tivoed NIGHTLINE last night, and they have devoted five insightful
not laudatory minutes to Borax:
And today this NYT columnist publicizes the phenomenon critically:
And it's all spelled P-U-B-L-I-C-I-T-Y (just spell it correctly, as the
cliche goes)
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/11/11/opinion/11tierney.html?hp
the Yokels
E-MailPrint Save By JOHN TIERNEY
Published: November 11, 2006
I realize I'm supposed to be worried about the dangerous tendencies
of the Americans caught on film in "Borat." But I'm more
concerned about the Americans sitting in the audience laughing.
Skip to next paragraph
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
John Tierney.
E-Mail John Tierney
Columnist Page
Podcasts
Audio Versions of Op-Ed Columns
TimesSelect subscribers can listen to a reading of the day's Op-Ed
columns.
Yes, it's a funny movie - I was howling along with everyone else.
Yes, Sacha Baron Cohen is a comic master. On "Da Ali G Show," he
was an equal-opportunity skewer of hip-hop artists, fashionistas and
pretentious talking heads. He was a television star making fun of
television icons and gaseous poseurs.
But "Borat" is more like the class bully picking on the nerds. The
hip urbanite ventures into flyover country disguised as a Kazakh yokel
to see how the American yokels respond. Are the rednecks just as
barbaric?
Considering everything Cohen does to them - running naked through a
hotel, smashing merchandise in a store, calling a man's wife ugly,
presenting a bag of feces at a dinner party - the biggest shock is
how politely they respond. Borat manages to goad several people into
endorsing his appalling views, but most of the Americans come off as
decent souls just trying to be nice to a weird foreigner.
The people of Kazakhstan are not so lucky. They're depicted as
rapists and prostitutes, bigots and idiots. I instinctively side with
comedians when the antidefamation police come after them, but in this
case I sympathize with the Kazakhs angry at becoming the new global
Polack joke. The country has enough problems as is.
I wish Cohen had instead invented a country like Molvania, the subject
of the hilarious Jetlag Travel Guide published two years ago. The basic
riff is the same as Cohen's - a visit to an impoverished hellhole
of a country that used to be part of the Soviet Union. Molvania is "A
Land Untouched by Modern Dentistry," blessed with a form of folk
music that is unique because of its "emphasis on volume over
melody."
Its patron saint's day is celebrated with "parades, masses and an
international arms fair." In the Miss Molvania pageant, women in
nurse uniforms parade on a "specially reinforced stage." Beggars
offer piggyback rides - "a charming local custom and the stamina of
these emaciated vagrants is nothing short of amazing." The
traditional greeting when entering a house is, "Don't shoot."
The humor is more deft than in "Borat" - and easier to enjoy
because there aren't real Molvanians sitting through a mockery of
their national anthem. The Molvanians have their brutal side:
witch-burning is still legal, and the annual Running of the Bulls
features a frightened herd of cows fleeing from a group of heavily
armed men, followed by a barbecue.
But there's nothing as buffoonish as the Running of the Jew in
"Borat." What bothers me most about the movie is its premise: that
villagers who have not embraced Western values are violently
anti-Semitic, racist, homophobic and misogynistic. Borat is an absurd
caricature, but we wouldn't laugh if we didn't think there was some
truth to the stereotype of the morally backward peasant.
This is the stereotype that arouses Westerners to become missionaries,
and it's not just Christians going out to redeem the peasants.
There's also a secular version of this impulse. The anthropologist
Richard Shweder calls it "imperial liberalism": the pressure on
third world countries to mandate Western notions of individual rights
even when they conflict with local customs and family traditions.
If you went into a real Kazakh village (as opposed to the one in
"Borat," which was actually in Romania), you'd find a lot of
people - women as well as men - who frown on American values. They
admire some of our freedoms and rights, but they also see the flip side
of Western individualism: weaker families. They feel sorry for all the
children separated from parents, all the adults living alone.
You'd also find plenty of villagers eager to import Western
technology, like the iPods coveted by the villagers in "Borat," and
eager to educate their children so they can have opportunities beyond
the village. As the children move to cities, they'll become richer
and adopt Western values on their own.
