Student Publications
University of Houston
151C Communications Bldg
Houston, TX 77204-4015
713.743.5350

©1991-2007
Student Publications,
All rights reserved.

Last modified:

Contact:
ktruitt@uh.edu

Life & Arts

Borat finds American identity

by AUSTIN HAVICAN
The Daily Cougar

Sacha Baron Cohen's character Borat shocked American audiences into hysterical laughter in Borat!: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. Borat is one of Cohen's three personas from Da Ali G Show, and the second to have a feature-length film.

As far as plot is concerned, Borat is a Kazakh television news reporter who is selected by the government to travel to the United States (the greatest country in the world, ruled by "Premier Bush") to take notes and learn what makes America a superpower. 

However, after watching an episode of Baywatch, Borat decides to make the drive to California and try to marry Pamela Anderson.

But as fans of the BBC and HBO series are fully aware, Cohen doesn't concern himself or his characters with plot. He is instead interested in quick-paced interviews and his interviewees' reactions. The exchanges are patched together with narration and scenes of Borat and his director driving cross-country in a used ice-cream truck. 

Because of the preconceptions people have about Borat's nationality and education, he is able to easily manipulate their assumptions to his favor, and that manipulation is hilarious.z

In one of the most appalling scenes of the film, rodeo organizer Bobby Rowe preps Borat for his national anthem performance with a few words of advice: "Why don't you shave that moustache off so you're not so conspicuous?" By conspicuous, he of course means that Borat looks like a terrorist. 

The segment becomes hysterically frightening when the crowd roars applause at Borat's wish that "Bush drink the blood of every man, woman and child in Iraq."

That's not to say the whole film is a political attack; slapstick humor and nudity frequently lighten the mood, and the nude hotel chase scene is guaranteed infamy in its escalating ridiculousness.

Besides providing one of the best laughs in a movie theater in a long time, Borat takes his pseudo-guerilla journalism to another, more interesting level. The interview segments become mini-documentaries on the hospitality and acceptance of American subcultures; interviewees with degrees and high positions dismiss him and treat him almost completely without respect, while the minority groups of homosexuals and black youth embrace him without hesitation.

Borat not only shows us how far someone with a camera will go to get a laugh, but also how much can be revealed about the ignorant and stubborn American public; gender rights, respect and equality continue to lag, and it takes the satire of a Jewish Briton to show us who we still are.

Send comments to dcshobiz@mail.uh.edu