The new TV ads for the cutting-edge reality comedy Borat focus on shots of packed opening-weekend audiences stunned into silence by some hugely offensive statements about women, Jews, gays or slavery, then breaking into convulsive laughter. On the phone from Los Angeles, producer Jay Roach said the filmmakers knew they would get this reaction: "We tested and tested it with audiences."
The testing proved that most audiences would respond with exasperation at Borat's racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism and misogyny, while retaining their sympathy for the clueless Kazakh TV reporter making a documentary about America and becoming obsessed with Pamela Anderson along the way.
Of course, the B'nai B'rith, the Russian government and other, less-vocal, groups have registered everything from sheer outrage to worry over whether some audiences will take Borat's antics straight. Russia, in fact, has announced a ban on the film, out of concern for the feelings of neighboring Kazakhstan.
The uproar mystifies seasoned cinematic provocateur John Waters, who says the film "gives us a politically correct way of being politically incorrect." Talking to Roach, a director of such mainstream smashes as the Austin Powers and Meet the Parents movies, you feel Waters nailed it. "There is an aspect of political correctness which is correct," Roach says. "People should be more respectful of others." But Roach thinks political correctness can mask the "social dysfunction and ignorance" that breed racial and ethnic stereotypes, until they become more mysterious and "much more sinister."
The glory of Borat, says Roach, is that Sacha Baron Cohen "plays a proud idiot who has idiotic attitudes, so the audience gets that anti-Semitism and misogyny are a backward set of superstitions or fears." As a buffoon, Borat has a license to kill social and political fears and prejudices with his comedy. Whether he's asking an all-too-helpful gun-shop owner for the best weapon to use on Jews or cajoling a van full of drunken frat boys into waxing nostalgic about slavery, "What he's doing is outing the dysfunction in our culture." As Borat, Baron Cohen makes U.S. audiences uncomfortable with their own complicity in the dark side of America. Then he dispels their awkwardness with his comedy.
L.A.-based critic David Ehrenstein - the half-Jewish, half-Catholic, African-American and gay author of a history of gays in Hollywood, Open Secret - agrees with Roach: "Borat throws a wild card into a culture that's become increasingly monolithic and authoritarian."
