Borat 'n’ roll

Having briefly enjoyed The Ali G Show back in the day, I never would have thought that comedian Sacha Baron Cohen’s second-banana character, Kazakh TV reporter Borat Sagdiyev, who was in love with all things American, would have turned into box-office gold. The character, sprouting a bushy moustache and mangled English, seemed too one-note, and his presence definitely left you with an uncomfortable feeling.

So color me surprised to say that Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan is probably the funniest movie since, well, maybe Jackass. That earlier movie took the edge off when Bush’s Iraq War began, its self-inflicted violence leaving us in stitches; Borat comes along as America turns a psychological corner on Iraq, at least according to mid-term election results.

It seems this is Borat’s time, as the US and much of the world goes through an uncomfortable lurching and shifting of cultural mores. Political correctness seems way too mealy-mouthed to cover the blatant human rights abuses since 9/11 and its aftermath. There are people pissed about being unlawfully detained, and people pissed about there being no closure to the war on terror. People pissed at being wiretapped, people scared of foreigners. There are people pissed at airports, in mid-air, and on the ground. Anger, confusion and resentment are a-bubbling at a time when "ignorant armies clash by night," to crib Matthew Arnold.

This is being expressed in odd ways. Celebrities, for instance, going mental all over the place. Actor Danny De Vito appears, apparently three sheets to the wind, on TV’s The View; comedian Michael Richards shoots his racist mouth off in an LA club, then goes on a hideous post-meltdown plea for forgiveness; supermodel Naomi Campbell dumps her anger against Eastern Europeans onto a hotel maid; and Mel Gibson proves that the anti-Semitic fruit never falls far from the tree in Hollywood.

So if celebs can’t be expected to act decently, how can ordinary moviegoers? No wonder, then, all the hoots and hollers when Borat comes onscreen. At a recent Manila viewing (unedited, by the way, minus all the onscreen black bars), males in the audience were laughing, as my wife aptly put it, "like hyenas." It wasn’t "laughing with you" laughter, either.

It seems people need an anger outlet these days. They need a scapegoat. They need someone else to laugh at.

Enter Borat, a TV celebrity in Kazakhstan, who offers himself as the butt of the joke, and as a one-man laser-guided missile focused on American provincialism, frat-boy misogyny and racism. Cohen, himself Jewish, does not shrink from lacerating anti-Semitic views, while parading and milking those same views for audience laughter. (There is the annual "Running of the Jew" event in his native Kazakh town, complete with papier-mâché horned masks.) It’s a tough tight-wire to cross, but Borat manages to deflect hatred by eliciting helpless, often uncomfortable laughter.

What’s the most difficult scene to watch in Borat? It depends on what offends, dear viewer. Could be the jokes about the town rapist ("Naughty, naughty"), Borat giving his sister a long, wet kiss for the camera, or Borat and his manager spending an unsuccessful night in a Midwestern bed and breakfast run by a friendly old Jewish couple. Or maybe it’s the sight of these two hairy Kazakhs wrestling nude on a hotel bed, then chasing each other through several conference rooms.

Then again, it could be Borat’s attempts to purchase an American car, during which he asks how good the Hummer is for running over Gypsies. Or when, during a society dinner in Atlanta, Borat excuses himself to use the toilet, only to return hoisting his deposit in a wet, plastic baggie; that was pretty nasty.

Cohen, for some strange reason, is skilled at convincing real people that he is a real person, not a satirical character. With his broad, vaguely Arabo-Slavic accent and relentless seriousness, his Borat hoodwinks unsuspecting rodeo organizers, kiss-aphobic New Yorkers, zealous gun salesmen and lawn sale purveyors ("Gypsy, are these your treasures for sale?"). It’s a mystery how any normal American could take this guy’s act seriously, especially in the age of Punk’d and reality TV.

But they do, like the college boys in an RV who pick up the hitchhiking Borat, then display a level of sexism that could only be cultivated in an American fraternity. (Or maybe not, if some Pinoy reactions to the Smith verdict is any gauge.)

Fueling the Kazakh reporter’s road trip from New York to California – besides a government grant to film American culture and "make benefit glorious nation of Kazakhstan" – is Borat’s infatuation with Pamela Anderson. After absorbing a steady diet of Baywatch reruns in his hotel room, he steers the documentary toward the West Coast, where he is informed the synthetically buoyant actress lives. Call it Borat’s quest.

Here, in the manner of most comedies exploring hatred, Borat is careful to invest its boorish hero with enough humane characteristics so that we grow to tolerate, if not necessarily like or comprehend, him. Borat comes to understand the true nature of love, in the shape of an overweight black prostitute in Georgia, rather than the illusion that is Pamela Anderson signing copies of her book in a Barnes and Noble. But not before attempting to put a sack over the pneumatic actress’s head.

Some people were apparently not in on the joke. One woman presented in the Atlanta dinner party scene is reportedly suing the film’s makers, as are some of the frat boys included in the RV scene. They claim the filmmakers "misrepresented" Borat as an actual documentary. Well, what is a documentary these days? There is truth, and then there is the truth behind the truth. At least one actual Cultural Minister from Kazakhstan (unless he, too, was a prankster) praised the film for giving his poor country some attention, if not respect. (The film was shot in Romania, by the way.)

Borat must be seen to be believed: a movie that manages to trample every existing definition of hatred and racism, yet still come out on the other side with a grin on its face. At a mere 82 minutes, it probably does more to catalogue America’s true nature than any soul-searching primetime news show or Inside Edition celebrity exposé ever could.