"Dzienkuje" Sacha Baron Cohen!
We are waiting for Godot, but I felt what we really need, and instead sent us Borat! And Borat is, if anything movable feast and the gift that keeps on giving. You managed to simultaneously insult Kazakhs, frighten Jewish anti-defamation groups, anger orientalism monitors, branched hypocritically thin-skinned Americans, provoke laughter than Beavis and Butthead, Southpark, and Archie Bunker generation and last - but certainly not least - provide a marvelous opportunity for the Western intellectuals to criticize and debate merits, meaning and interpretation of celluloid masterpiece. Finally, thanks to you, we can now confirm that the rumors of Yakov Smirnov's death greatly exaggerated. It turns out that's fine and well, finding gainful employment in a large American city called Branson, Missouri ("The Hours great ... auditorium, career and pockets less filling ... but what a country !"... OK, bad example) ! Slamma dunk, emissions to achieve, and hiyya-fiyva, you Sacha!
Talk about the movie that led to theatergoers being bombarded - even before they check cinema times - with conflicting signs and instructions from the cultural elites, trendsetters, and peers:
1) Go to film. Laugh, have fun!
2) If you go to a movie, do not laugh!
3) Go film, laughing, but then feign outrage!
4) Do not go film - partly because you may laugh at
5) If it does not work, there is something wrong with you.
6) If you go, there is something wrong with you.
Borat:. Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan can not help but give the impression that we May have become over-scripted, over-programmed culture
This article attempts to address some of the controversy and the larger consequences arising from the character of Borat and Borat! Film (hereinafter referred to as Borat!). It does so by tapping some of the wide range of film criticism, op-eds, and Internet postings that the film is iznjedrio.Priznanje and disclaimer of sorts about the film seems to make before you start: I went ... I laughed ... I cried ... (but because I was laughing, not because I went ).
for the fun of the people of Kazakhstan! ... NE !!!
Let's start with a question that has consumed so many keys in the last few months. In part we can do, because Sacha Baron Cohen intent (ie production / supply side) is so much simpler than the question of how the film and has been interpreted and used by the public (ie consumption / demand side).
Shortly after the publication of the American Borat! Interview with Sacha Baron Cohen appeared in the 14th November 2006 edition of Rolling Stone. Clearly, a lot of people do not know about the interview, did not read it, or do not want, because the online discussion about who is Baron Cohen satirizes the film rages on. Although it may be, are and will be a lot of interpretation, which suffers as a result of Borat! (more on that below), Baron Cohen comments to discuss Neil Strauss really eliminate a lot of speculation about what Baron Cohen film intends to do. To Baron Cohen may have realized too late that the real value and power in accordance mum about his intentions with Borat is possible when you consider that, according to Strauss, Baron Cohen is bothered enough to meet that Strauss called back a week nakonintervju about talk to.
Here is what Baron Cohen said that - although they probably will not - once and for all dampen speculation about his motivation in making Borat!. Baron Cohen was responding to news that the Kazakh government is thinking to resist him and placing a full page ad promoting the country in The New York Times (they are not at the end of the latter ):
I was surprised because I always had faith in the audience will understand that it is a fictitious country and the only purpose is to allow people to bring their own prejudices. And the reason we chose Kazakhstan was because it is a country that no one has heard anything about, so we could be playing on the stereotypes they may have about this ex-Soviet rukavce.Vic not on Kazakhstan. I think it was a joke to people who can not believe that the Kazakhstan that I describe can exist - who believe that there is a country where homosexuals wear blue hats and the women live in cages and they drink fermented horse urine and the age of consent was raised to nine years.
That can end up much debate about Cohen's intentions. It's about the people Borat interviews - in the film, the Americans - not the Kazakhstan and Kazakhs.Film is designed to be the Americans.
