Thank God you people don’t have to watch cable news shows where they occasionally show dead bodies. There are apparently serious issues out there, death, corruption, and famine. Those can be ignored though, I’ve yet to see a widely marketed DVD of such things at my video store.
I’m thankful that there are some people that have the courage to be outraged by raunchy satire. What kind of society would we be without the outrage that was meant to be generated by such material?
I’m just glad that people are willing to direct their energy towards something that really matters, preventing other people from seeing particular media, or at least labeling it as “rude” “crude” or some other label. I’d love to have my choices of media dictated by people who are easily offended, that way I don’t have to worry about being exposed to ideas that are not mainstream.
Exposing people’s true thoughts is just that, it can very seldom be done through honest questioning. If trickery makes the truth come out, which is uglier, the truth or the method of exposing it?
I’m sure you’ve seen the “Throw the Jew down the well” scene from Da Ali G show. SBC exposed people’s true feelings, got them to let down their politically correct facades. He never forced anyone to say anything, he just made a comfortable environment for them to say what they really thought. You know that as well as any of us.
I thought it was very funny, and most people deserved the ridicule. The conference bit was fucking hilarious. I’d love it if something like that happened at the next conference I’m at.
The only bit where I felt bad was when they abused the hospitality of that elderly, charming and generous Jewish couple.
In my opinion, the news producer totally deserved to get fired. She didn’t even bother to take 30 seconds on Google to research her interviewee? Then she didn’t do her job.
Are you talking about the convention they interrupted during the naked chase? It was probably staged. According to the wikipedia entry, no one has ever reported having seen this happen during a convention they were attending–and that’s the kind of thing you’d think people would have reported, especially after the movie came out.
Myself, I wish the movie remained consistent regarding whether events are staged or unstaged (there’s a fuzzy distinction if I ever saw one but you know what I mean I hope).
I’d like to see a cited review or two for that. I don’t remember any such emphasis in reviews I read. And while I wouldn’t say the woman’s race had nothing to do with the impact of the scene, I do think the other factors you go on to mention next are fairly obvious, such that it would be a misunderstanding of the film’s intent to think that the entire impact of the scene turns on the woman’s race.
I came away from that scene with a lot of respect for her and others at that table. She helped teach a grown man how to poop in the toilet. She did it (apparently) respectfully and in a spirit of kindness. It doesn’t get much more polite than that.
However, her insistance that Borat pay the hooker before she leaves rings a little hollow to me. It reads to me like a way to get a jab in at the hooker (and Borat) by highlighting her position in the situation. For example, I imagine if I came home to find my wife with another man (I’m just trying to think of an example of a serious, irreperable breach, to be analogous to the serious irreperable breach the polite lady felt she had experienced in the scene in question) then it would be particularly cold and cruel of me to insist, as the guy is hurriedly nervously getting dressed to leave, that my wife help him out by getting his coat and hat. This has the form of politeness, but the force of it consists in cruelty, not kindness.
I don’t understand why you think it can’t be that a movie is a documentary, and costs $20 million, and is released for profit, and makes a profit.
In fact, I think you’re right morally speaking. Legally speaking, I have no opinion.
Staged. Its fairly clear that it’s staged, too–the camera work is just too perfect and too well coordinated with people’s reactions.
She says her being “released from her contract” was due to the Borat incident, but there were at least a few months between the incident and the loss of her job. She says her boss began second guessing her, and she became depressed, and so was “released from her contract.” It does not sound to me like I should be confident I know the whole story here.
Were these people humiliated, really? I’d describe it as “inconvenienced.” The grocery store employee, for example, has nothing to be embarrassed about as far as I can tell.
The Romanians have a moral case, I agree. Kazakhstan, however, does not. The character of Borat, and the depiction of his hometown, clearly does not reflect the values of any actual culture, Kazakhstani or otherwise. It is obvious parody, not of any foreign culture, but rather of certain ways of depicting foreign culture.
But they were not embarrassed. They fared quite well in fact!
