A friend asked me to ramble about Borat for an article he's writing, so share in the blabber...
I loved the movie, too. I thought about 1/3 of the humor did come from making fun of people from the former Soviet Union. As Americans, it's only natural for us to do this. After all, they were held up as a boogeyman for so many decades during the Cold War and now that they've fallen on their faces politically, economically, and socially, it's our natural reaction to mock them after they scared us for so long.
The remaining 2/3 of the movie, though, pokes fun squarely at Americans, and it couldn't do this if Cohen didn't play a Kazak who spews inappropriate and racist language.
The knee-jerk reaction to the anti-Semitic things he says is going to be that the actor himself is anti-Semitic. To the contrary, Cohen describes it as a "dramatic demonstration of how racism feeds on dumb conformity, as much as rabid bigotry," (quote from
http://movies.yahoo.com/mv/news/va/2006 ... 01000.html)
(For the purposes of what I'm discussing here, I'm going to ignore the information about him being Jewish. You can be black and hate blacks. You can be white and hate whites. You can be Jewish and hate Jews. I really don't think this is the case with Cohen.)
When he interviews the producer of the rodeo who tells him he needs to shave his mustache so he won't look like a terrorist, or the frat boy who believes that Jews control everything, it's pretty plain who the real racist in the scene is. I doubt this would be so easy to do if Cohen was just being himself instead of Borat.
He also does a great job of portraying how institutionalized racism sexism can be so deeply ingrained that it becomes part of one's normal belief system. Based on the fictional portrayal of Kazakhstan in the movie, it's understandable why Borat believes Jews lay eggs, or that women have smaller brains than men, the same way we believe plants need sunlight to grow.
Can one laugh at anti-Semitism, sexism, or other types of bigotry? Some people can, some people can't. Everyone's comedy threshold is different.
Is it right to laugh at anti-Semitism? I think so. Laughing at something is the most effective thing you can do to take away something or someone's power, and to mock people who think this way will only contribute to marginalizing them. Therefore, I think it's a good thing.
To this day, people still laugh at Ralph Kramden when he tells Alice, "One of these days, POW! Right in the kisser!" When you think about it, it's a man threatening to beat his wife. Are we laughing because he's going to break her nose or because he's such a small man that he has to physically threaten someone 1/8th of his size?
I realize I'm all over the place so I'll end with a joke and some questions:
Hitler walks into a bar with a German Shepherd. He announces to the bar, "I'm going to kill 90 Jews, and 10 musicians." The bartender asks, "What do you have against musicians?" Hitler turns to the dog and says, "See? I told you nobody cares about Jews."
What's funny about the joke? Is it the fact that Hitler is going to kill musicians? Is it that the bartender doesn't object to him killing Jews? Is it that Hitler is talking to a dog? Is there anything funny about the joke? Is there more sad than funny about the joke? Is it anti-Semitic? Is it anti-German, or is it just anti-Hitler?
Personally, I think it's funny, but I doubt most people would feel the same way.
