Before I proceed, let me publicly state that Borat (and the current White House) proves to me, without at doubt, that the United States of America — and we Americans — is finally safely past being politically correct. Thank God!
I know why real Americans hate us, us being the smug intellectuals who live on the East and West coast. Only rednecks are allowed to use the R word.
(Oh, and America is anti-intellectual and anti-rational, just in case you hadn’t already noticed.)
I have been following Borat reviews closely. I have been consuming Borat skits on Google Video and YouTube for “years” now. Brilliant. After reading the Borat review in yesterday’s NY Times, I can easily show you why real Americans hate the East Coast, New York, New Yorkers, and the New York Times:
“The Anti-Defamation League, for one, has chided him, warning that some people may not be in on the joke. . . some people are definitely not in on the joke, though only because some people are too stupid and too racist to understand that the joke is on them.”
Patronizing, smug, and condescending and amazingly “John Kerry” in tone.
I fancy myself sophisticated and old-soul. I grew up in Hawaii. In Hawaii, everybody is always making fun of each other based on race and country-of-origin. I love this stuff. That said, anti-semitic jokes really make me uncomfortable.
If you make fun of dumb, racist, hicks, is that being anti-semantic?
I am going to see Borat tonight, if I can get tickets. I am in on the joke. Or, am I? Probably not. I have been called a dumbass, a moron, and thick, before, that’s for sure.
We would all love to think we’re in on the joke. That the joke isn’t on us. That said, I guarantee that this movie is going to make King Solomon coin, the majority of which will be forked over by the dumb, provincial, racist, pigs about whom Manohla Dargis and John Kerry spoke. They won’t think the movie is about them, either.
Here’s a little bit about the man behind Borat, Sacha Baron Cohen, from the Guardian:
Baron Cohen was born in north London in 1971, one of three brothers in a close-knit Jewish family. He was educated at Haberdashers’ Aske’s, the private school that has produced a wealth of comedic talent, including Matt Lucas and David Baddiel. He read history at Cambridge and wrote his thesis on the role of Jews in the US civil rights movement, and has been recalled as quiet, friendly and studious, but not exceptional.
After university he set up a comedy club with his elder brother before moving into cable TV. In 1998 he came to the attention of the producers of Channel 4′s 11 O’ Clock Show. He had already perfected Borat, but it was as Ali G, the semantically-challenged, shell-suited, voice-of-yoof from Staines that Baron Cohen first took the UK by storm.
The secret to the comic’s success, says Andrew Newman, is that he inhabits any role he takes on. “He is a funny actor, but more than that he becomes the characters he’s playing, certainly with Ali G and Borat and Bruno. He sort of has a mix of Peter Sellers’s acting and Rod Hull sort of bottle. He can just look someone in the eye and say, ‘is it ‘cos I is black,’ even though he is quite obviously not Ali G and he is quite obviously not black. He has a psychotic ability to play these characters, a fantastic confidence and ability … there is also a mix of quite clever satire and just funny cock jokes. He is able to mix things on a different level. He is able to be at once clever and very stupid.”
Sacha Baron Cohen may well be brighter than his cousin, Simon Baron-Cohen, “University of Cambridge Professor of Developmental Psychopathology.”
The Financial Times, my fave paper, compares Sacha Baron Cohen to Swift, “. . . racism’s idiocy is exposed not with a palavering preachiness but with the lethal satiric literalism Swift perfected when he proposed – so modestly – his recipes for cooking unwanted children?”
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
hope you enjoyed the movie. i’m going to see it this week.
I have to be the only person on the planet who doesn’t find SBC’s shtick funny, but I will say that hands down he’s needed right now. Swiftian indeed.
Sacha Baron Cohen is a racist, and thinks because he is jewish he has the right to slam every gentile in ways nobody would be allowed to slam a jew. He makes me sick, and his “jokes” are incorrect and pathetic. The only people I feel sorry for are the kazakhs whoes culture isnt really well known by too many Americans. (this is probably why sacha chose this country to make fun of) Anyway this is totally wrong of him to do, and dont think it will go unnoticed that he happens to be a jew and he is publically trying to destroy an entire nations reputation. How are they then supposed to feel about jews, if they didnt already have a problem with them? He is going to make life uncomfortable for innocent people. Sacha is a real bastard!