In the meantime, they don't need our guidance, let alone sneers from
a Cambridge-educated comic affecting moral superiority. Some Kazakhs
are trying to defend their country's honor by pointing to the
country's high rate of literacy and low rate of anti-Semitism, but
they know they can't compete with Hollywood. As long as we make the
movies, the laugh's on them.
Next Article in Opinion (6 of 14) »Related Articles
Kazakhs Shrug at 'Borat' While the State Fumes (September 28, 2006)
BOLDFACE (December 23, 2005)Related Searches
KazakhstanCohen, Sacha BaronThird World and Developing CountriesComedy
and HumorNext Article in Opinion (6 of 14) »
Inside
NYTimes.com
Fashion & Style » Technology » Travel » Books »
Burning Man Spreads Its Flame
PlayStation 3 on Rescue Mission
- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -
Robert Cohen wrote:
> Frat-Rats Sue Bo-Rat
> via the drudge report, i just saw this, and it's too ...uh...much fun
> to not post its link
> prediction: It's publicity (however true it may be), and Cohen will
> settle out of court in a coupla years after milking the controvery's
> publicity
> Robert Cohen wrote:
>> Depiction in 'Borat' doesn't do Kazakhstan justice
>> By KAMAL FATEHI
>> HASH(0x6208a0)
>> Published on: 11/08/06 by ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION (and probably
>> copyrighted)
>> Often, when people in the entertainment business want to tell a story
>> about an overseas country, they will make one up. A good example is
>> "Syriana," a story about Middle Eastern oil, which was set in a
>> fictional country with a name that sounded something like Syria.
>> But when Sasha Baron Cohen invented his character "Borat," he didn't
>> make up a country. He decided Borat should be from the former Soviet
>> republic of Kazakhstan.
>> Special
>> (ENLARGE)
>> Kamal Fatehi visits a marketplace during his stay in Kazakhstan as a
>> Fulbright scholar. 'None of what is portrayed in the movie is what I
>> have seen,' he writes.
>> Before Cohen's movie, "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make
>> Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan", came out, many people had
>> probably never heard of, or at least paid much attention to,
>> Kazakhstan. Even some of my well-educated colleagues cannot
>> differentiate it from the other former Soviet republics, which include
>> Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
>> I once heard a colleague lump Kazakhstan in with the other post-Soviet
>> states, referring to them as "all of those 'stan' countries," since
>> some of them end in "stan."
>> "Why call them 'stan' countries?" I asked. "You don't say all of those
>> 'land' countries. We have Holland, Poland, Switzerland, Iceland,
>> Finland . . . you differentiate among those countries."
>> After all, the terms "stan" and "estan" mean "land."
>> Kazakhstan's relative obscurity may be what made it an easy target for
>> Cohen's quirky humor. After all, if his fictional journalist came from
>> Russia, people would already have images and preconceptions of what
>> Russia, and Russians, are like. But meeting someone from Kazakhstan
>> would be so unusual that people wouldn't know what to expect, making
>> them easier targets.
>> Unfortunately, many people may not realize that Borat's Kazakhstan is
>> simply a joke. Since the punch lines are all they know about
>> Kazakhstan, their misconceptions may linger.
>> In reality, none of what is portrayed in the movie is what I have seen.
>> Kazakhstan is a rapidly modernizing country. The people are highly
>> educated. Right now, European and American universities, in cooperation
>> with Kazakh universities, are offering graduate programs of various
>> types.
>> Many American and European oil companies are operating there. One of
>> the largest recent discoveries of oil is in Kazakhstan; some predict it
>> could be larger than oil resources in Kuwait. The nation may become one
>> of the world's top oil exporters in the next decade.
>> Kazakhstan's cities are very modern. Astana became the capital in 1995.
>> It was chosen because it is near the center of the country, and it was
>> built from the ground up, similar to Brasilia, Brazil. Everything there
>> is modern, and of the highest quality.
>> The largest city is the former capital of Almaty, formerly known as
>> Alma Ata. I stayed in a high-rise hotel in Almaty that was as modern as
>> any Hyatt hotel in the United States and Europe.
