Make Benefit Sasha Baron Cohen’s Wallet
“Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan,” the most verbose title given to a movie since “Homework, or How Pornography Saved the Split Family from Boredom and Improved their Financial Situation,” became the highest grossing film ever relased to less than 1,000 theaters. The mockumentary brought in over $26 million this weekend, catering to generation z or y or whatever label is being put on 16-25 year olds these days.
Sacha Baron Cohen, possessor of the most symmetrically corect name in showbiz, produced one of the most shocking and offensive movies of all time. Among the ranks of “The Aristocrats,” Borat wasted no time establishing its potically incorrectness with an opening scene that included incest and prostitution, all from our lighthearted star’s sister. In addition, the Kazakh village has a militia of school children, armed with AK’s and gumballs.
As we are taken through a ‘hero’s journey’ from New York to Los Angeles, Borat grows on us like a sunspot. At first we are annoyed by the disfiguration, then we accept the fact that the red dot is not going away, and we embrace it as our own. Borat becomes the voice that we all want to be. An innocent, naive child, wandering through life with wide eyes, as ‘shapeshifters’ try to corrupt him.
At a rodeo in the South, Borat conversates with a bigot who proclaims that hanging homosexuals is “what we are trying to get to” in America. Later, Frat boys from South Carolina, not exactly the common voice of Americans, declare minorities as the most powerful groups of people in the states. And at a gun shop in Texas, a man does not hesitate when Borat asks him for a gun that will kill Jews, calmly recommending a glock-nine.
But when Borat crawls out of the ‘cave’ after having been left by his disgustingly obese, jewaphobic, cock powdering friend Azamat, his confidence is restored by Pentecostals and their “friend Jesus.” In a heckneyed attempt at dissing religion, Borat fakes an out of body experience that gives him new found purpose and poise in his pursuit of plastic Pamela Anderson.
Although the movie made me ‘lol’ as much as instant messaging ever does, I felt some of the scenes were arranged and contrived. Especially the ‘ordeal’ where Borat literally bags Anderson.
But with his new found power over the “vajeen,” Borat goes home to become the ‘master of both worlds.’ He becomes the leader of his village, bringing commerce and technology to the former Soviet satellite. With his cultural learnings from America, Borat shines his yellow, speedo-powered light upon the audience, begging them to see themselves as they truly are: rapists, racists, and rebels.
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