On the back cover of the Borat DVD that I purchased yesterday, it says the following:
‘In the movie theater, you couldn’t even hear all of the jokes because the audience was choking from hysterical laughter. People choked on their popcorn and slid off their seats onto the floor. If you don’t find this movie funny, take out a drill and drill a hole in your head.’
Unfortunately, I don’t have a drill.
I decided to watch this movie to see what all the bustle was about – to see why Russia banned it from the silver screen. I got my answer loud and clear. The first emotion I felt during and after the movie was disappointment in all of the people who raved about this film. Those of you who said that my political correctness and overactive cultural sensitivity would clash with this movie were absolutely right. I saw nothing funny about it.
I understand that the message of the movie was less about Kazakhstan than about America – a parody on Americans and the way they bask in the rays of their cultural ignorance. However, for an overwhelming majority of Americans, this film put Kazakhstan on the map and sprouted a bouquet of stereotypes that even the most backward Texan couldn’t have dreamt up. In a time when cultural misunderstanding leads to atrocities all over the world, Sasha Cohen has defaced an entire people and nation in a base, primitive film that says more about his personal neurosis than about any of the peoples he managed to stuff into this cinematographic abomination.
It is also interesting to note that none of the scenes of ‘Kazakhstan’ were actually filmed in Kazakhstan. The scenes of his hometown were filmed in Romania and the languages spoken ranged from Hebrew to Polish – Kazakh not included. Most of the scenes in the movie were not scripted. The only actors in the movie were Borat, his traveling companion and the black prostitute that he marries in the end. So being, everyone else was told that they were taking part in a documentary about an immigrant from somewhere in the former Soviet Union, and so they went into it the way one would go into a serious documentary and were shocked, upon seeing the film, that they had been tricked. The people who were filmed in Borat’s ‘hometown’ also claim that they had been lied to about the nature of the film.
Nonetheless, the entire time, I couldn’t help but feel a sharp pain in my chest for the people of Kazakhstan, who in this film are portrayed as dirty, mentally handicapped, incestuous, godless, fascist cave people capable only of defecating and masturbating. A friend of mine said that Americans already think this way and that this film would not affect their net perception of the peoples of the Newly Independent States (NIS) of the former Soviet Union. I have to disagree. Although it is clear that the absurdity of the image that Cohen has created for the Kazakh people is intended to testify to how ridiculous cultural stereotypes can be, for people who have never been to or heard of Kazakhstan, this film becomes their reference point, even if only on a subconscious level. I have no doubt that upon meeting a Kazakh person, every young American who has seen this film will immediately pull Borat out of the thin rolodexes of their cultural records. The association has been made.
I will admit that what the film does do is bring to the table the ignorance of the West about Eastern Europe and Central Asia. But the problem is that this kind of film can only have the effect intended by Cohen on people who understand the ludicrousy of the assertions made about the Kazakh people. But when such humor aims to reach a public that has no real knowledge about the culture to fall back on, jokes begin to cross the line that separates comedy from bigotry.
I am aware of the fact that I sound like an old lady who has just awoken from a 30-year comma, but I am truly disappointed that this film has gotten such raving reviews. I can have no faith in a society that has so loudly lauded a film that has, in my mind, committed outright culturecide.
