Borat's Coded Message: Pogroms Could Happen Here
The U.S. portrait Borat offers is of an ignorant redneck land pulsating with unexamined prejudice. A crowd at a rodeo cheer when Borat gives a speech about killing every woman and child in Iraq. College students who pick him up hitchhiking are pleased to talk about the power of Jews in America. His image of Christians at a revival meeting—crazies. And into this world comes Borat, from a village in eastern Europe, not far from the old Pale of Settlement, talking about Jews and money. When he shows us his village's annual festival of the Running of the Jew, culminating in the destruction of the Jew egg, the Jew baby, the American audience you're sitting with is laughing.
It felt to me like a test. Borat was saying, Watch, I will bring virulent anti-Semitism from eastern Europe to the liberal utopia, and people here will eat it up. These ignorant people too can turn into cossacks under the right circumstances.
I don't agree with Borat on this. I think America is too liberal, too diverse and too loving of its diversity, to fall for such a thing. But I got a chill alright.
The segment quoted below is from Steve Sailer's blog isteve.com--which quotes also from Steve's review in The American Conservative. Steve views the movie as an update on the Polish joke stereotype of slow-witted goyim popularized by Henry Youngman et al, several generations ago. Not sure if he's right, but it's a perspective which supplements Phil's. --Scott McConnell
"Borat" and the witch hunt for inappropriate remarks: From my upcoming review in The American Conservative:
"Borat," we are advised by film critics, is an Important Message Movie because it portrays Kazakhs -- and Red State Americans -- as anti-Semites... Manohla Dargis, movie critic for the New York Times, assures us the semi-scripted movie "will freeze your blood," exposing hidden anti-Semitism when Borat says something casually anti-Semitic to an American Southerner who fails to gasp with appropriate horror or to immediately perform a citizen's arrest and bundle the visitor off to a cultural sensitivity re-education camp. In truth, Borat must have struck most Americans not in on the joke as a harmless boob or a dangerous lunatic. In either case, humoring him would be the sanest strategy for getting him to go away.
And here's an essay that methodically works through just about every incident in the movie where Borat interacts with (presumably) real Americans:
Movie Review: Borat Makes America Look Good
Written by Al Barger
Here, I want to zero in on just one specific aspect: How the unwitting Americans came out. What I saw on the screen doesn't seem to quite jibe with what I'm reading in many stories about it. I keep reading that Cohen made fools of the Americans, setting them up to expose their dark sides, their racism and homophobia, etc. For example, Entertainment Weekly says "the people Borat talks to become the symbolic heart of America - a place where intolerance is worn, increasingly, with pride." But that's mostly not what actually showed up on the screen, by my best instant analysis...
But in the actual practice, the Americans he tricked into being in his film mostly acquitted themselves very well. None of these Americans seemed malicious or vicious, or even hateful. They were all pretty nice, and very open hearted. [More]
Sacha Baron Cohen's film crew shot so many hours of footage as they traveled across America that they even got a clip of a rodeo horse with a rider carrying an American flag falling down by accident (how often does that happen?), yet they weren't able to come up with much in the way of the red meat bigotry that so many film critics were so desperately hoping to see that they simply imagined it was there.
As for the most notorious Borat segment from the old Ali G show, when he gets some members of an audience in a country-western bar to sing along with the purported Kazakh song "Throw the Jew Down the Well," a clip which has been the subject of countless thumbsucking essays about the Meaning of It All, such as this one by Ron Rosenbaum in Slate, a participant in the Slate "Fray" responded:
Regarding the enthusiastic redneck responses to Borat's Jew-well-throwing songs--don't read too much into it. It's at least partly a product of editing. This is not to so that the sing-along barflies were not racist--hell, they probably were--but part of the genius of the Borat character originates in the editing room. It's not like he just walked out there, launched into a Jew-hating song out of nowhere, and the latently anti-semitic crowds joined right in. There's an article from the local AZ paper floating around the interweb somewhere, interviewing one of the bar patrons caught on camera singing along, who explained that, contrary to the way it looks in the edited clip, Borat had warmed the crowd up for some time, was pretty clearly doing a comedy routine, and had sung a number of pre-Jew verses about throwing your mother down the well, throwing your sister down the well, etc.
I haven't been able to find the original article to confirm this, but it certainly sounds more plausible than the conventional wisdom about the clip.
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1. Borat spoke Hebrew in the movie. Have you noticed it?
