Letters to the Editor
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WHY THE ENDLESS HAND WRINGING?
and put downs?
Don't you all know we all die one day? Good to enjoy things.
Cohen is hilarious, as anyone who has ever seen him as Ali G pull clever lines on the fly- as he skillfully dissects another famous inflated-ego talking head on live TV, Said Ego becoming visibly uncomfortable, thinking he or she may be in over their heads with someone they thought was just a stupid Hip Hop clad spokesman for Gen Y. You cannot script this stuff.
My theory is that Americans cannot stand when someone is having fun GUILTLESSLY and without REMORSE, particularly when it is at someone else's expense.
For a break, I LOOOOVE to watch the vacuous lite hedomism of Sabado Gigante on cable to see how people can have easy fun without wringing their hands silly, cringing with worry. My friends cannot believe I listen to Rush Limpballs sometimes in appreciation of the comedic orgy of hypocritical histrionics and endless fingerpointing that that show has become. IT IS **FUNNY** with a capital F.
Way too much puritan prudery in this country. Another reason the USA is becoming the laughing stock of the planet. Life is to have fun.
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Cory
There is evidence Borat is a muslim. Kazakhstan is a mostly muslim country.
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Borat is not supposed to resemble a kazakh
Borat is not a muslim character. He just isn't. He doesn't mention Islam or follow any Islamic customs, and it makes no sense at all to assume he is supposed to be muslim just because he is from Kazakhstan. The reason why that doesn't make sense is that he is not meant to resemble an actual Kazakh. His purported country of origin was chosen because it is really far away from America, and most Americans have no idea how a Kazakh looks or acts. If the people he was interviewing knew anything about Kazakhstan, they would not assume he was muslim, they would wonder WHY HE DOESN"T LOOK LIKE A KAZAKH. See?
Likewise, Borat's shtick is not the equivalent of wearing "yellow-face" to make fun of the Japanese. "Yellow-face" would be playing off of an actual stereotype concerning Japanese people. Borat bears no resemblence whatsoever to Kazakh people. He isn't playing off a stereotype concerning Kazakhs, because people in America do not know enough about them to harbor stereotypes.
If you want to learn about Kazakhstan, google it. Look it up on Lonely Planet. It's an interesting place.
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It is easy to speak truth to power,
and to even be funny while doing so,
without disrespecting common people,
let alone the 'high and mighty.'
Will Rogers and Norm Crosby, for instance.
I'd also offer up comics such as Lewis Black. They have a take-no-prisoners approach and feel the need to pepper their act with more obscenities than needed to make a point; however average people are either once-removed from the butt of the joke, or when the comic wishes to point a finger our way, we suspected it was coming when we bought the ticket. Certainly the audience is more prepared than, say, the newsperson who lost her job.
In fact, I'd say Borat-style comedy--as sometimes clever or funny or pointed as it may be--simply lowers the discourse, lowers the bar, and narrows the gap between our lowly words and lowly deeds. To wit: instead of acknowledging the very real cost to humanity of the woman that was fired, the self-proclaimed Borat fans immediately engage in personal attacks and seem overly delighted that "the stupid bitch got what she deserved." Ahem. If Borat is somehow asking us to point the finger at our own thinly-veiled racism and sexism while he "acts" the same in character, I'd say SBC is laughing all the way to the bank while his sycophants and shills pay for the limo ride.
Shame on us, because the joke's still on us.
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I don't like anything and
the Borat movie is actually pretty damn funny.
That is all.
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I don't like anything and
the Borat movie is actually pretty damn funny.
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Antisemites and antizionists are worried
Self annointed rabid antisemites and antizionists like Mark Elf and the whole gang of fools over at jewssanfrontiers.com are very worried abut Borat because they are upset that anyone besides them openly say retarded things with even a hint of humor in them. This makes SBC's case for him, doesn't it?
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From one of the guys in the RV
This is a letter from a friend of one of the guys in the RV. Y'all might find it interesting.
http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/48312
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In Soviet America, Yakov Smirnov doesn't laugh at YOU
Tim Robbins nailed this sort of thing on "Bob Roberts" very well.
I am glad to see "Ali G" is not catching on, but I think the success of "Borat" is owed mainly to the fact that this is not exactly a Golden Age of Comedy.
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It's because comedy is murder
The measure of Ms. Zacharek’s insight and authentic responding to Borat is how productively uncomfortable it has made us. It does seem odd, doesn’t it – that appreciation of humor could become an intensely debated moral question centered on “guilt” and “victims”?
Or maybe not. Because if we dare look at the evolutionary origin (i.e. the real meaning) of humor, we find that laughter, as a matter of life and death, would naturally pull up guilt and anxiety along with the more pleasurable feelings of euphoria and relief.
Think about the last time you were in, say, a classroom situation. When the un-cooly dressed and clique-less loser raises his hand, then begins a painfully discomforting disclosure, what do the cool kids do? They make eye contact with each other and giggle. THERE IS NOTHTING THAT IS ACTUALLY FUNNY. Yet they are behaving, and with a purpose: to communicate the understanding, “Freak show over there makes us uncomfortable and will never, ever hang with us.” It’s a social death sentence.
Fifty thousand years ago the eye contact was there, the vocalizations were different, and the understanding communicated was a literal death sentence for the deviant individual, because survival depended on the protection afforded by group inclusion, and the protective functioning of the group required compliance and conformity, with no tolerance for deviance.
Think about what we get from laughter with a group, especially when there is a victim of the humor: a feeling of deep, euphoric relief – “I’m safe because I’m still accepted by the group that ensures my survival.” The opposite of that feeling, experienced by the victim as humiliation, resonates with what evolutionarily is literally a death sentence, and accordingly can lead to extreme reactions, like Columbine. Life and death.
Archetypically, when we laugh we kill a non-conforming group member to ensure our own survival, through ensuring integrity of a tightly-controlled group. Complex, cruel, and guilt-inducing, just as Stephanie noted.
Sarah Silverman’s humor is so effective and uncomfortable because she connects us with its existential nature – survival and death, deviance, rejection, safety and guilt all inextricably linked. When she or Borat makes us uncomfortable it’s a gift, an opportunity to begin to understand the forces we are unconsciously driven by.