Of course, this is what Ryan Gilbey of London's leftist weekly, New Statesman, took out filma.Članak herself as "Sacha Baron Cohen's exposure of crass Americana" and "Kazakhstan as a journalist discovers unpleasant truths about the United States' summary film as follows:
violence that Borat encounters on the New York subway after trying to greet male strangers with kisses is frighteningly real .... There is an aging cowpoke who requires only the mildest and seeks to support the murder of homosexuals and Muslims. Others are accused of many things they do not say what they činiti.Mnoštvo redneck rodeo shows no remorse about cheering Borat in a gung-ho speech about Iraq, apparently not realizing that what was actually said: "We support your war of terror ! "And it is shocking to witness the tacit acceptance with which Borat's ghoulish requests are greeted. Trying to find the ideal car for mowing down gypsies, or seeking the best gun for killing Jews, he encounters only compliance among America prodavača.Kupca seems to be always right, even when the far right.
in April 2003 Lucy Kelaart article in the British daily Guardian, suggests that some Kazakhs - at least those with some exposure to the West - to understand more about Borat then (on the basis of his British television show visits the U.S.). Most Kelaart interview subjects on the streets of Almaty were unamused, but really offended, and thought Borat was just plain stupid:
Ainura, 25, recently spent a year living in the United States. Do you think Borat is giving Kazakhstan a bad name. "Borat is making fun of Kazakhs, he was making fun of Americans," she says. "They are gullible Neither one of them said." No way - it can not be true. "They show describes an American stereotype, and not Kazakhstan he said a naked American attitude towards foreigners:. Strong emphasis, a loud voice, stupidity, male chauvinism ."
Of course, as I stated earlier, we will see, were Baron Cohen intentions be-all and end all criticism of this article will be far shorter than it is. Especially in the era of postmodern critics, audiences and all actual or potential under-the audience to take center stage.
"Full" Sacha Baron Cohen: Beyond Borat
Do not Americans who see Borat! ethnocentric thinking in the sense that Baron Cohen are major goals in its work, it is instructive to look at the "Full" Sacha Baron Cohen, or the latest in a wider range of characters he played on television and in film.
Baron Cohen In other signature role in Hollywood movies in 2006, he played Will Ferrell's foil and antagonist in the movie Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. Baron Cohen character, Jean Girard, a French "Formula Un" driver that NASCAR circuit by storm. He is the embodiment walk some might say "freedom fries", "red (neck) state of" American stereotype of French - snobbish, effete, espresso-sipping, opera-listening, L'Etranger-read (adding insult to injury until he goes! ), Perrier-sponsored homosexual (his longtime partner starring Conan O'Brien is one way Latenight assistant Andy Richter ).
It is difficult to see this as a role in which Baron Cohen is somehow exploiting the American audience, but to play a stereotype intended to be maximally offensive in the sense of condescending to the audience, and intelligence. Instead, his role as Jean Girard seems typically English (la Benny Hill), and in that sense, throws light back on Borat, as we have learned from his Rolling Stone interview that Baron Cohen grew up idolizing Peters Sellers and loved Sellers' infamous French stereotype , inspector Jacques Clouseau:
Baron Cohen future was set when eight years two significant događaja.Prvi time I see one of Peter Sellers' Pink Panther movies at a friend's ninth birthday - setting off a lifelong admiration for the British comic actor working. The second was when his older brothers, he snuck into the theater to see Monty Python's Life of Brian.
Of course, the famous Baron Cohen character - and one whose success is probably responsible for getting the Borat opportunity over the long term - a faux "gangsta" rapper Ali G.. Indeed, it is instructive to note that the Ali G "is the first full-length film in 2001, Ali G Indahouse, instead of the epic quest for Pamela Anderson, Ali G. is looking for supermodel Naomi Campbell. Much of the criticism" Ali G. "sounds really unbelievable when you see a well-known statement of Baron Cohen's insensitivity to the Kazakhs. in the UK, Ali G. precipitated comments like this from Felix Dexter, a comedian on the British television series. Substitute" Kazakhs "for" black street culture, "could get a characterization similar to what we have seen in the light of Borat: "But a lot of humor is not on the black street culture and is celebrated because it allows the liberal middle classes to laugh at that culture is the context in which they can retain their sense of political correctness. "
say that the Kazakhs! ... However, why exactly is Kazakhstan?
