I know one shouldn’t make judgements based on appearance, but there is NO WAY any of those bar partons were in on the joke. NO WAY. You may able to trick intelligent people like C. Everett Koop and the like, but you can’t fool us drunken bar patrons in Tuscon, AZ. :rolleyes:
And for those who think the concept of Borat is so terrible, please provide a list of comedy that you find suitable, as I am very sure there is something that you have laughed at that was potentially offensive to another race, gender, etc.
You do have to admit, “Throw the Jew Down the Well” is a catchy little tune. Thanks to this thread I had it stuck in my head all day yesterday and probably will again today.
My husband and I love Baron Cohen’s comedy and will most definitely have to watch the Borat movie. We have tried to share it with some of our friends, but so far nobody else seems to like it but us. I find “Da Ali G Show” hysterical in a “The Office” sort of way. Sometimes watching it makes me downright squirm in my seat and it’s not unusual to hear me groan, “Oh, no!” One of my favorites was when Borat was dining with some old white guys and a black man came in to bring them something. Borat asked them if he was their slave and eventually, in response to the fact that slavery is illegal in the U.S., one of the old white guys said, “Well, it’s good for them.” Wow.
Borat has also brought two new phrases into my household, namely, “I crush them,” and “sexy time.”
There would have no reason to even perform the stunt in Tucson if the patrons had been in on the joke. That’s the whole point of Cohen’s humor is that he’s getting reactions from people who don’t get that his characters are a prank.
I don’t think any of those things are okay, and you can mock them all day long and I won’t care. But those are all well-publicized issues. (Maybe not corruption in Africa so much.) You can make fun of Nazis, hell, tell Holocaust jokes. I’m Jewish, and I’ll probably laugh! I love black humor. But people know you’re joking! When you start making fun of “gypsies”, well…I’d be prepared to bet that there are people in, I don’t know, definitely the US, who think that “gypsies” are imaginary creatures, like fairies and leprechauns. And people name their cats “gypsy”, like it’s cute. It’s not, it’s an offensive racial slur, people!
Maybe my sense of humor has been warped by the behavior I witness every day. I just don’t think it’s funny. YMMV.
In relation to the “questionable” nature of Cohen’s satire I saw a segment a few month’s ago on Andrew Denton’s Enough Rope. If he is not the best interviewer in the world he is awful close. He was interviewing 3 cab drivers and this ensued:
*ANDREW DENTON: So when you’re listening to people say things which you find really objectionable, you just nod along basically?
GERARD DONAGHY: Yes, you can nod along or you can actually get into the action yourself, you know like if they’re saying like one group of people, well they should be thrown out of the country, just get in there and say we should shoot them, you know. Get a hold of their children, stab their children and stuff like that, and eventually you see them sort of go, “Oh, that’s a bit much. I didn’t want to stab their children really, I just wanted to boot them out you know”?
ANDREW DENTON: So you’re doing a community service?
GERARD DONAGHY: Well, kind of, and it points up to them, you know, like the ridiculous stand they’re taking. You know, you just can’t run around the place pulling people out of houses, in this country anyway, not yet.*
It struck me as quite a nice way to shut an idiot up.
Please keep in mind that, in the U.S., there is a sizeable population of people that self-identify as Gypsies, and they have no Romanian or Eastern European ancestry (most have Irish names). They call themselves Gypsies and I’m pretty sure they don’t consider it offensive.
The word “gypsy” to me and everyone I know, has no offensive connotations other than that most Gypsies in the U.S. are scam artists. People naming their cat “Gypsy” are thinking of the jolly peasants in the brightly colored wagons, dancing and playing the flute.
I have worked in Kazakhstan and the caspian region and had the pleasure of knowing and working with a group of Kazakhs for several years. Their initial reaction to the Borat character when it first came up on TV a year or so back was ‘WTF, why is this guy portraying us as a bunch of fricking morons, what the hell did we do to get this?’.
English is not a common second (or even forth) langauage from the group of people I knew who were all well educated engineers and the humour bypassed them (and me).
Whilst it may be obvious to a westerner that the character is aimed at eliciting reactions from other westerners, to the people I knew, they just figured they were the butt of a ‘look how dumb they are’ joke.
