Brandon M. Dennis www.oxhorn.

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Borat Vindicates Americans

Brandon M. Dennis

Published in The Daily of the University of Washington

November, 2006

Borat: Cultural Learning’s of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan,
has been in the news an awful lot recently, and it isn’t because it is a feel-good family
flick you could take your kids to. Far from it. It is because it is a hilarious movie that is
very crude at times and which is purported to give a not-so pleasant view of Americans in
their “natural habitat”.
Now, I’m not endorsing the movie. It was funny. Very funny. I laughed my guts
out, but all the while I felt ashamed doing so. When the movie ended at the theater where
I saw it, the audience just sat there as the credits rolled trying to process what it was they
had just seen, and very slowly they all stood, some with eyes wide and other chuckling to
themselves, but all clearly both uncomfortable and thoroughly entertained. I personally
felt like taking a hot shower afterwards. If you like a clever comedy and are prepared to
laugh hysterically and then wash your eyes out with bleach when you get home, then
Borat: is right up your alley.
What distinguishes Borat: from all the other vulgar dime-a-dozen explicit
comedies out there is its supposed exposé showing Americans as they really are. HBO
spokesman Quentin Schaffer has been quoted as saying, “Through [Cohen’s] alter-egos,
he delivers an obvious satire that exposes people’s ignorance and prejudice...” and
Entertainment Weekly adds, “…the people Borat talks to become the symbolic heart of
America - a place where intolerance is worn, increasingly, with pride.” I think that in
order to make statements like this, one has to overlook an awful lot of genuine American
goodness that was demonstrated in the film.
To be sure, Borat came upon a few rude people. I have read reviews that have
tried to vindicate the Americans who were played for chumps in this film, but they have
not, I believe, given enough attention to those who certainly fumbled a bit. Cohen, as
Borat, was given a ride by drunken frat boys who said, among other things, that they
wished slavery still existed and that racial minorities get all the breaks. When at a rodeo
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he talked with one cowboy who talked about Muslims in a very racist manner and who
expressed his desire to hang homosexuals. When interviewing some feminists he
mentioned that his country’s scientists have proven that women’s brains are the size of
squirrel brains, and the feminists were rude and walked off mid-interview.
But what I believe has been overlooked by any who approach this movie with the
idea of placing the spectacle of ridicule upon Americans are the numerous instances of
Americans treating Borat kindly and with understanding without falling for Cohen’s
specific attempts to bring out racism and bigotry in them.
For instance, there was one time when Borat was invited to a rich dinner party, on
Secession Drive, no less. He was treated amicably and with understanding, despite
calling a pastor’s wife ugly and bringing a plastic bag of feces to the table. It wasn’t until
Borat invited a scantily-clad prostitute into their home that the hosts kicked him out, but
up until then they did their best to try and understand this strange foreigner and treat him
well.
There was another scene when Cohen took driving lessons from an instructor and
did his best to goad the instructor into saying something bigoted. When Borat kissed the
instructor, the instructor simply shrugged and said that he wasn’t used to it, but that it was
ok. Borat, while driving, began to talk about his view of women and the instructor was so
horrified that he had to say that women have a right to choose the person with whom they
have sex (to Borat’s utter shock and dismay, of course).
When invited onto a local news station for an interview, Cohen frustrated the
station with his inability to understand the procedure and his constant interruption of the
weather broadcast, but instead of getting angry, throwing racial slurs and kicking him out,
the crew laughed hysterically and continued the interview for a good while before he left.
Even when he was with the racist frat boys, they treated him well. They gave him
a free ride, called him “brother”, gave him drinks and showed him movies. They bantered
around like chums and gave him sympathy when Borat discovered that the love of his life
(Pamela Anderson) was no longer a virgin. They certainly said some controversial
remarks, but they treated Borat with kindness.
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One of the most uncomfortable scenes for me was when Cohen arrived at the
evangelical church near the end of the film. The movie then went on for a long while just
filming the church members running around like they were on fire, praying in tongues,
shouting from the pulpit and acting rather silly, timed, of course, with comic looks of
confusion and wonder from Borat. As a Christian myself, my mind went back 1st
Corinthians 14:23, and I had to cringe and ask, “Is this really how the world sees us?”
But that is for another article. What I did notice through this entire exchange was how the
Christians in that church treated Borat, an unknown foreigner, immediately with kindness
and as a brother. Cohen went up there to get his character saved. He was not told to
convert or die. Neither was he told to hunt down Muslims and Jews, nor to donate money
or become an American citizen. Instead he was surrounded by a bunch of people whom
he did not know and who prayed for him and blessed him as if he was their closest friend.
We must also remember that Borat: is a film designed to entertain but also one
that has an agenda, and in order to fulfill that agenda it was heavily edited. How many
interviews did Cohen do that never made it into the film? How many of them were
completely harmless and therefore un-funny, which is why they got the cut? I think that
the myriad of reviews that paint Americans as bigots, sexists and altogether simple and
hateful folk are not indicative of the egregious behavior of Americans, but rather betray
the self-deprecating “blame America first” attitude of those who write them.