In Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, one of the more benign offenses committed by the Kazakh television reporter of the title is driving the wrong way down a one-way street. Yet it’s probably the best metaphor for the movie. As the fictional Borat, British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen gleefully goes against the grain – culturally, socially, politically – while capturing the cringe-worthy results on camera.
Cohen travels across America as the boorish Borat, interviewing real people in an attempt to get them to reveal their own boorishness. This is ridicule humor, and its success entirely depends on how much the person being ridiculed deserves it.
For the most part, Cohen finds worthy victims: a Tennessean who feels comfortable enough with Borat’s bigotry to launch into a tirade worthy of Mel Gibson; a Hummer dealer who doesn’t question Borat’s request for a vehicle that could easily run over a person; an entire rodeo audience that hardly balks at a Borat speech in which he praises George W. Bush’s effort to kill the “mothers and children” of terrorists.
The latter scene, in which Borat ends his speech with a mangled version of the national anthem, gives you a sense of Cohen’s commitment to his comedy, often at the expense of his own safety (the cowboys grow surly when they finally suspect a hoax).
According to the press notes, Cohen’s dedication also led him to remain in character throughout the making of the movie. He would switch back and forth between Borat and Cohen during production meetings, a move that recalls the schizophrenic performances of Andy Kaufman as Tony Clifton.
Other touches – such as the sprawling, nude and all-too-hairy wrestling match between Borat and his swarthy producer (actor Ken Davitian) – bring to mind the id-driven insanity of Tom Green.
Yet more than Green – and even more than a legend such as Kaufman – Cohen is after something specific with his brand of anarchy (in that vein he’s similar to Trey Parker and Matt Stone of “South Park”). He wants to expose the intolerance that lies right under our noses.
And so a painfully polite Southern society dinner turns ugly when Borat invites a black prostitute to accompany him. Later, the hitchhiking Borat gets picked up by an RV full of frat boys who reveal the scariest streak of misogyny since the last slasher flick.
Through it all, your laughter carries a tinge of horror – you can’t believe these people are saying this stuff on camera (all of the participants signed a vague waiver beforehand). Anyone who thinks intolerance has subsided in America will find that it has only moved behind closed doors – doors Cohen diabolically opens.
Cohen isn’t always as outrageous as he seems – that prostitute, for instance, is played by comedian Luenell Campbell, even though the end credits slyly refer to her only as Luenell. In other words, there is more artifice at work here than we first realize, which somewhat undermines Cohen’s mission to reveal reality’s absurd underbelly. Yet even so, no other current comedian is performing such a radical high-wire act (and it’s an ongoing one, as Cohen has refused to do publicity for the movie as anyone but Borat).
Cohen has already proven his mainstream comedic chops – he voiced the maniacal lemur king in Madagascar and squared off against Will Ferrell in Talladega Nights – but this is something different. Without regard to street signs or any other common courtesies, he takes everyone in the audience barreling down that one-way street.