I agree it’s not the responsibility of Joe Cab Driver or anyone like that to chastise a fare who says something offensive- why waste the energy? Just go along, nod in agreement and collect the tip. It’s not my (or anyone’s) job to go around trying to convince everyone whose world view is skewed.
And yes, the “Jew” song is very well done, and very catchy- I was humming it for days after first seeing it. You gotta love the way it starts out harmless, with “and the problem is transport”, and only gets to the offensiveness in the second verse once you’re already hooked. Genius!
As a long-time fan of Da Ali G Show and Sasha Baron Cohen, I am familiar with Borat and the things he does.
To be honest, the things he may say and do in the show and the movie seem to make more of a statement on so-called “polite” North American society than it does about Kazakhstan.
It’s also screamingly funny. I have literally found myself unable to breathe from laughing so hard at Borat scenes. And it isn’t the offensiveness you’re laughing at-- it’s one of those things where what he’s doing is uneblievably funny, and you’re gut-laughing so hard it hurts, but you’re also thinking, “Oh my God! Did that southern gentleman actually just agree with him?!”
It says something about how welcoming North American culture can be to a foreigner looking to educate himself on our society. It says something about how far we’ll go to ensure that person feels welcome. It says something about the things we’ll do when a television camera is around, that we’d never do otherwise. It says something about the hidden, ugly discrimination that still exists in North America, despite any efforts on our part to pretend it isn’t there.
Furthermore, despite all this, it’s really, really funny. But in it’s own ridiculous way, it’s also very smart.
That sounds kind of similar to what Cohen did at the rodeo when he finagled his way into getting them to let “Borat” sing the national anthem.
“I support your war of terror. I hope you kill every man, woman and child in Iraq, down to the lizards…and may George W. Bush drink the blood of every man, woman and child in Iraq.”
Security had to escort him out of the facility to save him from getting his ass kicked or worse.
Really? I didn’t know that. I’m serious, not being sarcastic. I looked in Wikipedia (everyone’s favorite information source, right?) I knew about Irish Travellers, I assume it’s the same group? Wikipedia doesn’t list any other group that has anything to do with Ireland…the article says “Irish Travellers are a nomadic or itinerant people of Irish origin living in Ireland, Great Britain and the United States. They refer to themselves as The Pavee…Labels such as gypsy and pikey are common in Great Britain. Gypsy is more properly applied to the Roma people but is offensive to both groups.” The article does have one of those “The neutrality of this article is disputed” tags at the top, but I don’t know enough about the issue to even guess in what direction it could be biased.
Yes, The Pavee must be the same group, but in my experience and my father’s, who deals with them fairly often in the law enforcement field, they will alsa refer to themselves as gypsies and don’t appear to tkae offense when they arereferred to as such.
Transcript of the exchange- I personally think Borat called it accurately- Old white man was saying it’s good for “them” (old white guys term- see below) to not be slaves, not necessarily good for us:
A very well dressed black servant pours Borat a glass of wine.
Borat: “He is your slave?”
Man: “No no no”
Borat: “He is his slave?” (Borat points to the other man).
Man: “No no no, he is not a slave at all. We don’t have slaves here anymore.”
Borat: “Why you stop?”
Man: “Well it was a law that was passed. that they could no longer be used as slaves.” (pause) “…which is a good thing.”
Borat: “Yes.” (pause) “…but not so much for you.”
It’s all in the subtleties- “they could no longer be used as slaves”, not " slavery was horrible, an injustice, etc."
Here’s the YouTube clip of the “He is your slave?” bit. One of the white guys definietely says, “it is a good thing for them.” Borat then says “but not so much for you,” and the white guy says “you’re right.”
I was wrong upthread about one of the guys being a congressman, though. I must have confused this clip with another one (I think I remember Borat getting a pol to say that Jews go to hell and that was probably what I was getting mixed up).
The slave bit is part of a longer segment where Borat goes to a wine tasting club. The excahange in question starts at about 4:23 of the clip,
All I know is that I had heard about this movie a little before this thread, but didn’t know much about it. I just watched the trailer on Apple’s website. Now I’m dying to see it. What’d he say to the guy in the hotel? “What’s up bread face?”
What’d he say to the guy in the hotel? “What’s up bread face?”