As funny as the Borat movie appears to be, and as little as I care about making fun of people for their own decisions, I think it's really cruel to mock poor, uneducated people who have had little opportunity to better themselves.
When Sacha Baron Cohen wanted a village to represent the impoverished Kazakh home of his character Borat, he found the perfect place in Glod: a remote mountain outpost with no sewerage or running water and where locals eke out meagre livings peddling scrap iron or working patches of land. ...Villagers say they were paid just £3 each for this humiliation, for a film that took around £27million at the worldwide box office in its first week of release. ...
So when a Hollywood film crew descended on a nearby run-down motel last September, with their flashy cars and expensive equipment, locals thought their lowly community might finally be getting some of the investment it so desperately needs. ...
Luca, who now refers to Baron Cohen as to the 'ugly, tall, moustachioed American man', even though the 35-year-old comedian is British, said: 'They paid my family £30 for four full days. They were nice and friendly, but we could not understand a single word they were saying.
'It was very uncomfortable at the end and there was animal manure all over our home. We endured it because we are poor and badly needed the money, but now we realise we were cheated and taken advantage of in the worst way.
'All those things they said about us in the film are terribly humiliating. They said we drink horse urine and sleep with our own kin. You say it's comedy, but how can someone laugh at that?'
Spirea Ciorobea, who played the 'village mechanic and abortionist', said: 'What I saw looks disgusting. Even if we are uneducated and poor, it is not fair that someone does this to us.'
Mr. Ciorobea is right. It's one thing to mock feminists, Jews, Christians, Republican politicians, and others for the amusing aspects of their beliefs, but I think it's disgraceful to take advantage of miserably poor people who have no idea what's going on. They aren't poor by choice, and from the article it's evident that they aren't stupid. They "get it" now that the trick is over, but they don't think it's funny, and neither do I. I was looking forward to renting Borat when it came out on DVD, but now I don't think I will.
There, but for the grace of God, go I.
Update:
Looks like one New Yorker decided not to put up with "Borat"'s antics.
The comedian - who created the fake sexist and racist Kazakhstan reporter Borat - approached a man in New York and said: "I like your clothes. Are nice! Please may I buying? I want have sex with it."The man didn't find his comments funny and punched Cohen in the face.
Cohen cried out for help, but his pleas were ignored and he was repeatedly hit. Hello, he was in New York!
Nice.
(HT: My brother.)
Don't worry, the movie wasn't very funny. You won't miss anything if you skip it entirely.
I'm inclined to agree that Cohen pushes the ethical line with his filmmaking. People are essentially told lies and half-truths as they sign the release form to be in the movie.
However, in the grand scheme of things, I don't have a problem with it. It's "just a movie" and everyone who said embarrassing things knew they were on camera.
I watched a couple of trailers in order to form my own opinion. Based on the trailers, I completely agree with MW.
The appropriate response, I think, would be for anyone who was misrepresented in the movie to sue Baron Cohen, or the producers... within their own court system, for defamation of character. When Mr. Cohen brings up their contracts, the judge could say "We make great fascination with American concept call activist judges. You lose all money times seven now. We make Kazak oil, so you pay to keep good relations. God bless America. Bye now."
I'm going to stand against judicial activism here and assert that nobody has any issue to sue on from Borat. You agree to go on film and you voluntarily say stupid things, it's your own fault, you defamed your own character, Sasha Cohen didn't do it.
BTW, some of the people in the movie were completely upstanding in response to Borat's craziness. In particular was a conservative dinner group in the South. They never said a racist or sexist or homophobic word though Cohen undoubtedly goaded them to do so.
Those euro-trash are animals anyway, so let them lose there souls.....
Just like World War II. If we drop a bomb on yellow people we have a parade. Why never on Germany, the real bastards of WWII. Why ? Germans are white !!! Period
Why are we so sensitive about exploiting some ignorant whites on camera. We're suppose to tolerate exploitation of colored men and all women, but a weak, uneducated, and easily manipulated "CRACKER" seems to affect your psychological well-being. Get over it and watch these O'fey pastey face inbreds. If your well behaved then you get to watch nascar....
Cohen went out of his way to insult that dinner group Denniss mentioned, and they were the soul of grace. Altho at the end of the scene, it was clear he'd worn their patience out--the hostes told him, a little sharply, he had to leave *now*.
I'll defind Cohen a little: the joke is not to laugh at poor people, but to laugh at westerners who are too ready to accept this grotesque caricature as a genuine foreigner. The fact that this doesn't always work is encouraging, and it's perhaps pleasant that Cohen included a lot of his trick not working in the film. Although even the southern dinner party guests / host did not suspect that he was racist and sexist even by a foreign standard.
OTOH, he is basically getting a lot of laughs from pretending to be a stupid foreigner. He's not a moral force to be respected, and what I've just said might be a justification of sorts but it's one that's lost on probably 80% of the audience.
I hope he'll pay the villagers he used some more money. I think the film was probably a lot more lucrative than he expected.