Borat and Real Americans

Posted on November 14, 2006 in Ettiquette Film Hatred

Ever since Christopher Hitchens inexplicably renounced his leftist roots and joined the fatwa of the wRong, he has shown a remarkable purblindness when it comes to the failings of the American public. In a recent article for Slate, Hitchens takes the New Statesman to task for its analysis of the hit film Borat. Where the New Statesman finds “tacit acceptance” for “Borat’s ghoulish requests”, Hitchens yawns and says it all has to do with what he calls America’s “painful politeness:

Among the “cultural learnings of America for make benefit glorious nation of Kazakhstan” is the discovery that Americans are almost pedantic in their hospitality and politesse…..The only people who are flat-out rude and patronizing to our curious foreigner are the stone-faced liberal Amazons of the Veteran Feminists of America—surely natural readers of the New Statesman.

For those who have not seen the film, Borat is an exercise in offense. What shocked me was that many of the people in the film did not react like the feminists reacted — that they ignored or even endorsed the extreme statements about Jews that the lead character evinced. These were not actors but real people who agreed to go on camera and give the people of Kazakhstan a glimpse of real Americans. And real Americans were willing to sell Borat a gun (except that he was not an American citizen) to kill Jews. Real Americans told him that they were working on ridding the country of homosexuals. Real (drunken) Americans told him that they wanted to bring back slavery.

It counted for something that Borat made his trip through the American south where such viewpoints are rampant. Perhaps he might have encountered more “rude” people like the feminists if he’d crossed the American midwest instead.

But were the feminists rude? When someone expresses views about subjugating and chattelizing any segment of the American populace, should we remain politely silent? Or does that person deserve the cold treatment that concluded the interview with the elderly feminists? Aside from trolls, (who should simply be deleted and banned), I think we as a people should make it a habit to turn our backs on those who offend and not ghettoize those who take the fun out of it by rejecting the offensive. The feminists were not the rude ones: Borat was.

Another point that Hitchens fails to explore in his exonerating view of Americans is the question of racism and sexism in informing the responses of Borat’s interactors. The Great Hitchens, self-named Chief of the Tribe of Berzerking Apologists for the wRong, makes every attempt to excuse a car salesman and a gun dealer. Yet when Borat asks for a car that is a “pussy magnet”, the car dealer readily comes up with two suggestions: a Corvette and a Hummer. And when he requests a gun for killing Jews, the gun dealer hands him a gold-plated pistol of high caliber without a qualm. Only a lack of dollars and the fact that Borat is not a U.S. citizen prevents him from making his purchases. In America, we see, it is not virtue which guides our social exchanges, but the simple raw fact of money. And that, Mr. Hitchens, is the root of our evil.

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Two of the trio of fraternity thugs who were caught on camera advocating a return of slavery and being drunken louts who probably should have been expelled from the University of South Carolina for wantings in character have sued Twentieth Century Fox films for “humiliation, mental anguish, and emotional and mental distress” stemming from their depiction in the film.

As I see it, if you see drunkenness as a pastime, you deserve to be shown as an idiot. Score another one for Borat.

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My official view of Borat? Mixed. On one hand, I found parts of it funny, other parts of it disturbing. I gained some hope for America during the infamous rodeo scene where the approbation of the crowd grew less and less intense as Borat described in more vivid detail the tortures that he felt should be wreaked on those who opposed America.

On the other hand, I felt more than a little disgust at Borat’s scatology and at its anti-Islamic characterizations. The Jew jokes got to be too much. One could not help but feel that Cohen was not only engaging in a polemic against American culture but also against Islam.

In the final analysis, an interesting but flawed film. Small wonder that the Kazakhstan government has issued a corrective against the film’s allegation of anti-semitism.