By Amanda DeCamp
Borat is probably the funniest movie made ever. It is vulgar, obscene and wrong in many ways. Sacha Baron Cohen of Da Ali G Show plays a fictional Kazakhstani journalist. With the exception of absurd naked man-on-man wrestling scenes and driving across America with a black bear in an ice cream man truck, the movie portrayed a very literal and harsh sense of what America is.
According to an article in USA Today’s online edition on Monday, all the real Americans taped for the movie “Signed consent forms, yet many apparently weren’t expecting to show up on screens from coast to coast.” Many of the real people taped were tracked, however “We will never know, since Cohen will never tell us, which of the scenes we witness are set-ups or the real thing,” said Britain’s Evening Standard.
New York was depicted exactly as it is, and it turned out to appear the most normal. When the overly friendly Kazakhstani tried kissing strangers in the subway and on the streets of Manhattan, people threatened Borat and one even ran several avenues away from him.
He attended a feminist meeting where he told women that they have a smaller brain than men and that it is scientifically proven. The women taped are very upset with the portrayal.
When an old man comes to him to deliver a telegraph with the message that his wife from back home has died, he gives the man a high five. He attends a gay pride parade where the men are happy to kiss him and hug him excessively. The next day he calls Alan Keyes, a well-known conservative political analysis,” a chocolate face.” He explains the parade to him and Keyes explains that the other men were homosexuals.
By far the funniest part of the movie was Borat’s appearance on a local news show in Jackson, Mississippi. He kissed the news castor and weatherman, both of whom were uncontrollably laughing. The show’s producer, Dharma Arthur was fired because of her lack of research before booking him. “Because of him, my boss lost faith in my abilities and second-guessed everything I did thereafter,” she told Newsweek. “I spiraled into depression, and before I could recover, I was released from my contract early. It took me three months to find another job, and now I’m thousands of dollars in debt and struggling to keep my house out of foreclosure. How upsetting that a man who leaves so much harm in his path is lauded as a comedic genius.” Unfortunately, Arthur has no sense of humor and can’t admit that she did absolutely no research before she booked Cohen.
At a “high society” dinner in the South, Borat is sitting with three couples. He tells two of the women, “My country would go crazy over you two,” then to the pastor’s wife, “You – not so much.” He went on to highly offend the entire table of real Americans, but they responded cordially. When the one man said he was “Retired,” Borat accused him of saying “Retarded.” The doorbell rang and it was a prostitute for Borat. When Borat asked if they could stay for desert, the cordial Southerners kicked him out.
Borat asked a car salesman in Maryland where the “Pussy Magnet” is in the Hummer he was test-driving. Jim Sell, the salesman Borat duped, told FHM magazine, that he was thinking while taping, “This guy’s going to make me look like an ass in his country. Instead, he’s going to make me look like an ass in my own country.”
Bobby Row, rodeo producer from Salem, Virginia, told FHM magazine, “A man called and told me a singer from Kazakhstan was coming to America and wanted to sing the national anthem at the rodeo. They sent me a CD of him, but it was blank.” The movie shows Cohen ranting about how he hopes that every man, woman and child in Iraq dies. The audience, who is real, cheers him on enthusiastically.
He hitched a ride with three Chi Psi fraternity brothers from the University of South Carolina. David Corcoran, who was the most belligerent and outspoken of the three, said, “They paid for us to drink at a bar. Then we were supposed to pick Borat up in an RV as if he was hitchhiking. I got on the RV and saw all these video guys. It seemed like a good set-up for Kazakh TV. Borat told us he beats women and showed us naked pictures of his sister.” In the movie, Corcoran said that he thinks women should be slaves and that slavery should still exist in America.
Other scenes included seeing Borat being “saved” at a Pentecostal meeting, breaking hundreds of dollars worth of items in an antique shop, kidnapping Pamela Anderson in a sack and asking a gun shop owner what the best gun to kill Jews would be.
It is amazing the things people will say and do when they don’t think it will appear for all to see. Cohen may be a jerk for catching people while they are drunk or making them believe he is a reporter from another country, but he does not make them say what they do. He is just telling the truth about parts of America, in the funniest and most blunt way possible.