>> Alma Ata means "father of apple," and for good reason. Scientists say
>> that the first apples as we know them today appeared here. As the Wall
>> Street Journal reported in 2003, researchers are now trying to breed
>> the characteristics of Kazakhstan's wild apples into the modern fruit
>> to make them resistant to pesticides and disease, helping the global
>> apple industry.
>> I wanted to see the wild apple orchards when I went to Kazakhstan as a
>> Fulbright scholar. They are closed except for scientific purposes, but
>> I was allowed in. It was an incredible experience to stand among the
>> thousands of wild apple trees.
>> Kazakhstan's economy is improving
...
read more »
Reply »
16 From: Robert Cohen - view profile
Date: Thurs, Nov 16 2006 2:20 pm
Email: "Robert Cohen"
msn.com>
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David Brooks the NY TIMES call-u-mist and PBS NEWS HOUR gratuitous
kibbitzer also unloads borax onto Borat:
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/11/16/opinion/16brooks.html?hp
Op-Ed Columnist
The Heyday of Snobbery
E-MailPrint Save By DAVID BROOKS
Published: November 16, 2006
And so we enter the era of mass condescension. Thanks to the creativity
of our cultural entrepreneurs, we enter a time when we can gather in
large groups and look down at our mental, social and spiritual
inferiors.
Skip to next paragraph
David Brooks.
The Way We Live Now
Send Your Comments About This Column
The columnist posts about issues that shape his perspective and
addresses reader feedback.
Readers' Comments »
Columnist Page »
Podcasts
Audio Versions of Op-Ed Columns
TimesSelect subscribers can listen to a reading of the day's Op-Ed
columns.
In retrospect, it's easy to see how this cultural moment crept up on
us. There is "American Idol," which allows the millions to watch
Simon Cowell ridicule people who don't realize how talentless they
are. There is the middle segment of "The Daily Show," during which
correspondents sometimes go out and use postmodern interviewing
techniques to humiliate rural goobers who think they were abducted by
aliens or some such.
Then there is the rise of culture-war comedians whose jokes heap scorn
on the sorts of people who are guaranteed not to be in the audience.
("Megachurches," Bill Maher joked recently on HBO, "are presided
over by the same skeevy door-to-door Bible salesmen that we've always
had, just in an age of better technology. But they're selling the
same thing: fear. Fear to keep you in line."
One could list other precursors and signs of the times: network
magazine shows that taught TV professionals to use the power of ambush
and editing to dominate their non-media-savvy prey; the "Jackass"
movies, which acclimatized audiences to the mixture of suffering and
laughter. But, of course, the crowning glory of the current moment is
the "Borat" movie, an explosively funny rube-baiting session
orchestrated by a hilarious bully.
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.
Cohen also knows how to rig an unfair fight, and to then ring maximum
humiliation and humor out of each situation. The core of his movie is
that he and his audience know he is playing a role, and this gives him,
and them, power over the less sophisticated stooges who don't. The
world becomes divided between the club of those who are in on the joke,
and the excluded rubes who aren't. The more tolerant the simpletons
try to be toward Borat, the more he drags them into the realm of
anti-Semitism and vileness. The more hospitable they try to be, the
dumber they appear for not understanding the situation.
In a society as fluid as ours, snobbery is constantly changing form,
and in the latest wave of condescension media, various strains come
together. We Jews know all about Borat's Jewish snobbery - based on
the assumption that Middle America's acceptance of Jews must be a
mirage, and that underneath every Rotarian there must be a Cossack
about to unleash a continental pogrom.
There's also that distinct style of young person's snobbery. Young
people haven't accomplished much yet so they can only elevate
themselves by endlessly celebrating their own superior sensibilities.
Finally, there's blue America snobbery, as people on the coasts try
to fathom those who would vote for George W. Bush. The only logical
explanation is that they are racist, anti-Semitic idiots who can be
blamelessly ridiculed.
I suspect this wave of condescension media will repel as many people as
it thrills. But it does illustrate an interesting shift in the culture.
