"Borat:" The Aftermath

by Mick Lenszer

A little over two weeks ago Borat hit theaters and has been raking in the dough ever since. The movie premiered at the top of the charts, contrary to the predictions of many critics, and made just over $26 million in the first weekend. Borat was shown in a mere 837 theaters, beating out several movies including The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause, which was being shown in 3500 theaters. Now, Borat has surpassed $90 million and is closing in on $100 million just in the United States.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the premise, and I can’t imagine that’s very many people, Borat is the tale of a Kazakh journalist who comes to America to report on the “greatest country in the world” and travels across the nation trying to gain Pamela Anderson’s hand in marriage. Of course the whole movie is a slap-stick satire, with actor Sacha Baron Cohen playing the naïve Borat, who goes around spouting off his radical, over-the-top views on all things regarding race, religion, gender, nationality…you get the picture.

Many people are now speaking out against the movie, as well as against Cohen and his particular style of humor. Many have labeled him an anti-Semite, for Borat’s particular affinity to making fun of Jewish people, and saying the movie should be boycotted. However, what people don’t realize at first is that Cohen himself is a devout Jew who keeps kosher and respects the Sabbath. While Cohen’s characters, Bruno and Ali G in addition to Borat, all exhibited unbelievable ignorance and stupidity, Cohen himself is a world apart from his characters. He graduated from Cambridge University and wrote his thesis on Jewish involvement in the American Civil Rights Movement. Cohen sees his characters as tools for exposing people’s hatred and ignorance. Cohen recently told Rolling Stone that "part of the movie shows the absurdity of holding any form of racial prejudice, whether it's hatred of African-Americans or of Jews." HBO spokespeople say that they feel Cohen is in many ways educating people about the dangers of ignorance, or at least acceptance of it, just as the television show All in the Family did in the '70s. (The characters of Borat, Bruno, and Ali G were all central to The Ali G Show which was broadcast by HBO in the U.S. in 2003 and 2004.)

But not everybody finds it so enlightening, and not everybody is laughing. It seems that today lawsuits are just another benchmark of success. Two fraternity brothers who appear in the movie are suing Cohen. They say he got them drunk and lied to them before having them sign over consent to appear in the movie. Cindy Streit is suing as well, saying that she was told the footage in which she appears would be used solely for a documentary being filmed for Belarus Television. Continuing on this theme of questionable production practices, the city of Glod, Romania, is expected to file a suit, saying the film company took advantage of Glod's citizens and that the city never received promised compensation. To top it all off, the country of Kazakhstan is throwing around the idea that the film was a political tool used to cast a dark shadow over the country.

While Cohen would be much less successful in his goal of exposing ignorance if he employed more transparent business tactics, that may go against the whole premise of his Borat character. Knowing Cohen, these could very well be carefully calculated events spurring more interest in the movie. Either way, the news of these, and potential future, lawsuits will keep bringing audiences back to the theaters to see and hear Cohen’s message, no matter how shrouded behind nudity and profanity it may be.

(Publicity photo from Borat courtesy of 20th Century Fox.)

(Fox's long-form trailer for Borat can be seen below.)



(For a full review of Borat, please see: The Satire of "Borat" Gets: "High Five.")

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