Maybe I should post this under the Jesus Silverman thread–but bloggengruppenfuhrer Chakladar can make that decision later, if he so chooses. Borat lives! Given our conversation there about ‘mocking’ racism, I’m curious how people respond to Sascha Baron Cohen’s trio of disruptive personae? In particular, Borat, getting a crowd of country-western fans to sing “Throw the Jew Down the Well”….
For the trivia fans: Seth Rogen was writing for Da Ali G Show… and I hear Borat will be the star of his own film in the not-distant future.
i like you, do you like me?
as i once said to some other people, i’m hesitant to read too much into what borat gets people to “reveal” about themselves. i love the character but i think the only thing he really consistently reveals is the extent to which people these days are willing to be embarassed or just baffled rather than correct the foreigner with a camera present. even racists are politically correct–i think the best thing about “throw the jew down the well” is how he slowly strips away their resistance to singing along.
that said, i think borat’s form of mocking racism is of a different order than that of the l.a hipster comic’s. for one thing cohen completely inhabits the character. borat goes out among people who are often themselves unapologetically racist, and what’s more, borat himself is viciously, casually racist–so you don’t get to identify easily with the innocent/hipster among the racists (not that all the episodes are about race in a central kind of way). i think what makes the character so disruptive is that he is so likeable, and as audience we want to identify with him, and we ourselves in a sense look past his hatred of jews and gypsies.
i feel for the people of kazakhstan though.
That’s a really good point about never breaking frame: Borat, Ali G, Bruno–the key is that, even in the very rare interviews, we get almost no sense of someone laughing behind the personae.
However, while the country song might not be perfect, there are at least a few instances where Cohen’s alter egos do provoke (or allow?) some revelation–it’s not merely politeness or political correctness preventing a challenge to the character’s outrages. Out on the campaign trail with a conservative Republican, Borat’s misogyny gets the candidate and the voters riled up but confused–it seems less political correctness than uncertainty about the extremity of his rhetoric, as he just piggybacks on things they’re already saying. Bruno did this amazing thing with Spring Break boys, getting them to yell, strip, strut–before saying that the film was for a gay show in Austria, and acting surprised that they were surprised. Ali G is perhaps my least favorite “character,” but can be the most effective at unravelling pretense–particularly in the ’roundtables’ he sets up. (I remember one about Christianity where I thought this priest was going to belt him.)
Ah, Kazakhstan.
I think there is an ultimate question posed implicitly by much of this comedy: whether racism will be addressed by the pious renunciation of all hatred, even the possibility that one might harbor hatred, or rather will it be burned through by acknowledging the secular original sin everyone shares–that of fearing the “other” in some way–and, by acknowledging this shared “sin,” to disarm it and move past it. Perhaps the difference between renouncing all “excess” and therefore forever being tempted by the bottle of bourbon, the needle, whatever, because they pose an endless temptation to open vistas of self-knowledge and transcendence—or by embracing the excess, annihilating the censor temporarily, stripping the forbidden of its mystery and, out of sheer satisfaction, even sheer boredom, moving beyond the desire for indulgence.
There’s a great scene in 25 hours (?) by Spike Lee where the central character recites a litany of every racial group in New York that he hates–then he concludes by naming himself. beyond that point, there’s really no place to go. Well, if you were happy, you really wouldn’t be bothered by “the other†would you? Racism is an expression of thwarted happiness—it has been prevented by the other, and, because the other can be eliminated (in the fantasy life of the racist, or in the actual genocidal madness of a group that imagines itself to be oppressed), it’s still attainable. The smart comedian—when faced with the recognition that racism is living turned upside down, rather than a coherent doctrine to be denounced from a podium—makes a performance of racism which, by its self-consciousness, opposes the essence of genuine racism, its self-containment and refusal to recognize an “audience†of others.
I don’t know how really to define the fine line that separates an Andrew Dice Clay from a Sarah Silverman (or a Don Rickles, for that matter). Andrew Dice Clay plays directly to the essential “node†of resentment, the aggrieved part of the consciousness that imagines itself besieged by others, while Don Rickles (yes, Don Rickles!) plays to the part of consciousness that recognizes (dimly or more actively) its affinity with the other, who knows to some degree that hatred of the other is hatred of the self, a recognition of its stunted possibilities, and that the random and exuberant play with stereotypes puts their dirty little secrets into the spotlight and dissolves their false autonomy. Old comedy, from a certain point of view, appears reactionary—but the shtick perfected by that Jew Kafka and handed down in the Catskills and New York nightclubs plays with racism, and racism can’t abide play. Part of the test is intuitive—andrew dice clay is not funny, while Lenny Bruce is. You can’t make funny material that at its very heart is completely opposed to the play of comedy. Why is totalitarianism so afraid of the joke? George Bush is an instructive hybrid [see kafka’s “Crossbreed (a Sport)â€]—he is pulled toward humor as a demonstration of his shared humanity but he can’t quite carry it off because too much of his psyche owes its existence to the humorless dominance of corporate/military power. Jokes freeze in mid-sentence or trail off into incoherence. The impulse toward humor reveals that we are not quite entirely lost yet; the inability to achieve actual humor means that we’d better start exploding some ideological bedrock.
You’re lucky—one more glass of merlot and I’d go on even longer!
Like Paul Giamatti’s character in ‘Sideways’ I usually try to avoid drinking Merlot, but maybe I’ll try some now. Great post. This captures the difference between Silverman and Dice Clay perfectly. Perhaps it is unique to Oberlin (it is not) but the notion of racism as original sin, and the solution as something approaching public self criticism, is exactly what separates Frisoli’s two approaches to racism. And Edward Norton in ’25th Hour’ (a wonderful film, and maybe my favorite Spike Lee) exemplifies the self-hatred that underpins a certain kind of racism.
thank you, Chris. I have not yet seen Sideways–what’s he got against Merlot? I feel the same way about 25th hour–I have no idea why it didn’t get more attention, perhaps because spike lee’s stock had fallen when he was no longer a more simplistic provocateur.
Thanks, too, for the following tactic, which I plan to adopt: “Perhaps it is unique to Oberlin (it is not)…”–slipping in my definitive statements on the sly! it also reminds me of the ending of a beckett story “Dante and the Lobster” Dante puts the lobster in the pot of boiling water, and I paraphrase “At least it’s a quick death. It is not.”
deleted scenes from the upcoming borat movie–which cannot get here soon enough. here is borat enquiring about dog adoption at a shelter (you’ll see links to the others on the side).
I want to second Chris’s comment. Michael, that was a great comment. Yes, it’s been a year since you posted it, but I know that like a fine Merlot, your comments get better with age. So I waited.
An ad for the soundtrack to the Borat film is here. Just scroll down to “Borat commercial.”
Thanks, John…I can’t believe that was a year ago, seems like yesterday!
The half hour Comedy Special extended ad for the Borat movie last night was very funny. As usual, the humor was almost painful as the viewer watches for the reaction to Borat’s offensiveness. A scene where he sings the Kazakh national anthem at an American rodeo is priceless. I watched the special nervously with my 13 year old son, knowing that it was borderline inappropriate, but wanting someone to share it with. My son doubled over with laughter at the last line. Borat faces the camera and says that at first the Kazakh film censors were concerned about the amount of anti-semitism in the movie, but they eventually decided that there was enough.
I know what you mean about sharing with sons and all those finger-waggers worried about “inappropriate” and “irresponsible” and “sick.” I shared the plans Max and I have for Halloween with some “friends,” and–whoa. Very judgmental.
I will be going as Mark Foley, and Max will be a page.
Inappropriate would you as the page and Max as Foley.