Borat’s characterization is not intended to be taken as anything resembling a real representation of Kazakhs but a parody of western stereoptypes and beliefs about Eastern Europeans and “foreigners” in general. It’s a mirror of American ignorance.
SBC is one of very few, maybe the only, truly subversive coomedian reaching a big audience today. As with any satire, most of it will be crap or injokes or wooshes (I’m looking at you kyla), but it’s all worth it for those precious moments when he really exposes the bigotry that many people hide away from plain view.
Many people are wary of what they consider to be the “pc police” and humor may be a much better way of exposing them, than investigative journalism.
Apart from that, the pure comedy, as when SBC had Ali G interview Buzz Aldrin, it’s magic.
If anyone is unsure what’s being made fun of in Borat’s segments, please watch this three-minute video and decide who comes off looking worse: The “Kazakh reporter” or the American who says he wishes we could shoot Jews.
The bigots I’ve encountered in real life don’t walk around wearing hoods and shouting about it. They know their views are unpopular, and they keep silent about them, until they decide they’re talking to someone who will “understand”; then they open up about it.
That’s the brilliance of the Borat character; people who know nothing about Kazakhstan assume the crazy stuff he’s saying passes for normal over there, and they feel freed up to express the things they wouldn’t say if they were face-to-face with a fresh-scrubbed Columbia Journalism grad with a TV camera.
Maybe. I haven’t seen Da Ali G show or any bit of this movie at all, but from what I’ve heard and read, it seems like something that I would laugh my ass off at, except for the throwing rocks at gypsies part. Like I said upthread, it’s possible that my sense of humor has been warped by living in Eastern Europe and seeing firsthand how Roma are treated here. When you know people who actually would happily throw rocks at gypsies, jokes about it sort of fall flat.
But that’s the point. It isn’t SBC making a joke about it (ha ha let’s kill gypsies) - it is him that is lulling people into the false sense of security where they say what they really think - or at least go along with what the funny foreigner is preaching.
On another level, as has been said, it’s also a social exercise in seeing how far people will go to be polite and appease the visitor to their country. The classic is the Kazak national anthem sketch, where people are willing to give up some time for the visitor to express himself until they realise that he isn’t going to stop. Then it’s about Western values of politeness and courtesy.
Of course, we on the outside, being on the joke, can see all this while the majority of those involved presumably do not.
After (finally) seeing the movie (all right, before its official release), I can finally attest to its brilliance. I’d start a new thread, but this whole conversation about it being offensive or not becomes moot upon seeing it, and discussing a controversial work with people who’ve never seen/watched it (assuming it’s available) is usually a bad idea.
Again, freaking brilliant.