2nd best Jewish identical twin comedy twin or that Flight of the Conchords are New Zealand’s forth most popular folk parody duo.
You get the double joke of “this silly contest exists” and “we aren’t even the best at it.”
My personal favorite of the genre is when Mike Birbiglia recounts his story of having a dream where he got the bronze medal for dustbustering at the Olympics.
I feel the mother punchline is reaching. If Borat’s mother was the best prostitute in Kazakhstan, Borat would have bragged about that.
The joke is that Borat is bragging when he has so little to brag about. The sister joke is an example of this. Borat is bragging about his sister being a prostitute, which is nothing to brag about. Saying she’s not even the best prostitute just emphasizes that point.
Abe Simpson, talking about his wartime experiences: Back then, I was known as Sgt. Simpson, and I commanded the Flying Hellfish, the fightin’est squad in the fightin’est company in the third-fightin’est battalion in the army.
The joke being, of course, that degrees of “fightin’ess” were tracked and ranked.
[/spoiler]
I do find it a little disturbing that I actually took the time to make a thread about this. But the actual thought just popped into my head while cooking bacon.