Borat

May as well talk about what everyone else is. Just when the Rick James' quotes were dying out Borat has come along giving us all a new gem to cherrish for the next year. "A very nice."

Let me say this: I love dark humor. There are shows that touch on the very issues Borat attempts to that suceed, and that I love, but how does Borat measure up? Not well.

The entire film is flawed from the begining. Borat is a fictional news reporter from Kazakhstan who is sexist, racist, and clueless. This is when some some questions begin to arise. I watch on and start to ask myself, "is this really satire?" Satire was used to describe the film in the dozens of positive reviews posted across the globe. Every critic laudes it's use of satire, calling it genious, the funniest movie ever made. Not.

What is satirical about it? The fact that he is exposing the stereotypes of a culture we have no knowledge of? Let me ask: What is a typical person from Kazakhstan like? The only person that I recognize from Kazakhstan is Borat, this fictional character. He is creating stereotypes not satarizing existing ones and in doing so crosses the line from satire to racism.

Borat sets out to travel America to understand the culture, with hopes of bringing it back to Kazakhstan to improve there country. Mr. Cohen (the actor)'s real goal, however, is to use this character to expose America, to call them on their racism towards Muslims, Jews, homosexuals and anyone else that might warrant a laugh from a sold out crowd of morons.

It's also hypocritical.

Was this film made so that our eyes would be opened to things we hadn't seen, or things we didn't know about, such as racism amongst college students? Were we to become enraged enough that we wanted to get up and do something like traditional satire intended, or are we meant to just sit and laugh, only to forget the moment the theatre's closed.

Example:
The village that a part of the film was shot in was a poor peasant village in Russia filled with people who were falsley promised a documentary about their country in exchange for their services by producers. They were paid a feeble 3 dollars a day. In the film these people, these poor peasants who trusted the producers enough to allow them to film in their village were portrayed as retraded, incestuous, racist, sexist, monsters.

But wait? I thought this type of behavior is the thing that satire works towards destroying rather then creating?

I'll admit, parts were funny. We see the inside of a Church and how mad the people inside are. We see some college frat boys making fools of themselves, talking about slavery and women. There is a cowboy that supports Iraq (whoa, i've never seen this done before.) But all in all, the film fails due to the fact that sadly the makers of the film don't hold their own morals higher then the people whom they seem so quick to critisize.