Honk If You Hated Borat

Rating: 1/10 (5 November 2006)

Sacha Baron Cohen's film "Borat" is being used as a litmus test. If you like the film, you are hip, cool, and part of the new in-crowd immune to the silly dictates of common decency and Political Correctness.
If you don't like "Borat," you are an old fuddy-duddy or spinster schoolmarm.
I laugh at dead baby jokes. I was a nurse's aid and then a Peace Corps volunteer, and I learned to laugh at death, bodily fluids, pus-filled sores, and intestinal parasites.
I cannot tell you how much I hated "Borat." I would have walked out, but I had to keep watching because of my field of study.
Based on reviews, I expected a penetrating, edgy critique of Political Correctness that would make me laugh out loud. I did not laugh once. (Full disclosure: others in the theater did.) I'd like to offer you samples of what passes for humor in "Borat," but if I did so, this site would not run my review. That's because just about every joke - - not just some of them but just about every one - - is made at the intrusively graphic expense of women or homosexuals, and/or it involves bodily excretions.
An example. Baron Cohen is a guest at the home of a genuinely charming woman. After defecating, he hands her his fecal matter. That's a big joke. If you are laughing now, this movie is for you.
In another scene, Baron Cohen, without any clothing on at all, wrestles with another undressed man who is grotesquely obese. During this wrestling match, they assume poses for activities I can't name; if I did, this site would not run this review. If jokes at the expense of fat homosexual men are your cup of tea, this movie is for you.
I've never seen such a hateful movie in a mainstream theater. Again, I know full well that I sound like a schoolmarm when I say that. Sacha Baron Cohen, I would have to guess, based on this movie, hates the human race, including you, the ticket buyer. He is willing to exploit everyone he encounters, to humiliate them on camera, to get you, the ticket buyer, someone he also hates, to laugh at others' suffering. Once you do that, he can laugh at you. If watching decent people doing their best to deal with an obnoxious creep is your cup of tea, then this movie is for you.
I feel like repeating over and over: I laughed at Todd Solondz's "Happiness." I laugh at politically incorrect humor. And I hated this movie.
There's more going on here, and I know I'm risking a lot by pointing this out.
Borat speaks Polish. Only speakers of Polish will get that. He says "Dzien Dobry," "jak sie masz," "dziekuje" and other Polish phrases. The film's opening and closing scenes were shot in a real Eastern European village. Real Eastern European folk music is played on the soundtrack.
With "Ali G," Baron Cohen exploited vicious stereotypes of Blacks. With "Borat" Baron Cohen is not targeting Kazaks. He's exploiting a centuries-old, contemptuous and hateful stereotype of Eastern European peasants that can be found in various Western cultures - witness the American "Polak joke" - - and is common in one thread of Jewish culture. In this stereotype, Poles, and, by extension, Eastern European Christian peasants, are, like Borat, ignorant, bestial, and disgusting. A good précis of the stereotype can be found in a famous passage in Isaac Bashevis Singer's "The Slave." It can be found in the "Golem" article on my website.
In fact, "Borat" has a lot in common with Marian Marzynski's controversial film "Shtetl." In both, cameras invade an impoverished Eastern European peasant village. Villagers who are not sophisticated or worldly are conned into appearing on camera to perform for us as if they were trained monkeys. We laugh at them, or feel disgust at them, because they are dirty, because they are poor, and because they keep pigs. In any case, gazing at these lesser peasants, we know that we are superior. Perhaps Baron Cohen will try this technique next in a Darfur refugee camp or a homeless shelter. Poor, unsophisticated people can be so amusing.
Baron Cohen speaks of women as if they were less than dirt. Don't misunderstand him. He's not mocking misogyny. He's milking misogyny. The things Baron Cohen says about women in this movie are grotesque; they are brutal. He makes fun of mentally retarded people. He makes fun of white, Christian Southerners, a group everyone feels safe mocking.
Reviews, and no doubt many viewers, are telling you that "Borat" is a fearless laugh riot that punctures political correctness and makes you laugh till you cry. It's that very description that made me want to see it. I thought I'd be getting something like the Colbert Report.
I've gotta think I'm not the only one, though, who found looking at Baron Cohen's hatred for an hour and a half to be an icky, profoundly unfunny experience.