A few weeks back, one of our busiest spout.com film experts, SkyPilot (also known as Adam), gave us some great food for thought on a sticky topic–the film Borat. Unfortunately, the post promptly became burried beneath about 50 Denver Film Festival podcasts. Here’s the post again, soon to be followed by another related post by Adam on satire. - Kristin

I’m normally not a fan of explaining jokes, but Sacha Baron Cohen’s new comedy Borat merits some discussion. The problem is summed up on the cover of the October 20 issue of Entertainment Weekly: “Has This Man Made The Funniest Movie Ever…or Simply the Most Outrageous, Offensive One?”

In my opinion, Borat is some of both. Journalist Josh Rottenberg calls Baron Cohen’s character a “cross-cultural Trojan horse sneaking past his subjects’ defenses and giving them license to bare hidden prejudices.” It is chilling–all the misogyny, homophobia, and anti-Semitism our intrepid Kazakh encounters. This may be the movie’s greatest significance, although the value of simply seeing filmed evidence of prejudice is a little unclear to me. More on that later.

For those who haven’t heard Borat (the character) speak yet, this is what will immediately become clear: He is unrefined, misogynistic, homophobic, sex-obsessed, and anti-Semitic (Baron Cohen is Jewish). Borat is from Kazakhstan, not because Kazakhs are known for anything, though. In fact, it seems that Baron Cohen has chosen a relatively unknown place as a disarming mechanism. Borat is far more about Americans and their prejudices than it is about Kazakhs.

But I do find Baron Cohen’s methods of baiting and exposure problematic. There is no question that Baron Cohen and his crew were deceitful (claiming to be from “a Belarus TV station”), but I’m not totally convinced their behavior was immoral. Larry Charles, the film’s director, said “I never felt like we tricked anyone in a cruel way. We gave people a chance to be themselves.” Maybe this is true, but we need to consider the perspective of Ron Miller, who invited “Borat” to a dinner party at Miller’s home in Natchez, Mississippi. Miller says that after their meal together–during which Baron Cohen baited his hosts with racist and homophobic comments–Miller and his fellow guests felt “emotionally raped.” Miller said he’s relieved the scene didn’t make it into the movie.

For now, the best sense I can make of Baron Cohen’s baiting is this: There are two kinds of people Borat interacts with–victims and subjects–and we don’t know who’s who until after they’ve been filmed. The victims are those who tried the best they could to be gracious with an intolerant foreigner, and during that experience they were humiliated microcosmically (during filming) and macrocosmically (now). I don’t think they deserve that.

The subjects of the film are the people who I feel deserve to have their hatred exposed (i.e. one frat boy tells Borat he has sex with as many women as possible but never calls them afterwards because “They don’t have [his] respect”). But one subject has surprised me with his public response to the film. Bobby Rowe, the now-infamous rodeo man, spoke with Newsweek about meeting Borat. Rowe said some disturbing things about Muslims and homosexuals while he was being recorded. Devin Gordon reports that when “reminded of what he said on camera, the normally gregarious Rowe falls silent. ‘Man, oh, man,’ he says. ‘I guess I’ll go see that sumbuck so I know whether to run off and hide.’” I’m not quite sure how to interpret this (does “that sumbuck” refer to Rowe himself?), but it looks like Rowe might have gained some humility. That would give me hope for the subjects, and indeed for any prejudiced person who sees this film.

Ultimately, Baron Cohen has formidable gifts in the areas of physical comedy, wordplay, and improvisation. He’s a hugely talented comedian, and this shines through, despite the film’s rough edges. Somehow, miraculously, Baron Cohen makes me like Borat, and even care about him during the rare “dramatic” scenes. But, as likeable as Borat is, Baron Cohen never lets us stay at ease for very long. The scripted satire, much of which centers around anti-Semitism, feels downright dangerous. I can remember the way my mouth hung open in shock for a few seconds before I finally began to laugh at the line, “Azamat refused to fly in case the Jews repeated their attack of 9-11.” (I have since realized that this absurd statement is merely the logical conclusion of something a celebrity said recently while being arrested for drunk driving.)

The entire experience with this film is much like this–shock, then laughter, then realization. But whatever your feelings are about Borat, you should see it. I recommend laughing your head off while you’re watching it, and then, after it’s done, thinking and talking about whether you should have.