and father of a prototype for the character of Borat was a Moldovan television journalist, named Alexi Krickler, which Cohen played in the mid-1990s on British television. According to Cohen, which is a figure based on a doctor he met at a free beach getaway in Astrakhan, southern Russia: "... there was a man who was a doctor, a moment when I met him, I started laughing ... had some elements of Borat, but he has none of the racism and misogyny and anti-Semitism. he was Jewish, actually ."
This is insofar as it reveals the personal characteristics that are separate from the views he attributes to his own artistic creation, which some might complain about is the essence of stereotyping.
It was like Alexi Krickler that Baron Cohen hit on what Strauss calls "little epiphany that would eventually fuel Baron Cohen careers ":
For example, when someone talks about the British Lions rugby team, he would go back and forth with the respondent for ten minutes, does not seem to understand that they have no real lions game of rugby. "I was struck by the patience of some of the members of the upper classes, who were so keen to appear polite - especially to the camera - that he would never walk," says Baron Cohen.
Of course, there is a distinction that may have petered over the years ... at least in Borat: originally, Baron Cohen really concentrated on the truly powerful, whether celebrities or those with money and power, but in Borat! he clearly began sliding toward "taking the piss out of" more average citizens. Perhaps this is where he "crossed the line ."
Greetings from the "Post (tab)-Commiestan"
Borat Borat u! still has several incarnations from Alexi Krickler to Borat Sagdiyev today. After Alexi Krickler came Albanian TV reporter called Kristo. Only later Baron Cohen's "Borat" become Kazakh: first as Borat Karabzhanov, and then the Borat Dutbayev, and at the end of 2003 as Borat Sagdiyev. It may be important because it indicates that although Sacha Baron Cohen and Kazakhstan have become inextricably intertwined, Borat is "Kazakhness" almost by accident. One is inevitably reminded here mistaken intention sometimes easy to read in a retrospective analysis: Bram Stoker's Dracula was inseparably linked with Romania, but Dracula was allegedly started in Stoker's imagination as the "Count Wampyr" from Styria (Austria), and only later (as Borat) migrated eastward to Transylvania.
However, Moldova, Albania, and Kazakhstan have a clear common theme - they are all part of the post-communist world of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. And it is worth recalling here Baron Cohen's own comments as mentioned earlier: "And the reason we chose Kazakhstan was because it is a country that no one has heard anything about, so we would be able to play on stereotypes they may have about this ex-Soviet backwater. "In other words, generic post (card)-Commiestan species.
Baron Cohen would not comment specifically on why Krickler forced to leave Moldova and change its name, and why his television journalist is still in post-communist world, but we can speculate. In this way, not much has changed since Bram Stoker time: you need to find a setting that is at once exotic and yet familiar, which acts as a support, but not a distraction from the fundamental goal artform. One wonders to what extent Borat migration from Moldova to Albania to Kazakhstan was dictated directly or indirectly, in the real world events - Albania certainly lose some of the "unknown", a sign that the key to this plot device, due to serious news surrounding Kosovakasnih 1990 -it (maybe a witness, the movie Wag the Dog). Distance course makes a parody easier (witness the infamous Weird Al Yankovic song and video parody "Amish Paradise" - talk about disenfranchised communities that are likely to get upset!), But only to the point: Go east young man ..! . but not too far east, because then it becomes unrecognizable, and his audience can relate to and the power of satire is lost!
Molvania, Romanovia and Kreplakistan ... Oh My!