Eighty years ago, H. L. Mencken's magazines, The Smart Set and The
American Mercury, ridiculed exactly the same targets as today's
condescension mavens: evangelicals, Middle American boobs, etc. (I
actually think today's comedians are funnier than Mencken, though
that may be a matter of taste.)
Then, the condescending Menckenites were a small, educated sect, much
less popular than the romantics who celebrated the Middle American
common man in novels, movies and fanfares. Now, however, the Mencken
sensibility is a mass phenomenon, found on networks and in multiplexes
all across the country. We've democratized snobbery and turned it
into a consumption item for the vast educated class. Popular culture
has traveled from "The Grapes of Wrath" to Borat the magnificent.
Next Article in Opinion (5 of 11) »Related Searches
Social Conditions and TrendsCohen, Sacha Baron
- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -
Robert Cohen wrote:> I tivoed NIGHTLINE last night, and they have devoted five insightful
> not laudatory minutes to Borax:
> And today this NYT columnist publicizes the phenomenon critically:
> And it's all spelled P-U-B-L-I-C-I-T-Y (just spell it correctly, as the
> cliche goes)
> the Yokels
> E-MailPrint Save By JOHN TIERNEY
> Published: November 11, 2006
> I realize I'm supposed to be worried about the dangerous tendencies
> of the Americans caught on film in "Borat." But I'm more
> concerned about the Americans sitting in the audience laughing.
> Skip to next paragraph
> Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
> John Tierney.
> E-Mail John Tierney
> Columnist Page
> Podcasts
> Audio Versions of Op-Ed Columns
> TimesSelect subscribers can listen to a reading of the day's Op-Ed
> columns.
> Yes, it's a funny movie - I was howling along with everyone else.
> Yes, Sacha Baron Cohen is a comic master. On "Da Ali G Show," he
> was an equal-opportunity skewer of hip-hop artists, fashionistas and
> pretentious talking heads. He was a television star making fun of
> television icons and gaseous poseurs.
> But "Borat" is more like the class bully picking on the nerds. The
> hip urbanite ventures into flyover country disguised as a Kazakh yokel
> to see how the American yokels respond. Are the rednecks just as
> barbaric?
> Considering everything Cohen does to them - running naked through a
> hotel, smashing merchandise in a store, calling a man's wife ugly,
> presenting a bag of feces at a dinner party - the biggest shock is
> how politely they respond. Borat manages to goad several people into
> endorsing his appalling views, but most of the Americans come off as
> decent souls just trying to be nice to a weird foreigner.
> The people of Kazakhstan are not so lucky. They're depicted as
> rapists and prostitutes, bigots and idiots. I instinctively side with
> comedians when the antidefamation police come after them, but in this
> case I sympathize with the Kazakhs angry at becoming the new global
> Polack joke. The country has enough problems as is.
> I wish Cohen had instead invented a country like Molvania, the subject
> of the hilarious Jetlag Travel Guide published two years ago. The basic
> riff is the same as Cohen's - a visit to an impoverished hellhole
> of a country that used to be part of the Soviet Union. Molvania is "A
> Land Untouched by Modern Dentistry," blessed with a form of folk
> music that is unique because of its "emphasis on volume over
> melody."
> Its patron saint's day is celebrated with "parades, masses and an
> international arms fair." In the Miss Molvania pageant, women in
> nurse uniforms parade on a "specially reinforced stage." Beggars
> offer piggyback rides - "a charming local custom and the stamina of
> these emaciated vagrants is nothing short of amazing." The
> traditional greeting when entering a house is, "Don't shoot."
> The humor is more deft than in "Borat" - and easier to enjoy
> because there aren't real Molvanians sitting through a mockery of
> their national anthem. The Molvanians have their brutal side:
> witch-burning is still legal, and the annual Running of the Bulls
> features a frightened herd of cows fleeing from a group of heavily
> armed men, followed by a barbecue.
> But there's nothing as buffoonish as the Running of the Jew in
> "Borat." What bothers me most about the movie is its premise: that
> villagers who have not embraced Western values are violently
> anti-Semitic, racist, homophobic and misogynistic. Borat is an absurd
> caricature, but we wouldn't laugh if we didn't think there was some
> truth to the stereotype of the morally backward peasant.
