Thursday, November 30, 2006

The more I think about Sasha Baron Cohen's movie Borat the more I become ambivalent about its major themes. It seems kind of crass to create a character who is based on stereotypes of third world countries. I did laugh in the theater like everyone else but later on I've been feeling an inscrutable guilt. These real life people, American citizens, were lampooned at their own expense. It seems that the premise of the movie was too easy, that it was too easy to make fun of these people and to not delve into their more dynamic qualities. Everyone went home after the Southern dinner party scene to live their lives with the same vigor and compulsion that we all do. We laugh at them but we cant laugh at ourselves.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

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- Joe