This still leaves key question unanswered: why is Baron Cohen asked him to make fun of journalists come from real places ... however fictionally described? If, as suggested by Baron Cohen, Borat not real Kazakh, but from the fictional Kazakh, so absurd that "the joke is on people who can not believe that the Kazakhstan that I describe can exist," Why do you choose the right country name to begin with? Mirroring the separation, restoring independence, and micro-states occur within the region during the post-communist era, in recent years have seen an explosion "really imagined communities" in the form of a fictional country in post-communist space.
As John Tierney opined in the New York Times op-ed, "I would like Cohen instead invented a country like Molvania", but Borat from Kazakhstan. Molvania is, of course, the famous fictional country Jetlag Travel Guide series [Molvania: Land untouched modern dentistry]. "Somewhere north of Bulgaria and downwind of Chernobyl", described as (Despite the name of a fictional country in the space provided and characteristics, and his three Australian authors takes place is not modeled on Moldova or even Romania, but was inspired by travels in Portugal.) Among many other things, Molvania is home to Europe's oldest nuclear reactor, and as one of its authors are concerned: "it is a beautiful country now that the radiation levels dropped to acceptable standards ."
unsafe nuclear power plants, environmental degradation and genetic mutation are also a punchline in the Ben Stiller comedy Dodgeball in 2004, in which we are familiar with Fran Stalinofskivichdavidovitchsky of Romanovia: "In my homeland Romanovia, dodgeball is the national sport and her nuclear power plant is team won the championship five years in a row, which makes her the deadliest woman on earth with a dodgeball ."
then there is Mike Myers' creation Kreplakistan Austin Powers series: Kreplakistan the former Soviet republics obviously can not protect their nuclear warheads in a state of permanent chaos (as a mock CNN clips of people to mingle-mangle transferred to us) . There is speculation that Kreplakistan on Wikipedia is "probably based on the real Karakalpak Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, now the Republic of Karakalpakstan." Convincing, however, the idea that "kreplak" inspired "kreplach, Eastern Europe Jewish dish consisting of meat-filled dumplings ."
, but the invention of the country the problem of negative stereotypes and prejudices? If it is any indication: Apparently not. Molvania comes in for harsh criticism from those who saw it as yet another variation of the (neo-) orientalist theme. There were angry dismissal particular photographs used by authors in the book and the website Molvania - while playing a fictional role, mockworthy Molvanians, they are indeed real people. Nor are the critics Molvania is submitted only to the orientalism monitors. In comments similar to those of officials of Kazakhstan Borat, in 2004, former British Minister for Europe Keith Vaz criticized the book because "it does not reflect some of the prejudices that are taking root [in Europe] ... sadly, some people might actually believe that the This country exists. "Ironically, too, the choice of fictional" everycountry "may in fact be interpreted as a more offensive, because it treats the people of the entire region or group as significantly different" they "-" I can not tell 'em apart, they all look alike. .."
Borat, class, urbanity, and
parallel drawn by John Tierney between Borat! and Molvania unquestionably natural, and therefore one that many, especially on the internet are made. Especially as the stories began to emerge about how Borat mock "Kazakh" home village in the movie was filmed in a poor Roma (Gypsy) village in Romania - where villagers have received as payment for his work on the feast of "pigs" and while Sacha Baron Cohen reportedly spent the night in a swanky mountain retreat Sinaia - the issue of class entered into a discussion about Borat!. It is difficult not to conclude that the issue of class can be funny in the movie because it has shown "culturally safe environment." It is poverty becomes broadly funny when it shows a relatively unknown cultural or unprotected ... were Kazakhs or "trailer trash" in the "red (neck) states," America
.Polish author of the blog "Beatroot" captured this well in a post on Molvania guide titled: "Why is it that only people" liberals "think that it's okay to laugh at these days are white working class and middle and Eastern Europe ?"
in Europe 'white trash'
Indeed, I would dare to speculate that the villagers in Borat! presented as the Roma or "gypsies" and not as a fictitious Kazakhs, there might be more outrage about this, just because the hierarchy of official recognition of discrimination that is prevalent in the cultural and political circles in the West. By showing a relatively-unknown Kazakhs, however, made it "easier" to laugh freely. I had an English tabloid press have not taken an interest in the village of Glod (meaning "mud"!) And will show clips from the movie villagers, it is possible that these fictitious Kazakhs would have been every bit as disadvantaged relative to the Amish Weird Al Yankovic: the reporters, "not one farmer we spoke to had ever been able to afford to travel to the nearest cinema, 20 miles away "!
