Borat

Well, let's keep to the subject of being offensive.

I have a bunch of movies (and one extremely awesome concert!) I've meant to discuss since I returned home and I'm actually not even done with my Oxford blogging, though I have recently been waylayed by other things, such as party changes in the House (and sort of in the Senate, as Justin reminded me) and my own little impersonation of John Kerry. (I guess I also figured out that a few people are actually reading my blog. I wonder about that sometimes, and I'm curious if that type of tripping is similar at some level to the insecurities I feel in my social interactions. A major difference is that my blog is also in large part for me---in that I gain a very nontrivial benefit just from forcing myself to write stuff down regularly---and wondering whether anybody has read my posts when I don't see a comment for a while is a lot less stressful than wondering if not getting a response to an e-mail or two means I've done something wrong without realizing it. I just wish this kind of stress wouldn't make me lose my appetite for days at a time.)

Before I get to the movie that I'll discuss in this post (which is actually the most recent one I've seen), I wanted to interject one more thing. I watched an episode of Star Trek: TNG tonight for the first time in quite a while. (I started by wanting something on tv while I ate in the hopes that I would eat more than a few mouthfuls. Sadly, that didn't work. By the way, this is one reason I try to grab others to go to dinner and especially do so in a "bursty" manner---if I feel a certain way, I need to have others sharing a meal with me to even get myself to eat. For some reason, though, I don't have this problem when it comes to consuming coffee.) This episode, which I may have seen years ago but didn't actually remember at all, is notable in that it's the one in which the Borg is first introduced (I suppose 'first introduced' is redundant). I was intrigued enough at the beginning to watch the whole thing and postpone reading the article on my plate until later in the evening. (I actually did some work tonight. I'm extremely "dedicated.")

Anyway, back to the movies...

When I first saw the trailer for Borat, I was intrigued. I figured the movie would either be really good or really bad, but it looked interesting and I wanted to see it. Then the movie came out and while the articles I read warned about one particular gross-out scene (and with good reason, I'll add!!!!), the reviews were positively glowing. The movie also got a very high score on IMDB and Lemming heard positive reviews from individuals. So I thought I was in for a satirical treat. I let my expectations get really high.

OK, so what happened? Well, some idea of what I'm about to write can be predicted easily enough by a combination of knowledge about me and the Borat wikipedia entry. (Lemming seemed to react in a similar manner to me but not as strongly.) Let me first say that there are times when the movie nails things right on the head the way I was expecting. In these moments, "Borat" (Sacha Baron Cohen) is just talking and getting other people to admit to very unpolitically correct beliefs---such as executing homosexuals, doing bad things to Jewish people, talking about the confederate flag as part of their "heritage", etc. Some of people's beliefs that are revealed (and we all know that they're there, but it's still rather different to see how little it takes for them to come to the surface and to see people talk matter-of-factly about such disgusting beliefs) really drive the social criticism home, and many of these partial scenes are done in a very humerous manner. (I really liked the one with Congressman Bob Barr, for instance. That was priceless!)

Now, most of the film was done with unwitting participants, so the major problem for me arose when "Borat" starts doing things that cause people damage. That's just not cool at all. In general, I'm really hard to offend in the sense that in the vector space of words and deeds, I have very few basis vectors along which I am offended. However, when somebody does an action that has a nonzero inner productive with one of these vectors, I get really offended almost immediately. (Or, if you want me to be less nerdy, I have very few buttons but when one of them is pushed, I have a tendency to go from "calm" [or whatever I possess that passes for calm] to berzerk almost immediately.) In one seen, "Borat" destroys the property in an antique shop. Most of the stuff in there might be complete garbage, but there was absolutely no need for this. And it doesn't even further the points about US attitudes that I thought he was trying to convey! It's acting like an ass for the sake of acting like and ass and causing problems for other people. In another scene, he is making a fool of himself on TV. In the movie, it may not have seemed horrible, but then I read on the wikipedia entry how the person who booked him got fired over that. This is doing serious damage to somebody's life, and that's just not acceptable! (That person has sued. Actually, I just read a few minutes ago that the frat boys have also sued, although that part didn't bother me.)

The aspect on which I believe Lemming and I differ is the scenes in which "Borat" and "Azamat" were, um, "enjoying" each other's company. I was just grossed out by that.

It may seem like I just totally trashed this movie. I don't think it's without value and when I left the theatre, I told Lemming that if I had to judge both the positive (there were some shining moments, as I mentioned) and negative (there were a lot of "anti-moments"). I wasn't in a great mood before I saw the movie and this is the type of movie that after seeing malicious acts against unwitting people in the name of entertainment actually put me in a worse mood than before I saw the movie. Also, as I find out more and more behind some aspects of the movie, the taste in my mouth just gets worse and worse. I was going through my mental list of friends briefly trying to think if there was anybody (not counting those who already saw the movie) who I think would actually enjoy the movie and not just be utterly pissed off by certain things in it, and nobody came to mind. (I was thinking at first that there might be a subset of people among my peeps for whom I could be confident that this would be a great movie and that I wouldn't have to "worry" about them getting offended by it. I couldn't think of a single person, and then I realized that I'm really glad that I couldn't think of a single such person among my friends.)

Let me summarize. The Aristocrats, considered by many to be utterly offensive, was brilliant! Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic, also considered by many to be extremely offensive, was brilliant! Borat, although it has several really great moments (maybe we should watch the 25 minute version?), really leaves a sour taste in my mouth because of other cirumstances behind the movie and it's really hard for "satire" (is it fair to call this satire?) to truly make me react that way. (I typically love satire---especially the extremely harsh variety.) The major difference between this and things other people find offensive: People were hurt.