Sacha Baron Cohen comes clean about Borat in Rolling Stone magazine
by Carmen Van Kerckhove
The latest issue of Rolling Stone includes an interview with Sacha Baron Cohen — the only interview he’s done out of character. It’s our first time hearing — in his own words — what he was trying to accomplish with Borat. Here are some excerpts from the partial story they’ve posted online here:
When Baron Cohen first heard that the Kazakh government was thinking of suing him and placing a full-page ad promoting the country in The New York Times, he was editing his movie in Los Angeles. His reaction: “I was surprised, because I always had faith in the audience that they would realize that this was a fictitious country and the mere purpose of it was to allow people to bring out their own prejudices. And the reason we chose Kazakhstan was because it was a country that no one had heard anything about, so we could essentially play on stereotypes they might have about this ex-Soviet backwater. The joke is not on Kazakhstan. I think the joke is on people who can believe that the Kazakhstan that I describe can exist — who believe that there’s a country where homosexuals wear blue hats and the women live in cages and they drink fermented horse urine and the age of consent has been raised to nine years old.”…
“I think part of the movie shows the absurdity of holding any form of racial prejudice, whether it’s hatred of African-Americans or of Jews,” Baron Cohen says…
“Borat essentially works as a tool,” Baron Cohen says. “By himself being anti-Semitic, he lets people lower their guard and expose their own prejudice, whether it’s anti-Semitism or an acceptance of anti-Semitism. ‘Throw the Jew Down the Well’ [a song performed at a country & western bar during Da Ali G Show] was a very controversial sketch, and some members of the Jewish community thought that it was actually going to encourage anti-Semitism. But to me it revealed something about that bar in Tucson. And the question is: Did it reveal that they were anti-Semitic? Perhaps. But maybe it just revealed that they were indifferent to anti-Semitism.
“I remember, when I was in university I studied history, and there was this one major historian of the Third Reich, Ian Kershaw. And his quote was, ‘The path to Auschwitz was paved with indifference.’ I know it’s not very funny being a comedian talking about the Holocaust, but I think it’s an interesting idea that not everyone in Germany had to be a raving anti-Semite. They just had to be apathetic.”…
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of
tmk wrote:
great concept.
bad execution.
Posted 17 Nov 2006 at 12:20 pm ¶
KXB wrote:
Christopher Hitchens, who wields words like a switchblade, eviscerates Borat in Slate.
“Kazakh Like Me”
http://www.slate.com/id/2153578/
“Borat reveals the painful politeness of American Society.”
Oh, Sacha – using the Holocaust to excuse jokes about shit and incest – really classy. But hey, you got $40 million out of it.
Posted 17 Nov 2006 at 1:07 pm ¶
Y. Carrington wrote:
Baron Cohen talks about exposing stereotypes and racial prejudice, but to really expose US oppression, you have to know it—and to know it, you have to live here.
Racism, anti-Semitism, and misogyny have a specific history and context in American society. Without a full understanding of that context, all somebody like Baron Cohen can accomplish is getting a bunch of stupid Americans to act a fool on screen and piss the audience off—without either the stupid cast members nor the audience ever understanding what happened and why it did. So nobody ever gets the message that Baron Cohen is trying to communicate.
Did he even understand what he was trying to communicate? From reading his own words, I’m not so sure.
Posted 17 Nov 2006 at 7:12 pm ¶
Julia Stepchild wrote:
But if Cohen, himself, is Jewish, why wouldn’t he understand anti-Semitism? He’s a British national, but I’m sure he’s had to deal with anti-semitism in England, too…
Posted 21 Nov 2006 at 1:17 pm ¶
Marsha wrote:
I decided to rent “Da Ali G Show” from Netflix after hearing it mentioned in the BBC comedy “The Office” a couple of months back.
I didn’t like the Borat character at all for many reasons (not that Ali G is much better!). What I find really disturbing about the popularity of the “Borat” movie is that it has nothing to do with the fact that Americans are fans of the “Ali G Show” (unlike say, people in the U.K. who are familiar with “Ali G”.). Borat was just a skit on “Ali G” like “Wayne’s World” was on SNL. The difference is that people went to see “Wayne’s World” because they loved the skit on SNL. But why are people flocking to see a character they have never seen?
I think that Borat is resonating with American audiences because:
1) Borat is portrayed as a dumb foreigner. Many people love the “dumb foreigner” because it makes them feel superior. I am constantly amazed at the dumb comments and questions that are asked of people from different countries. It is quite clear that many Americans still view certain parts of the world as backwards and primitive. Borat is comforting because he makes Americans feel like they are superior in intellect when it is proven that many so-called third world countries are churning out workers and students that are superior academically than their American counterparts.
2) While Borat is clueless and dumb and many Americans laugh at his ignorance, they feel a sense of camaraderie that he shares their sexist, racist, homophobe, and anti-Semite views. They laugh because Borat is clearly not p.c. and they resent the fact that they can’t openly act like Borat anymore without being attacked.
Posted 21 Nov 2006 at 2:26 pm ¶
Stefanie wrote:
I know many people (myself included) who were familiar with the Borat character from Da Ali G Show before the film came out.
Posted 22 Nov 2006 at 12:02 pm ¶