Sun-baked mud, or when things get all Bollixed Up: Use Borat
ended cultural products can become a broker enters or is it for the things their creators could never even dream of, and may even disagree with the good poznat.Nekoliko years old I remember when television reports in major U.S. metropolitan area where real estate agents are under investigation for using the shorthand "Archie Bunker" to describe customers' discriminating tastes, "referring to the use of such language were somehow remaining within the limits of equal opportunity legislation. also, U.S. soldiers in Iraq have described their establishment satirical jingoistic ballad "America, ** ck it!" from Team America: World Police on their mission. So with Borat. This is undoubtedly the object of Jewish anti-defamation group, that does not matter that Baron Cohen is Jewish and seeks to emphasize the anti-Semitic prejudices, If his audience laugh with, rather than, Borat's anti-Semitism
London tabloid The Sun, known for his "doubts" about immigration and some would argue pandering to racist and xenophobic attitudes, searched his villa to get hay from Borat! in the context of the looming immigration debate associated with Romania and Bulgaria joining the European Union on 1 January 2007. The paper is delighted in quoting Gheorghiu Pascu, 46, as he said: "Borat's son-of-a-bitch who we look like savages. This is Transylvania, home of Dracula. If he ever returns we will put a stake in backside and impale him. Then i announced my b *** off. "Two weeks later, under the headline blaring," we are leaving Romania "is a picture of the village in a horse with the title" horse and cart ... Romanians are heading our way for a better life, slowly. "The article said the peasant, saying, "people will easily get around the limitations of working in the black market, or are self-employed," and ends with another promising, "Borat to watch out for. He might bump into some of us in London soon."
American stereotypes ... Now coming to theater near you:
Getting America's wrongs right, his right Wrong, wrong and its right
Borat! is filled with what might be called "nesting occidentalisms" or "nesting anti-Americanisms": that is, he creates and plays on foreign and domestic hierarchy of Americans, the good, bad and ugly. Chris Jones hits banality and tawdriness of Baron Cohen's itinerary in the film as follows:
In other words, Baron Cohen is the road so often traveled through the European theme park of American stereotypes (and some would have us believe only Americans view the world as an extension of Disneyland!) 'Othering "it turns out, does not recognize the class struggle or political correctness.
Baron Cohen certainly is - or at least wants to show - to be serious. So it should come to no surprise that the Americans, who come from the best in the film are religiously-observant elderly Jewish couple who run bed and breakfast and Afro-American slut (variously claimed to be an actress on the Internet ):
I think part of the movie shows the absurdity of holding any form of racial prejudice, whether it's hatred of African-Americans or Jews ... Borat essentially works as a tool. I was anti-Semitic, he lets people lower their guard and expose their own prejudice, whether it is anti-Semitism or the acceptance of anti-Semitism .... I remember when I was in university I studied history, and there was this major historian of the Third Reich, Ian Kershaw. His quote is: "The road to Auschwitz was paved with indifference." I know it's not very funny being a comedian talking about the Holocaust, but I think that's an interesting idea that not everyone in Germany had to be a raving anti-Semite. They just had to be indifferent.
, but this is really what we are talking about the ugly Americans Baron Cohen meets in Borat! For one thing, Chris Jones raises a good question: Did Baron Cohen really have to "cross the pond" to find such disturbing stereotypes
Because Cohen is now reportedly the highest paid comic in Britain - and because he styles himself as a radical - here's the movie he now needs to be done. Let's look at his Borat make some Cultural learning of his self-satisfied world. It would not be difficult for him to talk racist London pub. He could go to any British soccer game and find a cacophony of anti-gay slurs. Get an Irishman on the street chattering about Eastern European immigrants, and someone will put a foot in it. Borat could spend time with French gothics from the Dordogne. He would have us could learn about the way Europe is integrated (or not) its Muslim citizens. Not that the hookers in Hamburg? Let's see if they welcome the better class of German party.
