[I'm clearing out my list of drafts -- posts I started but never finished. Here's a topic I took about a year ago and finally managed to finish.]
Yes, I watched Borat. I’m glad I didn’t listen to all the people who said it was a sign of the decay of civilization. I find it is a wonderful movie with insightful social commentary and profound lessons for Western society. While those who also watched Borat are wondering if I saw the same movie they did, let me try to make the case. First, if you haven’t seen the movie, throw out all you’ve heard and let my words reach you unfettered by the misplaced criticism. Contrary to popular opinion it is not simply a fratboy movie full of senseless bathroom humor. Think of the basic plot. Jewish comedian Sasha Baron Cohen pretends to be a naive, racist, third-world visitor from Kazakhstan in attempt to make light of unsuspecting Westerners. Surely, the idea has merit.
We take many of our Western values for granted: pluralism, tolerance, equality for races and sexes. We view the major civil rights issues to be making sure people have equal rights to health care, education, marriage, etc. Westerners typically see these as important, if not necessary, features of a society. However, Borat wants to challenge these and show that the non-Western cultures have to deal with much bigger problems than whether everyone gets equal access to health care. He puts his foreign customs and values up against our supposed tolerance to see just how much pluralism we can take. In the end, it is revealed that we really aren’t as tolerant as we think. Our tolerance only goes so far and it its limits are arbitrary.
I’ll focus primarily on one scene which I find most succinctly reveals what makes Borat a worthwhile film. In this scene, Borat is invited to a dinner party with wealthy suburbanites (which includes a minister) in Birmingham, AL. Here he behaves in all kinds of awkward ways that violate the hosts’ concept of propriety (kissing the men on the lips, mistaking a man who is retired as “retarded”), but priding themselves on being so multicultural and hospitable to those that are different, they merely smirk at his behavior. Borat asks if he can use the telephone and calls a black escort from an advertisement he picked up earlier and invites her to the house of his wealthy, white hosts. Later, he excuses himself to the restroom, and while gone, the hosts discuss how vast are the cultural differences but agree that “it wouldn’t take very much time for him to be Americanized.” Borat returns to the dinner table with his excrement in a plastic bag, asking where he should put it. This prompts the host to give him a lesson on bathroom hygiene. Finally, Lynelle, an overweight prostitute shows up at the door in a halter-top and short shorts. The pastor is the first one to leave when she shows up. The host begins to give various excuses as to why she can’t stay and when Borat asks if she can at least stay for dessert, the host calls the sheriff and chases them both out of her house. In the next scene, as they are riding in Borat’s van, Borat apologizes to Lynelle for the treatment she endured from his former hosts. The contrast between Borat’s generosity and kindness to those from all walks of life and the contrived pseudo-acceptance of the suburbanites is stark. And the viewer finds herself seeing more humanity and goodness in a man like Borat than in those of high society.
So much for tolerance and multiculturalism. It has its breaking point, but its limits are not based on well-thought principles. In scenario after scenario there’s an initial openness to Borat’s culture and values but many scenarios end with an arbitrary expression of offense that is simply a reaction rather than an expression of carefully crafted values.
Borat points out the hypocrisy of Western tolerance in other ways, also: put enough pressure on us and we gladly abandon our values. Another scene points out that just as easily as we accepted the so-called virtues of tolerance without careful thought or intention we can just as easily be swayed from it without much thought or intention. The scene below is not from the movie. Instead it is a clip from another Baron Cohen creation, the Ali G Show,where Borat occasionally appeared in a cameo.
I’m sure that if you had surveyed the opinion of the bar-goers toward Jews before Borat sang this number, you would’ve gotten something close to a standard, politically correct response of tolerance and openness to those of other races and cultures. Yet, by the end of a two-minute song he has them all shouting “Throw the Jew down the well!” Clearly many in our culture are easily swayed and take an ad hoc approach to values.
But we’re hypocrites and we’ve expunged intolerance from what we’ll tolerate in others, but we still tolerate in ourselves. Once again, the question is put on the table: does philosophical pluralism really work?
Lest we chalk up this racist response as the unfortunate expression of the culturally-deformed, unenlightened few who haven’t arrived at our level of public virtue, consider this clip of a Borat interview with a Cambridge University professor…
There is something ironic about a man saying that he has visited with some the most intelligent people in Britain as he stands on a litter-covered lawn and scenes of senseless behavior flash on the screen. Hopefully, you hear his sarcasm when he extols the wonder of government-funded education and declares to his countrymen: “We have lot of lesson to learn.”
The virtue of total tolerance is a farce. It is not possible to consistently hold it. Those who attempt to do so only open themselves for others (in this case Borat) to exploit this inconsistency.
I have shared my thoughts on Borat with some thoughtful people and I always receive the same response: “You’re reading into the movie. No one else sees what you see….the filmmakers were not out to make a thought-provoking exposé on the foolishness of Western values” (Actually, I’m paraphrasing. No one ever used the word “exposé”). My response is always two-fold. 1) It doesn’t matter if other people don’t see what I see. I’m sure that most people that watched Borat enjoyed it for the physical comedy and its shock-value, but most media affects us without our seeing how it works on us. Therein lies the power of media. Besides, others I’ve spoken to also see Borat the way I do. 2) Maybe the filmmakers weren’t intentionally trying to comment on contemporary Western values, but they did so even if by accident. Our ideas often have implications that we don’t perceive though others do. Still, what makes someone so certain that the filmmakers weren’t intending to reveal the absurdities of our culture? After all, Baron Cohen studied history at Cambridge and wrote his thesis on Jewish participation in the American Civil Rights movement of the 60’s.