They were utterly polite and kind. Sure some of their comments betrayed (or were framed by the camera to betray) some deeper prejudices. But it was clear they were doing what they could to be kind, accomodating, and open.
Then when it became clear they were not being told the whole story, they became angry at the fact that their hospitality was being taken advantage of. This is perfectly appropriate.
The part that begins “preventing” is roughly analagous to saying “cutting the throats of prostitutes, or at least labeling them as morally questionable” in that there’s a pretty monumental leap from the one to the other- so much so that there’s actually no connection whatever. Nobody here, not I and not anybody- has even suggested preventing anybody from seeing anything they wish.
Cite?
I now know that guys in NYC don’t like to be kissed on the cheeks by strangers. HEY, THAT MUST MEAN AMERICANS ARE ALL HOMOPHOBES! And I’m a gay guy who doesn’t like to be kissed by strangers— oh dear lord I’m self loathing and it took Cohen to show it to me.
Get over it. Cohen’s not performing a public service or plumbing deep psychological insights, he’s creating awkward situations for laughs. Do you really think that the rodeo promoter would claim to be gay-friendly and anti-war if it weren’t for trickery? I don’t- the man’s probably damned proud of his views. Same with the frat boys- if you think students have to be tricked into displaying “politically incorrect” or conservative views, read the replies to liberal editorials from any online southern college newspaper. (I specify southern because the frat boys were from South Carolina.)
I agree. And that sketch I thought was funny, in fact. I just don’t see the connection between “getting a group of rednecks to sing an anti-semitic song is funny/therefore making people nervous or extremely uncomfortable and lying to them about why you’re doing it must also be funny”.
Since I don’t see the relevance of the catching your wife in bed comparison I’ll just go to this one- are you implying the hostess doesn’t think the whore knows she’s a whore? Or that other guests may not know she’s a whore? Or for that matter that the hostess thinks the whore is embarassed by the fact she’s a whore?
To me it seems quite genuine: you offered this woman money, she came here for that money, and you are not going to leave without fulfilling your obligations.
I never said that. Fahrenheit 911 outgrossed Borat by a HUGE amount and while I definitely think it has major amounts of spin and fun-with-editing tricks, I accept it’s a documentary. Because I’m familiar with Moore’s work and with the accusations of unethical editing and allegations I would never under any circumstances sign a release waiver unless it gave me approval over my portion of the final product and Moore would never do that- so it’s an informed decision on my part, and again I know that Moore is going to make a bloody fortune off this and, to quote Don Barzini- “we are not Communists here”- more power to him, but if I contribute to that then he’ll “let me wet my beak”.
However, no reasonable person could really call this a documentary. None of it’s awards and nominations from Oscar on down are for documentaries and yet every single major award on that list has documentary categories. It doesn’t even get listed as a documentary film under Wikipedia’s quite broad and easily edited categorization. It’s at best a mockumentary- a documentary by definition doesn’t have actors playing fictional characters and speaking fictional scripted dialogue and fictional settings and fictional backgrounds. You can’t really say with a straight face that this is a documentary first and a comedy second when by your own statement much of it was staged.
Actually, they were only offended by the implication there were roaches in their B&B. According to Wiki and some articles on Lexis-Nexus they described Cohen and crew as exceptionally courteous and polite, though they were afraid they were secretly there to film a porno movie.
As it should be. If you have the opportunity to appear in any production, whether it’s a low-budget short or a blockbuster Michael Moore docu-essay, there are regulations in place to protect you. If you sign a waiver, you may very well be waiving that protection. This isn’t some obscure knowledge, either. There have been stories involving dishonest film producers for almost as long as there have been film producers. The people who regret having appeared in this production made a very basic mistake, and I don’t feel much sympathy for them.
