Iowa Martins in Albania

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Borat is a Jerk

The Kazaks have nothing to worry about when it comes to Borat. This country has done itself a disservice by paying attention to the movie. The show is truly disgusting. The other people in the movie did not look silly or unintelligent; Cohen was the dimwitted totally senseless part of the movie.
The parts of the movie when he interacted with people were bad, but the interaction with his “cameraman/assistant” were even worse.. They spoke to each other in a language that was not any language I had ever heard—not Russian, not Kazakh.
Because it is human nature to have the greatest objections to observations that are true, but uncomfortable to admit, I have considered the true origin of my strong distaste for the film. My biggest problems with the film are not the observations he makes about life in the US. I’m sure there are people who would like to lynch all the homosexuals in the country, and I’m a person would not have to look very long to find a few college students whose only goal is to see how many ways they can get drunk. I don’t think, however, I would be able to find someone who would believe that another human being would expect the owner of a house to clean their body after expelling bodily waste—and no one would believe that anywhere on earth people keep feces in a plastic bag and bring it to the dinner table.
I read one review of Cohen as having a “comic genius” not seen in a long time. It seems to me that the only people who might find this movie funny are 5th grade boys who would see the atrociousness as a dramatization of their own curious ideas about the world. Cohen when he runs naked after his naked friend through a hotel, into an elevator, and into a wedding party, may be playing out some kind of juvenile fantasy. I would describe most of the humor as nauseatingly repulsive, but those words are not bad enough. One reviewer said that not since Alexis De Toucville wrote about life in the US has someone giving such a true to life critical evaluation of the American character. I would say that rather than a scholarly diplomat, Cohen shows himself as more of a perverted prankster.

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