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Jewish comedian Sacha Baron Cohen's 'Borat' is homophobic, misogynistic and anti-Semitic.And outrageously funny.But is the target of his humour liberal complacency? Valerie Shanley reports AMAN in a cheap shiny suit is stumbling through a crowded New York subway train. The lid of his battered suitcase opens suddenly and two chickens fly out, causing chaos and consternation among the passengers. This is just one of many hilarious scenes in Sacha Baron Cohen's latest onslaught on the silver screen. The character he plays, with the trademark Freddie Mercury moustache and jacket sleeves pushed back, is the eponymous hero of a movie everyone between here and Central Asia has surely heard of by now . . .Borat: Cultural Learnings of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.
I'm watching, with my 13-yearold, clips of the film which have been posted on 'journalist' Borat Sagdiyev's spoof website. He arrives at a premiere of the film with 30 members of his extended family on a mule-drawn wagon also containing barrels of his favourite tipple, fermented horse urine (which, reassuringly, turns out to be apple juice from Tesco).
It's when the jokes wade into the minefields of anti-Semitism, homophobia and misogyny that the laughter becomes more to do with the outrageousness of what is being said, rather than the pure slapstick of those other scenes. It's not just that my son would be hard-pressed to point out Kazakhstan on a world map and thinks a pogrom is something on the telly. It's my own response to Borat's claim on the website that a favourite pastime among the peasants of this allegedly goat-loving, woman-caging, gypsy-stoning, dog-shooting nation is something called The Running of The Jew.
I laugh. Because it's so outrageous. And funny.
To go from the ridiculous . . . Borat . . . to the highlyintellectual . . .Freud . . . the world's most quoted
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YOU ARE HERE: 19 March 2007 / tribune.ie / 2006 / 11 / 05
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