2. Surprise. Nobobody left the theatre, while I was disgusted by Borat.
3. The innocent candid camera victims were boring.
4. This movie was poor. It had no message.
5. The intelligent ones did not make into the misfortunate Borat.
6. Sacha Baron Cohen will have to retire or learn a new job.
He is a poor comedian. Even worse than Seinfeld and Kramer.
In the unique tolerant America, the ball is in the court of the many ultra-religious Jews and the other sentimentally blind Jewish people. Their are carrying a culpability, if the good America is also turning toward antisemitism. The selfmade Jewish victims should be stopped in their negative activity. Being the stone-age Jews.
Let us have this universal human chain of decency, and even the certain some poor losing outsider Jews will be cured from their ugly Jewishness.
if porgoms could happen hear the right wing jews are oblivious to it. they are almost willing it to happen.
Steve:
I bet some of your best friends are Jewish, right.
And litle Phil, have no fear, their will always be a need for a judenrat. If I ever saw a role for you that's it.
It's nice to see we're viewed as willing executioners...thanks
Sascha Cohen is an Orthodox Jew who doesn't even answer the phone on Saturday. In other words, he is a religious fundamentalist.
It's probably very easy for him to skewer the dumb bigoted goyim. I'd have liked the film more if he also made fun of the crazy hasidim who adorn our NY landcape, the ones who insist that buses in Rockland County be segregated (so women won't go near men) who have their wine boiled (yayin m'vooshal) if a gentile is going to be serving it.
Cohen thinks rightwing fundamentalist goyim are bigoted fascist throwbacks. They are. And their Jewish counterparts are no better.
First of all the chances of America turning into Kishniev 1905 are negligible.
The American people are intrinsically good people and recognize who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. And the founding fathers set up a brilliant system of government that has proven it's durability. Not bad for a bunch of white guys. Secondly, if it ever comes to pass Jews are going to be a lot safer in Texas than they would ever be in Berkely. Lastly, little Phil is one of the principle advocates of the destruction of Israel and the deaths of all the Jews there. So, in the end why does he care. Why little philly do you care if Jews are under the gun? Is it that deep down you know that to your pals at the ISM and other of that ilk your really just another jewboy kike.
Amazing how so many pundits are desperately trying to re-invent Cohen into a visionary watchdog. In fact he is a seething elitist religionist-racist who insults everyone except his own. Cohen's 'Borat' embodies the true image that all outsiders have for this orhtodox elitist - everyone else is clumsy, ignorant, and ready to rampage against the Jews. Phils post is further proof of this dismal mindset.
Hey John:
I didn't know you were such an expert on orthodox Judaism. Why I bet some of your best friends are Jewish. And your not anti-semitic, your just anti -zionist. Isn't that the mantra?
When Phil says the movie is "filled with anti-semitic humor," what is he referring to? Surely not scenes like the bar room sing-along? That was making fun of the(gentile) redneck patrons, not Jews. Jews are not the butt of a single joke in that film.
Has Mr. Weiss lost his usual ability to look beneath the surface of things?
Too bad Borat didn't stop in Crown Heights (or Postville, Iowa for that matter). Now THAT would have been funny.
So Bill Pearlman wants to say that anyone insulted by the crude and deameaning Cohen 'Borat' is anti-semitic. Sorry bill - doesn't work anymore - not stunned into silence by your wacko charge - borat is an orthodix elitist who percieves all others as ignorant, rubes suited for the butt of his crude jokes. Should't you be addressing the problem that this racist Cohen is creating?
Hey John, define orthodox elitist, you don't have any conecption of othodox Judaism and Cohen isn't one anyway. Second, and no I don't think everybod hates us, but I think you do. Tell me where I'm wrong
Pearlman;
You're wrong - you have no idea what I think. This discussion - which you seem hell-bent on avoiding - is about Cohen - who - and you aren't capable of understanding it - is the one who is attacking everyone. I won't talk to you - becuase I believe you have no grip on reality other than a very strange and sick world-view. Cohen made the insulting film attacking so many good people. He's the hater - your his apologist - so yes, you're part of the problem with 'Borat' by your own choice and admission.
Your all pretty amusing. Its just a comedy. Chill out and dont read too much into it, which is my recommendation to the author of the above article. Cohen made the movie as a comedy, a joke, to make people laugh. It worked for me, and clearly many other people as it did very well at the box office. Dont turn this into an anti or pro Jewish topic - its not! Its just a funny movie.