It's a clever jewish incitational mockumentary. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borat
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Who saw Borat?
by roflcopter 24 Replies latest jw friends
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Iforget
Ok so warn me now guys....I LOVE movies like this and laugh my ass off. I have a terrific sense of humor as well. BUT if he is taking shots at "retards" then I will have to pass. Our daughter has Down Syndrome and while I have never used that word, it offends me to my core. Is it a huge part of the movie?
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hemp lover
Borat is an anti-Semitic, racist, homophobic misogynist with a mentally disabled brother (not pictured) who he talks about in several scenes. In one dinner party scene, he misunderstands a man who says he's retired and that's where my quote came from. I apologize if what I quoted offended you. I don't refer to people as the "r" word either.
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Iforget
No apology needed. I just wanted to be sure it wasn't something that would be hard to take as a parent. Thanks for explaning though! I can't wait to see it.
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DanTheMan
Saw it, laughed my ass of at it, but then the following op/ed by David Brooks appears in today's paper and it makes me wonder if I'm an asshole for having enjoyed it. The "sycophantic reverence for his audience" phrase hit me. I agree with him that along with the unsuspecting but richly deserving red-state boobs that he mercilessly embarrasses, he could have done more to challenge the "educated class" that is going in droves to see his movie.
Low blows: U.S. culture afflicted with Borat-itisDAVID BROOKS
And so we enter the era of mass condescension. Thanks to the creativity of our cultural entrepreneurs, we enter a time when we can gather in large groups and look down at our mental, social and spiritual inferiors.
In retrospect, it’s easy to see how this moment crept up on us. There is American Idol, which allows the millions to watch Simon Cowell ridicule people who don’t realize how talentless they are. There is the middle segment of The Daily Show, during which correspondents sometimes go out and use postmodern interviewing techniques to humiliate rural goobers who think they were abducted by aliens or some such.
Then there is the rise of culture-war comedians whose jokes heap scorn on the sorts of people who are guaranteed not to be in the audience. ("Megachurches," Bill Maher joked recently on HBO, "are presided over by the same skeevy door-to-door Bible salesmen that we’ve always had, just in an age of better technology. But they’re selling the same thing: fear. Fear to keep you in line.")
One could list other precursors and signs of the times: network magazine shows that taught TV professionals to use the power of ambush and editing to dominate their non-media-savvy prey; the Jackass movies, which acclimated audiences to the mixture of suffering and laughter. But of course the crowning glory of the current moment is Borat, an explosively funny rube-baiting movie orchestrated by a hilarious bully.
The genius of Sacha Baron Cohen’s performance as Borat is his sycophantic reverence for his audience, his refusal to challenge the sacred cows of the educated bourgeoisie. Borat ridicules Pentecostals, gun owners, car dealers, hicks, humorless feminists, the Southern gentry, Southern frat boys and rodeo cowboys. A safer list is impossible to imagine.
Cohen understands that when you are telling socially insecure audiences they are superior to their fellow citizens there is no need to be subtle. He also understands that any hint of actually questioning the cultural suppositions of his ticket-buyers — say by ridiculing the pretensions of somebody at a Starbucks or a Whole Foods Market — would fatally mar the self-congratulatory aura of the enterprise.
Cohen also knows how to rig an unfair fight, and to then wring maximum humiliation and humor out of each situation. The core of his movie is that he and his audience know he is playing a role, and this gives him, and them, power over the less-sophisticated stooges who don’t. The world becomes divided between the club of those who are in on the joke and the excluded rubes who aren’t. The more tolerant the simpletons try to be toward Borat, the more he drags them into the realm of anti-Semitism and vileness. The more hospitable they try to be, the dumber they appear for not understanding the situation.
In a society as fluid as ours, snobbery is constantly changing form, and in the latest wave of condescension media, various strains come together. We Jews know all about Borat’s Jewish snobbery — based on the assumption that Middle America’s acceptance of Jews must be a mirage, and that underneath every Rotarian there must be a Cossack about to unleash a continental pogrom.
There’s also that distinct style of young person’s snobbery. Young people haven’t accomplished much yet, so they can only elevate themselves by endlessly celebrating their own superior sensibilities. Finally, there’s blue-America snobbery, as people on the coasts try to fathom those who would vote for George W. Bush. The only logical explanation is that they are racist, anti-Semitic idiots who can be blamelessly ridiculed.
I suspect this wave of condescension media will repel as many people as it thrills. But it does illustrate an interesting shift in the culture.
Eighty years ago, H.L. Mencken’s magazines, The Smart Set and The American Mercury, ridiculed exactly the same targets as today’s condescension mavens: evangelicals, Middle American boobs, etc. (I actually think today’s comedians are funnier than Mencken, though that may be a matter of taste.)
Then, the condescending Menckenites were a small, educated sect who were much less popular than the romantics who celebrated the Middle American common man in novels, movies and fanfares. Now, however, the Mencken sensibility is a mass phenomenon, found on networks and in multiplexes all across the country. We’ve democratized snobbery and turned it into a consumption item for the vast educated class. Popular culture has traveled from The Grapes of Wrath to Borat the magnificent. David Brooks writes for The New York Times.