Dad asks, “Did you read Brooks’ column today? It’s so good that I forwarded it to everyone.” As everyone knows, Thursdays are Style and Home section days of the New York Times. Naturally I totally missed the news, because I had to learn how to organize my bookshelves. But Daddy’s rejoicing was setting off some warning bells, so I fished the paper out of the recycling bin.
David Brooks is up in arms about a new form of dangerous comedy, one that makes fun of people (no!), especially “the sorts of people who are guaranteed not to be in the audience.” (In the past, comedy was very respectful of people not in the audience.) It’s all part of the on-going culture war. Man of the people, David Brooks, points his finger at Jon Stewart and Bill Maher, but he saves most of vitriol for Borat.
The genius of Sacha Baron Cohen’s performance is his sycophantic reverence for his audience, his refusal to challenge the sacred cows of the educated bourgeoisie. During the movie, Borat ridicules Pentecostals, gun owners, car dealers, hicks, humorless feminists, the Southern gentry, Southern frat boys, and rodeo cowboys. A safer list it is impossible to imagine.
Cohen understands that when you are telling socially insecure audiences they are superior to their fellow citizens there is no need to be subtle. He also understands that any hint of actually questioning the cultural suppositions of his ticket-buyers — say by ridiculing the pretensions of somebody at a Starbucks or a Whole Foods Market — would fatally mar the self-congratulatory aura of the enterprise.
My eyes have rolled so far back into my head that I’m checking out my own ass.
I’ve seen clips of Borat (it’s on the agenda for date night tomorrow) and quite a lot of episodes of Da Ali G Show. When Cohen was in character as Ali G, he interviewed a lot of east coast Harvard types. He played on white, liberal guilt to get high powered policy wonks and professionals, like C. Everett Koop, to answer the rapper’s stupid questions. Like any good comedian, Cohen makes fun of everybody.
But who cares? Funny is funny. I don’t want my art or my jokes politicized. I don’t care if feminists give this movie a green light, and I don’t care what Brooks thinks about it. If the man tells a good fart joke, then I’m cool.
Brooks seems to think that there is some new breed of leftie, snob comedy. Has he seen Blue Collar TV on Comedy Central? They’ve got one guy on there who just goes by “Larry the Cable Guy.” Ron White is especially excellent. “You ever go into the john and take a dump so big that when you come out, you’ve dropped a notch on your belt?” And then he goes on from there.
Apt. 11d 
You’ll like Borat. 😉 I howled. You should especially like the wrestling scene.
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Brooksie’s just jealous. And Borat’s teh funny.
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The thing about Borat that feels wrong is that while other comics abuse people’s flaws and weaknesses, Cohen’s humor works by abusing very ordinary people’s tolerance, hospitality, and kindness. (Staging is probably an issue, but he is obviously using a lot of total innocents.) So, Brooks does have a very good point about the safety of Cohen’s humor. If you start asking bizarre and insulting questions of a group of genteel elderly Southerners who are hosting you at a wine tasting, exactly what risk are you running? But try the same with a different demographic, and someone will assuredly deck you (or much worse). And indeed, Cohen had a recent experience in NYC where one of his “victims” repeatedly punched him in the face.
I also think that Cohen doesn’t get what he’s doing–from what I’ve read, he think he’s doing this expose of people’s deep hidden bigotry. Now and again, he does seem to get lucky and find a real genuine anti-Semite, but most of the time, what’s happening is that nice people are just saying yes to whatever the crazy foreigner is saying, and just hoping he’ll go away. So even if he doesn’t realize that that’s what he’s doing, his main target is American niceness. It is possible for this niceness to go too far (as Cohen shows), but the country would be unbearable without it.
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I could care less about who a satirist targets, or whether there’s any “bias” in who they go after; if the result is funny, then it’s funny. My problem with comedy acts like Borat’s is that I just plain can’t handle humiliation, whether it’s experienced by the comedian or by his or her targets. I’ll laugh at it, but I’ll also cover my eyes, hide my face, mutter “don’t say it, don’t do it!,” etc. I don’t know why. It’s not primarily a principled religious thing like Hugo’s angry reaction to the movie, though I agree with him in my general dislike of the kind of heartlessness often involved in such comedy. (I don’t like Mencken, either.) I think it’s more that I just don’t like the feeling of being completely paralyzed, of being overwhelmed by a situation and not having any kind of control or response, of just having to endure something horrible or ludicrous. (I see that Amy just wrote that Borat’s real target is “niceness,” drawing a mean humor out of the fact that most of us really will allow ourselves to be astonished and humiliated. I think that’s pretty much exactly it, for me.)
I haven’t watched Blue Collar TV is a while (we don’t have cable at present). I didn’t care for the TV show that much; too many lame commercial parodies. But when those guys just stand up and go at it, it’s pretty hilarious.
