Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Borat Cultural Learnings of America...
Totally off topic. See the updated post below for serious thoughts on war. I went to see the Borat movie on Sunday evening. It has gotten very good reviews and I was rather looking forward to it. I rather liked the Ali G clips I'd seen on YouTube. Actually I thought they were clever in an idiotic sort of way. I did not like Borat, however. The thing which impressed me foremost was how polite Americans are. The preparedness to endure the crassest offences is pathological. They need help. In any other country it would have been a short movie. He'd have been throttled ten minutes in.
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6 comments:
Fine line btw being funny and plain offensive. Bill Hicks was a past master at traveling along that line. I guess Borat crosses over it for you once too often huh (haven't seen the movie myself).
I did see clips where some Americans were not shocked by Borat's outrageous comments about jews: that was pretty shocking to me. But for the most part, he appears to be picking on very polite if a bit dim folk.
There has always been a large element of weirdness in the US population, and no sooner does one weird culture get assimilated than another one comes along. If a gun-store owner is asked for the best weapon with which to kill a Jew, and he recommends a Nine, that doesn't necessarily mean he's an anti-semite. It may only be that he won't challenge the anti-semite Borat character to his face. We don't know what the owner told his wife when he got home. (To which she probably replied: 'Celebrate Diversity, dear!')
I think it's not impossible that he's doing both. In this case, mostly the latter and in one episode where he visits for a dinner party the home of a southern Society Lady it isn't attacking the dim or, I think, the prejudiced. It's just excruciatingly manipulating the pathological desire of some people not to offend or take offence even when literally handed a bag of shit. There's something wierd about that. I just don't think it was brave or funny to reveal it. As I said, I like Ali G. The difference is maybe that the target there were elites--clever people who could defend themselves. Thinking about it, I'm coming to the view that Brass Eye was much cleverer ini the sennse that it involved allowing the totally unreflective pompous and arrogant to ridicule themselves.
There was a letter in the Guardian about Borat from the editor of magazine or other: an 'expert' on funny things. Anyway, his basic argument was - doesn't really matter if it's offensive humour so long as it is really funny. Nothing more offensive, it wd seem, that unfunny comedy. And, on reflection, I think I wd agree with that (on the understanding that any truly offensive just isn't at all funny). So I cd see myself laughing at the Southern dinner party host being handed Borat's stool. I guess she must have signed-off on this footage so either (a) she was an actor or (b) she saw the funny side in the end. I suppose (c) is also a possibly: she got paid off.
Either way, I saw Borat learning cricket and American football on YouTube. Both excellent examples of physical comedy: real Laurel and Hardy stuff. Very, very funny. Interestingly, the English fellow teaching Borat cricket got impatient quite quickly, as I recall. Needed a stiff cuppa after that experience I'm sure.
I see from the New York Times that some of the Americans are now taking him to court for taking the piss out of them or asking questions or something like that.
The Dude. For whom the answer is always a White Russian.
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