Now it’s one thing to directly confront the absurdity of cultural tolerance, but it is another to mock it in such a subtle and clever way as Borat. This is what makes the movie so worthwhile. Maybe you find yourself being offended by it. Perhaps it has done its job, if only you will reflect on your reason for taking offense and consider whether your offense is based on an arbitrary standard. If so, you might have made great fodder for Borat.
Great post, John. I also really enjoyed this movie for its insightful criticisms, but found that everyone around me had a very superficial take on the film. I was even mildly rebuked by some who were offended that I did not see the need to walk out during the film. To these folk I have conceded that there are things in the film that are offensive, and that not everyone should see this film because of conscience. But they continued to be offended that my conscience did not agree with theirs.
But what is ironic is that some of the people who were offended by my opinion of the film admitted that they have sat through many other crude comedic films without feeling the same disgust, movies which, when measuring the redeeming value, have very little value at all. I have suspected that their willingness to sit through these other crude comedic films was based not on less offensiveness but on personal comedic taste, since one comment I repeatedly heard was that Borat was just not that funny.
Anyway, I’m glad someone else found value in the film.
Chase,
It’s good to hear from you. I have to confess being a little surprised that you agreed with my assessment of the movie. Not that I chalked you up to someone that would be highly offended but I did not anticipate your approval.
In my enthusiasm over the movie I neglected to point out that there are those parts of the movie that don’t seem to have any other function than shock value and attempting to disgust the audience (I’m sure you remember the hotel room scene). Values aside, there is reason enough for people to be sufficiently put off by these scenes since they simply turn the stomach. These scenes, in my judgment detracted from the film.
Your anecdotes on the inconsistency and (though you don’t use the word) hypocrisy of people on matters of film (and by extention, other forms of media) are similar to my experience. I think you are right that sometimes our greatest offense is to our tastes than it is to our conscience. If we personally find something funny or emotionally moving, or enticing, we are much more willing to set aside offense to our consciences. This tendency is present in all of us, I suppose, and I think this can be a positive thing in some cases. A person’s conscience isn’t always in the right and sometimes entertainment can open us to truth which we might not give a hearing otherwise.
I find it interesting that your anecdotes point out the very thing that the movie points out: people apply there values randomly and they can be bought. When we claim to have our morals offended, it is often our taste or our desire for convience that is really offended.
I must admit that my appreciation for Borat is not unrelated to the fact that I find it hilarious. Yet its humor is not the only reason I appreciate it. It is the fact that it is able to make a profound point in such a clever and humorous way that I appreciate it. Many people can be funny, and many can be clever and profound but it is a rare acheivement to find these together in the same medium (I enjoy the Seinfeld sitcom and some of George Carlin’s stand up for similar reasons).
In the first draft of the post I started to harp on the attitude of many people (not just Christians) toward film. The post was originally titled, “Why Borat and Knocked Up Are Better Movies than Princess Bride and Finding Neverland” The whole post would’ve been way too long. The point I was out to make was that we have these standards (some that are both personal and social) for what is acceptable to watch on screen (and granted, we’ll apply them arbitrarily) but the standards are often flawed from the beginning. Our objections are usually to profanity, nudity, and violence, but we are oblivious to movies that convey an unrealistic picture of love and romance or promote a relativistic ethic. I suspect that idealized romance in media has done as much to contribute to the break-up of marriages and families as pornography has (and certainly more so than onscreen nudity, profanity and violence). Yet doesn’t make it onto the radar of most Christian media consumers. Anyway, your comment has me wanting to write a post on this issue). Maybe it will be forthcoming in a few weeks.
It’s great to see someone else thinking through these issues too.
Thanks for the reflection, Frasier. For the sake of discussion, in the dinner scene, what do you make of the Pastor’s reaction to Lynelle? You rightly report him as being the first to leave the dinner table and excuse himself from the gathering. How do you view this act in relation to your comments on the absurdity of tolerance in western culture?
I remember my first impression of the Pastor in that scene and thinking to myself, “There’s a Pastor with some moral fortitude, fleeing anything that might ensnare him morally, or vocationally, as a pastor.” I considered him virtuous, although I can’t know his real reasons for leaving, but I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that he did not want to be associated with Lynelle because of her seductive attire.
The various readings of the film are no-doubt rich and laden with many things to make us reflect on culture. But let’s remember that the subjects of Cohen’s experiment were simply acting in accordance with their culture, of which we are all a part.
Dennis,
Lynelle’s attire could be called a lot of things, but seductive? Disgusting comes to mind. But even if it was seductive, the point is that his response to a prostitute is just the opposite of what Christ’s response was. Jesus ate meals with prostitutes and this guy refuses to. He never gave her a chance, as soon as she walked in he was out. Contrast that with Borat’s response which was not to treat Lynelle as a sexual object but to simply talk to her and get to know her. The pastor was the one who actually treated her like a sexual object. That was all he saw when he looked at her. I think his response should have been more like Christ’s response to the woman at the well in John 4. In this case, Borat acted more like Christ than this pastor did.
I thought Borat was funny but I saw the new Bruno film last night and nearly wet myself… go see it!
Now you also fill your mind with garbage.
You must not have understood the concept of having your mind and eye singularly focused.
Can you honestly glorify God while watching this vomit? (I watched it before becoming a Christian, and I’d hardly subject myself to this again because it has no place in a true Christian’s life)
Vain entertainment is not becoming of a Christian.