Letters to the Editor
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Cringing Comedy
I guess I'm going to come off as a real stick in the mud, but I can't stand comedy that involves making a fool out of someone utterly clueless. It sets my teeth on edge and makes me cringe. Even the narrow-minded rubes that are often deceived and ridiculed on The Daily Show get my empathy up. I often switch channels after the monologue.
It seems like there are two kinds of fools that these comedians exploit: the guy who's so full of himself that he can't tell when he's being bullshitted, and the guy who is so sincere that he takes everyone else for being equally sincere and just doesn't see it coming. Either one can be a complete idiot or a real asshole. But neither one really deserves to be exploited for our amusement.
Maybe my sensitivity comes from the 12-16 years of school-yard ridicule and bullying that I had to endure. The bullies were always sure that it was just fine to gull me into just about any embarassment, and they always had a good laugh at my expense. Sometimes I'd be fooled into thinking that one of them was my friend, only to have him set me up for a big joke that everyone else seemed to already know was coming. Sometimes I'd just be taunted until I acted out in some way that they had known that they could provoke. In any case, I can still feel the sense of shame that enveloped me and the powerless, hopeless twist of betrayal in my chest.
I'm generally considered to be a witty guy, these days. I love a good laugh, and I think I almost died the last time I saw Eddie Izzard perform. It took hours for my face to return to normal and for me to slow my heart down. So it's not that I'm just a moribund and gloomy prig. I just can't stand to see anyone humiliated. It's too easy and too cruel.
Needless to say, I'll be skipping Borat.
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Uncomfortable humour
Watching Baron Cohen always makes me feel uncomfortable. He's obviously a very talented man but, for me, he's much funnier to read about than to watch - you can laugh at descriptions of his set-ups but watching him take the piss out of unsuspecting people just makes me squirm.
And, on one level, you can laugh at his depictions of Kazakhstan, but if I were a Kazakhstani I would be bloody annoyed. People know, of course, that he's wildly distorting what Kazakhstan must be like, but, hang on, maybe there's a grain of truth there, no smoke without fire, you know...
And we're pretty unlikely to find out what Kazakhstan's really like either, so Borat's descriptions of it will be the ones that are likely to live with most of us.
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Like an elementary school book report
Don't you just love it when you read a movie review that tells you just about everything that happens in the movie? It certainly removes any pleasure of discovery that you might have gotten out of the movie itself. Such reviews remind me of the typical elementary school book report--just retell the story, and you've got your report done!
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A wild and crazy guy..?
Didn't Steve Martin do this character about thirty years ago..?
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They're not clueless
People who will openly talk to a complete stranger on camera about exterminating this group or that group of people are not 'clueless'. The irony of the joke did not zoom over their heads. This is real heart of darkness stuff. You needn't feel sorry for people who WANT to tell you about all their hatreds and bigotries and who they'd love to persecute. "A Modest Proposal" was satire. What Borat uncovers is something darker, it's the death of hope. It's humor fried to a crispy black crust.
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"Easy" is not the point
To anyone who thinks Baron Cohen's brand of comedic ambush is "easy" and that there's no fun or skill in "shooting fish in a barrel": Please watch the scene where Borat gets the folks in the tavern to join in--heartily, after a bit of hesitation--in a rousing rendition of "Throw the Jew Down the Well." The point is not that it's difficult to elicit such grotesque behavior, but that it's ludicrously easy. And that sickening feeling it gives us? Sure, it's one part horror that we live among people such as these...but might the other part be all the times we've heard a racist or anti-Semitic or homophobic joke and gone along with it just to avoid confrontation? Mightn't that sick feeling be a reflection of the sick smiles we don to get by?
THAT's the point of his humor, and while a little goes a long way and invariably leaves me feeling implicated, as well as depressed, I think the guy's brilliant.
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Best comedian out there
Cohen is the best thing going for comedy right now. His on the fly comedy has no rival. He is always in character and flawless in his presentation. Three Cheers for Borat!
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Half a Million People in a "Small Town"?
Jackson, MS, has a population of almost 200k, and a metropolitan area of about half a million. So the only reason I can think that the author would refer to the city as having "small town TV types" is that she assumes that all of Mississippi is one big backwater boonie. Perhaps she is just one of those "seemingly sophisticated New Yorker" who needs to educate herself before making such ignorant statements?
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Blaming the victim
Yep, seeing a lot of that going on here. The tv booker did her research, the Borat's producers set up a fake website to fool her and his "publicists" lied to her face about Borat being a tv journalist from Kazakhstan. Typically when people do that for monetary gain, we call it fraud and it's a crime. Everyone makes honest mistakes at the office, mostly they don't end up getting fired and then having to see their humiliation on the big screen and the perpetrator of it raking in the accolades and big bucks.
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Jackson, MS Is A Backwater Boonie
I've been to Jackson, Mississippi. It really is one big backwater boonie. The overreaction of the management at that television station prove that. Stop whining and deal with it.