I saw three major kinds of non-actors in this movie. There were those that SBC approached who wouldn’t play along, such as the guys on the street that shooed SBC away when he tried to euro-kiss them. No, these guys weren’t being homophobic; euro-kissing is generally not acceptable in north america, as it makes many people here uncomfortable no matter what the genders or orientations of the people involved. There were people like the frat boys who signed off on being in the movie and where later embarassed because of their own conduct. Everyone in their right mind knows that in this day and age, anything caught on camerca can at the very least find its way onto the internet to be viewed by by millions, so I have no sympathy for these fools. Finally, there are those who made an effort to be polite and accomodating to Borat, and then did their best to put up with his antics. Do these people really think so little of foreign cultures that they believed such a wild caricature? Do they really believe that there is an eastern-european country of incestuous peasants that rape at the drop of a hat and bring bags of their own excrement to the dinner table? These people were either playing along, or were at least as bad as the frat guys.
That’s fine. I didn’t mean to claim the film is a documentary. It was just that the way you worded your post, it seemed like the evidence you were adducing for your claim that it’s not a documentary was bad evidence. But in your more recent post, you’ve said more clearly relevant things.
Haven’t see the movie, but I did catch Cohen on “The Tonight Show” with Jay Leno a few months ago. Rather embarassingly, he remained in character throughout the interview, which was reminescent of Andy Kauffman, also a brilliant comedian but a certifiable lunatic to boot.
I tried to listen to Cohen’s interview with Terry Gross on “Fresh Air” via FreshAir.org, but it is not available:
“Due to legal restraints, the audio for this story is not available on our site.”
The only other time I’ve seen this tag was for the infamous Gene Simmons interview, which degraded into a volley of personal insults between the host and the guess. Simmons reportedly refused to sign the release, so you cannot hear it via the site. (Though, of course, in this digital age you cannot suppress these things; you can hear it other places.)
Her interview with Cohen must have been interesting because Terry Gross refers to it on her website today:
“We can hardly believe it ourselves, but somehow Fresh Air has just reached its 20th anniversary as a daily national show. (snip) To celebrate, our producers have picked memorable moments from the past 20 years that they want to play back for you. Today’s show includes…Sacha Baron Cohen, who created the comic Kazakh Borat…”
The only funny moments are when he gives the mic to people and just lets them talk, thats a riot. As for the putting decent people in uncomfortable situations and laughing at them I don’t get the joke…much like Jackass when Johnny Knoxville is dressed as an old man and goes screaming down a hill, we’re 'sposed to laugh at the people running to help!!! The story crap is worthless and reallty contrived, so I only made it to the middle before I left the theatre.
Well, I think Punk’d is hateful, which is why I don’t watch it. ANd it’s why I haven’t watched Borat either. I’d probably find some of it quite funny – I do like low-brow tasteless humor sometimes. But I don’t like pranks.
Nonsense, it didn’t come close to outgrossing Borat.
Oh…you mean in money.
I and Mrs. J. enjoyed Borat (despite the wince-making parts), didn’t take it very seriously, and haven’t agonized over the worldly implications of its style and themes.
I feel badly for all those real-life people who live on Secession Drive, though. :dubious:
Ah, so Cohen brilliantly exposed their prejudice against people with mustaches! Take that, bigots!
“As bad” how? For accepting that a person in front of them was really who he said he was? I guess it reveals something about them, like I said, but really, I think it says more about social pressure and people’s reluctance to cause a scene by calling somebody a liar or a phony even when the person is acting in a ridiculous way in front of a camera. That’s not bigoted on their part or insightful on Cohen’s.
I too felt that the majority of it was staged. And if it’s staged then really, what’s the point?
I’ve seen years and years and years of shows like Candid Camera, Punk’d, Jamie Kennedy Expirement, Jackass, Tom Green, TVs Bloopers and Practical Jokes to know how people react in given situations. The way these people reacted just screamed STAGED.
For example Borat trying to give strangers kisses on the street. A real reaction would be to avoid him and walk away briskly without a word. Not sprint away arms flailing wildly yelling “Get away, get away!” Yeah right.
As soon as you have staged reactions mixed with (possibly) real ones then you lose all credibility in my book.
Yeah, that seemed strange to me as well. I thought maybe they have dozens or even hundreds of “polite” refusals on the cutting room floor, and just kept the four or five crazy people for the film.
