A Second Thought on Borat

While I will not recant my recommendation of the film, because I still think it is by turns funny and intelligent (while also at times overly vulgar), something bugged me earlier this week (or last week, I forget which, the days all run together) and I aim to speak on it.

In the film, the one thing that makes it all palatable is that we know the interviewees/subjects are not in on the joke, so it is funny as a comedy of manners; everyone in America (outside of New York, I guess) is too polite to tell Borat that he is a vile human being because we assume Kazakhstan (or any "-stan" suffixed country for that matter) produces naught but bigots. The anti-Semitism, unfamiliarity with toilets, misogyny and other crassness are excused by those in the film because they are under the impression he doesn't know any better, and we in the audience laugh because we get the joke (I hope). Two grown men get into a hotel elevator buck nekkid and no one says a word; we laugh because we expect someone to say something; maybe a "Get the #%&* off this elevator naked!, perhaps the softer, "Where are you clothes?". Them not saying anything is a classic example of comedy of manners.

What bothered me was seeing "Borat" the character on Jay Leno. In that setting, there is no joke on anyone. Everyone there knows it's an act, and since there is no one playing it straight other than this character, his routine lacks the key ingredient necessary to propel it toward being real comedy. In that situation, his barbs come across as meanness and the laughter is more of a tacit approval of what he says rather than laughing at a joke, because in the comedy of manners, the joke is the affectations of those being pranked. I guess on some level, the fact that calling Madonna a transvestite is met with laughter instead of, I don't know, not laughing, could be seen as the audience carrying forward the idea that they, too, are too afraid to call him out, even when they know it's a ruse.

So, I guess the question is, at this point, in the talk show setting with Borat, what is the joke? Are we at to sit at home laughing at the fact that this audience still laughs at this reprehensible character even when they know it's a gag, or do we laugh because we think it is genuinely funny to tell Martha Stewart she should be in her cage or pulling her plow?

That's what bugged me, I think on some level, we are the joke and either we don't realize it or we are in a state of denial.