Op-Ed
Cultural Learnings to Make Think America
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Don't Miss Out
November 9, 2006 - 1:00amSacha Baron Cohen tested America’s stomach for satirical critique (and hairy naked men) this week with his “moviefilm” Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. Because the offensive mockumentary is hard to swallow, you won’t be sure whether it’s OK to laugh as Borat crudely exposes American stereotypes. You’ll feel like a horrible person for reveling in its ridiculousness, and yet, you’ll leave wanting more. Critics have raised concerns about the film’s popularity. By exposing these stereotypes, they ask, is Borat inadvertently reaffirming them? My answer to them is simple: the point of a satire is to make its viewers laugh and think. Exposing stereotypes only reaffirms them if you’re laughing at them without thinking about them.
Borat is a universal offender; he exposes nearly every stereotype and excludes no one. By duping people into believing that he’s actually a sexist-racist-anti-Semitic foreign reporter, he manages to reveal the ugliest side of American culture in the funniest way possible. And here’s the most interesting (yet disturbing) part of his shtick: while Cohen is merely acting, the people he interviews are not.
When Borat asks the owner of a gun store, “What’s the best kind for killing Jew?” he was reading a script. But when the storeowner recommends a gun without flinching, it was just — well — natural.
And when a western rodeo guy told Borat to shave his mustache to look less like a terrorist, he wasn’t exactly kidding.
The purpose of the film is to show how ridiculous prejudices and stereotypes are and that Americans still hold them for particular groups. But in using those stereotypes, critics are concerned that Borat might actually be perpetuating them. In making a movie like Borat, Cohen runs the risk of inadvertently promoting what he seeks to condemn.
The way I see it, Borat could evoke three possible reactions from its viewers. You could laugh hysterically and love (almost) every minute, get offended and walk out or enjoy the silliness of its humor without really understanding its irony. The first two reactions are to be expected; it’s the latter that could potentially be dangerous.
The Anti-Defamation League stated: “We hope that everyone who chooses to see the film understands Mr. Cohen’s comedic technique, which is to use humor to unmask the absurd and irrational side of anti-Semitism and other phobias born of ignorance and fear.”
But what if some viewers didn’t see it that way? There is something unnerving about seeing the “running of the Jews” on the big screen and hearing roars of laughter in the audience all around. When I saw it, I certainly laughed. But I also hoped to God that the viewers around me understood the irony in the message, and weren’t reveling in the on-screen defamation of Jews.
Chances are, people got it. I’ll give viewers the benefit of the doubt. Seeing as the movie has received rave reviews in newspapers across the country — not just the liberal northeast — I think it’s safe to say that America understood Sacha Baron Cohen’s gist. If that’s true, then the Borat movie is a “great success!” because it makes us laugh hard and think harder.
If people watched and laughed at Borat but didn’t think about its message, however, that’s when problems could arise. I’m taking a class about the psychology of television and other media, in which we recently discussed the effect of stereotypes on viewers. Significant research has shown that, although the presentation of stereotypes in media won’t change a person’s views, it is very likely to bring that typecast to mind more easily in social situations.
One study was done in order to show the difference in a male’s perception of female societal roles before and after viewing MTV. Male subjects were asked to rank four female roles in order of importance: parent, tax-payer, corporate player and sex-role. Before viewing a stereotypically sexual MTV video, most men named “parent” as the number one female role. After being primed by the video, however, the majority of men listed “sex-role” first.
The Borat movie depicts stereotypes even more severely than MTV, by presenting Jews as money-grubbers or southerners as xenophobes. When we hear the movie lines quoted by college kids over and over again in the coming weeks, might those negative stereotypes come to our minds more easily when we encounter them in social situations?
The answer is no: not if we’re smart enough to think about the movie rather than simply laugh at its slapstick humor. Cohen is a Cambridge scholar who clearly thought deeply about the cultural themes he presented in the movie — that’s what made it brilliant (High-Five!). If we’re thinking critically about why Cohen chose to present the stereotypes, then exposing them shouldn’t have the negative effect that Borat critics are so wary of.
There’s a caveat to the findings from the MTV study mentioned above: “thoughtfulness may override the effect of stereotype activation,” according to my professor for the class.
It’s not Cohen’s responsibility to shield the public from stereotypes so that we don’t think about them. To the contrary: it’s his job to expose those stereotypes so that we do think about them.
Now it’s our responsibility as viewers — particularly young educated viewers — to watch it, think about it and do something to change what’s been exposed. The movie was released to fewer than 1,000 theaters on its opening weekend, only in big cities and near college campuses. Some analysts believe Fox’s rationale was to target cities because Borat’s type of humor might be lost on “Middle America.” Now, though, after making 26 million that weekend, it’s being expanded to over 2,000 theaters, maybe even 2,500. It looks like Americans from all regions want a piece of the hype.
We can only hope that, as the movie attracts more viewers, audiences across America will think about the jokes as hard as they laugh at them. If they do, the movie will be “great success.” And in the words of Borat, “If it not success, I will be execute.”
Missy Kurzweil is a senior in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. She can be contacted at mek37@cornell.edu. Don’t Miss Out appears Thursdays.
BORAT IS THE BOMB
LOVED YOUR ARTICLE. THINK YOU'RE RIGHT ON. SAW THE MOVIE AND LAUGHED (AT MOST OF IT). THE MOVIE DOES MAKE YOU THINK ABOUT RACISM AND BIGOTRY. PERHAPS THAT REALLY DOES MAKE IT A SUCCESS!!