Borat and the Targets of Cinematic Comedy

Elliott Oring
California State University, Los Angeles

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August 27, 2008 from http://www.foxstore.com/ detail.html?item=2782

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006) is a film that garnered much attention and earned a great deal of money. It also attracted considerable criticism for its insensitivity to and exploitation of a variety of individuals and groups in the realization of its comic vision. The following comments are directed to questions about the way the individuals and groups—the targets—in the film are framed.

It is possible to divide the targets in the film into two general categories: those that are explicitly commented upon in the film, and those that are not, but who are targets by virtue of the situations into which they are put and the things that they are induced to do and say. Social groups constitute the first set of targets and include—in an approximate order of the salience of the invective against them—Jews, women, Uzbeks, and gypsies. All of these are referred to by Borat in some explicit way and are necessarily framed by a perception of his character. Borat is portrayed as primitive, clueless, crude, brazen, incestuous, and a bit of a social climber. Consequently, his comments on Jews, women, Uzbeks, and gypsies are discountable given the nature of their source. Furthermore, Borat’s remarks are self-framing; they beggar belief on the part of modern audiences. Even the most rabid anti-Semites and misogynists would not believe that Jews turn themselves into cockroaches or that the mass of a woman’s brain is the same as that of a squirrel. Finally, the film Borat is framed as comedy. The advertising and reviews all proclaimed it. No one who went to see it was under the misapprehension that they were seeing a documentary. The comedy frame indicates that what is presented cannot simply be taken at face value.

It is appropriate that the film is bracketed by Borat’s attempt to learn and use “NOT” jokes. He attempts to learn to produce one from the humor coach toward the beginning of the film—although he never fully succeeds—and he finally uses it appropriately in reference to Pamela Anderson at the end of the film as he is being forcibly subdued by security personnel after attacking her at her book signing: “I am not attracted to you anymore—NOT.” All the negative and positive declarations about particular ethnic groups in the movie are, in a sense, variations on one big NOT joke. And like the NOT joke, they all undo themselves.

The other targets in the film are individuals who are put in uncomfortable situations as result of Borat’s speech and behavior. Much of this humor might be described as practical joking which is “a competitive play activity in which only one of the two opposing sides is consciously aware of the fact that a state of play is occurring…that is, until the unknowing side is made to seem foolish or is caused some physical and/or mental discomfort” (Tallman 1974:260). In this regard, Borat spares no one, neither New York pedestrians, driving instructors, television news people, humor coaches, congressmen, rodeo managers, bed-and-breakfast owners, etiquette coaches, dining society members, gun salesmen, car salesman, mortgage brokers, fraternity boys, nor Pentecostals. Practical joking is often, but not always, an in-group activity. Even within an in-group, it can cause some pain and discomfiture. When it is perpetrated on strangers and made public to an audience of millions, it can prove particularly embarrassing.

This is the problem in Baron Cohen’s work. He uses ordinary people who are unaware that they are being tricked, and who appear in a film whose purpose they do not understand. Audiences are likely to accept such tricks when they are played on public figures. They may be less accepting when they are played on ordinary folk. Nevertheless, a good number of Borat’s victims seem to have behaved quite well: the driving instructor, the humor coach, the etiquette coach, the bed-and-breakfast owners, television newscasters, and Pentecostals. The dining-society members are extremely hospitable even if they seem too ready to believe that someone could be as backward as Borat and that all he needed was to be “Americanized” a bit. Only the New Yorkers, the rodeo manager, and the frat boys express their aggression and prejudices and condemn themselves. The car and gun salesmen fail to respond to Borat’s gambit of wanting to know how capable the weapon or vehicle in q uestion might be for killing a Jew or Gypsy, but reflection might suggest that they might have felt that either they did not properly understand him or were not about to get in a confrontation with him over his prejudices.

Those individuals who sued the production company claimed that they were personally humiliated or their livelihoods suffered. The basis of this humiliation and damage depended on their behaving as themselves in their everyday personas. They were not acting parts. They were participants in a scenario about which they had not fully been advised. However, the largest of the lawsuits—some $30 million dollars—was filed by the residents of Glod, the Romanian village that was portrayed as Borat’s Kazakh village of Kuzcek. Like the other “victims” of this film, the villagers claim they were lied to about the true nature of the work. The also claim that they were humiliated on “ethnic grounds.” The village, it seems, is overwhelmingly Roma. In addition to monetary compensation, they wanted changes made to the opening of the film as well as a formal apology. Their lawyer, Edward D. Fagan, stated, the film was only funny when it made Americans look like idiots, not “when it makes fun of underprivileged people and their misery and ethnic background” (Pancevski 2006).

It is doubtful that more than a very few people viewing the film recognized either the real ethnic identity of Borat’s mythical home village or even the country of origin of that village. The village would have remained anonymous were it not for a small acknowledgement in the final credits of the film. In fact, the suit has only called attention to their identity and exacerbated their grievance. What is particularly interesting about the suit is that the villagers of Glod—unlike the other victims of Borat’s joking—played a part in the film. They were not playing themselves but Kazakh villagers. Attorney Fagan complained that, “Mr. Cohen makes a great point about anti-Semitism in his film. But as Jews do not have horns, Roma are not rapists and prostitutes” (Pancevski 2006). Exactly so! As Jews do not have horns, so the villagers of Glod are not rapists and prostitutes. What members of the viewing audience would fail to grasp this basic point? Fagan’s claim that it is the Roma who are demeaned in the film—rather than fictional Kazakh villagers—implies that Glod has to be defended from the charges that it has a town rapist, that the town welder is also an abortionist, that the oldest woman in the village is forty-three years of age, that the village conducts an annual running of the Jew, and that the village is home to the number four prostitute in all…Romania?

The criticisms and suits reflect a challenge to the humorous frame of the film itself. When humor is evaluated within the frame, it is evaluated for its funniness. The frame is broken when it is evaluated for its seemliness. Some statement, behavior, or image within the film is judged on moral grounds. A moral claim might also be leveled against something associated with the humorous expression; for example, workers in a film comedy were underpaid, or the revenues of a joke book were being directed to some malevolent end. A complaint can even be made that a comedy does not apportion its comic invective equitably (Saunders 2006). In the above circumstances, the humor is no longer humor but is transformed into seriousness (Emerson 1969). Statements within a comedy are assessed for their moral rectitude, and are found wanting for the injuries they are claimed to inflict or for their overall lack of sensitivity and compassion . George Saunders, writing in the New Yorker, invoked the images of the one-armed old man from the village of Kuzcek/Glod weeping “in his room at the memory of being tricked into wearing a sex toy on his arm,” and the woman at the dining-society dinner—whom Borat did not think so attractive—“crying quietly so as not to alarm the kids” because she might have suffered from feelings of unattractiveness and inferiority all her life (Saunders 2006). This kind of moral objection will always be able to challenge a humorous frame, but it is difficult to tell who is manipulating the unsuspecting characters in the film more: the moviemaker or the outraged commentator.

Works Cited

Emerson, Joan. 1969. Negotiating the Serious Import of Humor. Sociometry 32(1969):161-189.

Pancevski, Bojan. 2006. Villagers to Sue Borat. Los Angeles Times, 20 November, Home Edition, Part E, p. 1.

Saunders, George. 2006 (4 December). “Borat”: The Memo. The New Yorker, p. 57.

Tallman, Richard S. 1974. A Generic Approach to the Practical Joke. Southern Folklore Quarterly 38:259-274.

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