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While I laughed at some of the stuff on Ali G- mostly his hijinks with bigwigs whose handlers should have known better- I can’t see Borat. The commercials make me cringe. Humiliation doesn’t feel funny to me. I don’t think Cohen is out to educate, I think he is out to make a buck. This is Jack-Ass for grown-ups.
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For a further discussion on why SBC’s comedy may be problematic, try googling “Right Reason” Borat. Right Reason, a philosophy blog, has a long discussion thread on the subject. Right Reason is an evil conservative blog, by the way.
My plan is to see it on DVD, not in the theater.
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By the way, the discussion is really good on the website RAF links to.
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There’s a fairly long tradition of making fun of people who aren’t in on the joke. Candid Camera comes to mind, but there are surely lots of other examples. Also, the dupes in the movie had to sign consent form to agree to have their images on screen. They must have been okay with the jokes.
I have to be in the right mood for comedy/humiliation. On some days, even Seinfeld makes me uncomfortable, so I get not wanting to see the movie for that reason. My sister said that’s why she’s giving the movie a miss.
OK, let me check out those links.
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Laura I think you are right about a huge segment of people thinking this is funny- Candid Camera, America’s Funniest Home Videos, etc. I couldn’t watch those either because they make just feel sorry for the people who are the object of mockery. And I agree that at some points Seinfeld wasn’t funny, but just mean.
I read the dupes signed up to be in a documentary about America. They didn’t know it was satire. One guy was fired from his job because he made his business look bad- I think it was a tv reporter, though I am not sure.
But really I can’t be too high and mighty because I used to laugh my ass off at Punk’d on MTV.
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I find the Borat concept extremely unfunny, for the same reason Russel describes — I’ve never found humiliation of ordinary people (as opposed, to say, Bush, or Rumsfeld) at all amusing. But, that’s me, I don’t draw any political lesson from the fact that some find it funny. I don’t think anything has changed about humor, and that pundits are always in a dangerous place when they sa that we’re at the dawn of a new age (of humiliation, or cooperation, or aquarius).
bj
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I’ve never watched America’s Funniest Home Videos, or Jackass, or any of those old Candid Camera, Bloopers, or Practical Joke shows. Well, I take that back; I think I did watch the one with Ed McMahon and Dick Clark way, way back when. But in general, the premise just didn’t appeal to me. I guess Laura’s description of herself as having to be in the mood for humiliation-as-comedy fits me; I’m just in that mood fairly rarely. (But then, if I really couldn’t ever handle humiliation, then I could never enjoy farces, which I often do. I mean, what was Fraiser accept a pompous fool getting egg on his face, episdoe after episode after episode? So, even my dislike of satirical meanness–which isn’t the same as black comedy in general, which I usually like–is pretty subjective.)
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Well, it was in worse taste than Animal House, but I laughed harded than any movie I can think of since the first time I saw Life of Brian. (And I fell off the couch in the middle of that one.)
There is a pretty big omg factor involved. Are they really going to do that? Did they really just do that? Yes and yes and for much longer, much more absurdly than you would have thought possible. I don’t know how they’re doing TV commercials because so much is never going to get past the FCC.
(v minor spoilers, prob less than TV commercials)
Some of the real people hold up pretty well. I mean he’s just shown his etiquette coach pornographic pictures of himself, and she barely misses a beat before she says, “I don’t think you should show those at the dinner.” She’s unflappable, and it’s funny anyway because it’s so absurd.
Or the long-ish dialogue in the Hummer about where exactly the pussy magnet is located. And the salesman, having answered Borat’s question “What cars help me attract women shaved down there” with “That’d be the Corvette and the Hummer”, now tries to dig himself out by explaining that there is no such magnet, which Borat patiently refuses to accept, sure that it must be a misunderstanding.
(end of v minor spoilers)
Whoever fired someone over the weatherman sequence (also exquisitely timed and howlingly funny) is a jerk and a blowhard.
A friend of mine interviewed folks in the Romanian village that’s supposed to be Borat’s home. (Article for the FT unf behind firewall.) They’re pretty pissed, too, seems they didn’t earn much. And their village’s name translates as “Mud,” so there’s that as well. And some things show Borat’s closer than one might think: the mayor of the region said, “These Gypsies would sell their own fathers for money.” Who’s political now?
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Your comments have been spammed.
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Why should David Brooks object to “humourless feminists”, anyway? Surely that’s one of the conservative’s favourite strawpeople (persons)?
There’s just no gratitude!
(And it’s a bit of a hoot that a feminist who does object to Borat is a male… no wonder the right winger are confused!)
Or the long-ish dialogue in the Hummer about where exactly the pussy magnet is located.
Coffee on keyboard moment. I am definitely seeing the movie now.
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Sorry, that should be “right wingers”, plural
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