As Andrew Mueller notes about the film:. "What astonishes about every American faces than their naivete, but their kindness, hospitality and extraordinary degree to which Borat has to inflame the situation to cause a reaction that has tried these antics in many other countries - brings Hooker to dinner, desecrating the anthem before an audience Rodeo - he'd spent the publicity campaign in the train ."
I would say that Baron Cohen to some extent misinterprets the reactions of those who "reveals". Is what he sees with the majority of Americans are being recorded on tape as well as what he says in the "upper-class Englishmen ... so keen to appear decent for a camera?" I do not think tako.Rezervat, omissions, consensual behavior of Americans Baron Cohen meets, I believe, was born of a desire not to offend guests, no matter how strange it is, not to speak or ask questions to a show one's ignorance. After all, the biggest faux pas you can make in today's globalized day and age, we are told, that is false or express ignorance of our interviewees culture. Do not be judgmental, just play along, go along to get along ...
This is the American socio-cultural laissez-faire-also known as American selfishness - at its best and worst case, a world where individual privacy can lead to absurd proportions, do not be asking neighbors about their wages or value your home, or does not interfere with the neighbor next door, even if the question sounds you hear during the night and indicates a physical or mental abuse. Indeed, a U.S. conflict with Borat! can be seen in the last episode in a long-running comedy series Seinfeld, where the main characters are four haul into court for failing to meet the recently passed "Good Samaritan" law and help people in distress, which are instead made fun of because of their weight - homage, intended or not, American selfishness
.Is it safe? ... Is It Safe?
"Is it safe? ... Is it safe?" no longer just something you hear at the dentist anymore. It is thought that crosses people's minds before, while or after they were laughing in the post-modern world. Perhaps the lesson here, however, that it all too seriously.
Americans should actually be grateful for this film: holding a mirror and tells us how some of the world review of us. As is often said in the past, many people who loved the United States to separate compartmentalized view of American foreign policy from the American people, as opinion polls indicate that the foreign party does not draw this distinction (though it may indeed be that the negative perception of the former affect the latter). Like it or not, Baron Cohen has proposed an effective foreign perceptions of U.S. and find enough Americans to play ugly stereotypes that expected of them brilliantly.
On the other hand, yes, Virginia, it is safe to laugh at Borat. Andrew Mueller explains why:
The reason that Borat is so liberating hoot is Baron-Cohen's view that nothing is funnier than what we are supposed to laugh - and, in the early 21st century, the pressure on us not to laugh at the backwardness and stupidity of foreigners was significant. We expected that serious people who want to execute cartoonists for drawing and stone women having sex - neither of which, as well as the ideas are dafter than Kazakh custom, described by Borat, a convincing gay people to wear blue hats.
should not cry too much for Kazakhstan (Moscow certainly does not). As one poster on the site debating whether Borat is good or bad publicity to Kazakhstan, said: "Without Borat, Kazakhstan is just another obscure Central Asian republic." Another said, Borat is portrayed as "naive, but it is not cruel or evil." Others suggest, Kazakhs could download a real shock that they now use the Borat character in the film market "real Kazakhstan." Professor Sean Roberts notes that, according GoogleTrends, Borat Kazakhstan has more than doubled the usual google hits for the lead and the height of the film Borat PR campaign.
All that remains then is the final plot device to kill Baron Cohen Borat, so that no one is upset više.Skromni suggestion: How about "Dallas", like the plot of Twister with the "Who shot Borat?" Is it the Americans, Kazakhs, Glod villagers? ... Why is that Baron Cohen is