> This is the stereotype that arouses Westerners to become missionaries,
> and it's not just Christians going out to redeem the peasants.
> There's also a secular version of this impulse. The anthropologist
> Richard Shweder calls it "imperial liberalism": the pressure on
> third world countries to mandate Western notions of individual rights
> even when they conflict with local customs and family traditions.
> If you went into a real Kazakh village (as opposed to the one in
> "Borat," which was actually in Romania), you'd find a lot of
> people - women as well as men - who frown on American values. They
> admire some of our freedoms and rights, but they also see the flip side
> of Western individualism: weaker families. They feel sorry for all the
> children separated from parents, all the adults living alone.
> You'd also find plenty of villagers eager
...
read more »
Reply »
17 From: Robert Cohen - view profile
Date: Mon, Nov 20 2006 10:13 am
Email: "Robert Cohen"
msn.com>
Groups: alt.fan.letterman
Not yet ratedRating:
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original | Remove | Report Abuse | Find messages by this author
This is also more of a sermon than a movie review:
http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/Column.aspx?ContentGuid=67b461eb-f...
- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -
Robert Cohen wrote:> David Brooks the NY TIMES call-u-mist and PBS NEWS HOUR gratuitous
> kibbitzer also unloads borax onto Borat:
> Op-Ed Columnist
> The Heyday of Snobbery
> E-MailPrint Save By DAVID BROOKS
> Published: November 16, 2006
> And so we enter the era of mass condescension. Thanks to the creativity
> of our cultural entrepreneurs, we enter a time when we can gather in
> large groups and look down at our mental, social and spiritual
> inferiors.
> Skip to next paragraph
> David Brooks.
> The Way We Live Now
> Send Your Comments About This Column
> The columnist posts about issues that shape his perspective and
> addresses reader feedback.
> Readers' Comments »
> Columnist Page »
> Podcasts
> Audio Versions of Op-Ed Columns
> TimesSelect subscribers can listen to a reading of the day's Op-Ed
> columns.
> In retrospect, it's easy to see how this cultural moment crept up on
> us. There is "American Idol," which allows the millions to watch
> Simon Cowell ridicule people who don't realize how talentless they
> are. There is the middle segment of "The Daily Show," during which
> correspondents sometimes go out and use postmodern interviewing
> techniques to humiliate rural goobers who think they were abducted by
> aliens or some such.
> Then there is the rise of culture-war comedians whose jokes heap scorn
> on the sorts of people who are guaranteed not to be in the audience.
> ("Megachurches," Bill Maher joked recently on HBO, "are presided
> over by the same skeevy door-to-door Bible salesmen that we've always
> had, just in an age of better technology. But they're selling the
> same thing: fear. Fear to keep you in line."
> One could list other precursors and signs of the times: network
> magazine shows that taught TV professionals to use the power of ambush
> and editing to dominate their non-media-savvy prey; the "Jackass"
> movies, which acclimatized audiences to the mixture of suffering and
> laughter. But, of course, the crowning glory of the current moment is
> the "Borat" movie, an explosively funny rube-baiting session
> orchestrated by a hilarious bully.
> 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.
> Cohen also knows how to rig an unfair fight, and to then ring maximum
> humiliation and humor out of each situation. The core of his movie is
> that he and his audience know he is playing a role, and this gives him,
> and them, power over the less sophisticated stooges who don't. The
> world becomes divided between the club of those who are in on the joke,
> and the excluded rubes who aren't. The more tolerant the simpletons
> try to be toward Borat, the more he drags them into the realm of
> anti-Semitism and vileness. The more hospitable they try to be, the
> dumber they appear for not understanding the situation.
> In a society as fluid as ours, snobbery is constantly changing form,
> and in the latest wave of condescension media, various strains come
> together. We Jews know all about Borat's Jewish snobbery - based on
> the assumption that Middle America's acceptance of Jews must be a
> mirage, and that underneath every Rotarian there must be a Cossack
> about to unleash a continental pogrom.
> There's also that distinct style of young person's snobbery. Young
> people haven't accomplished much yet so they can only elevate
> themselves by endlessly celebrating their own superior sensibilities.
> Finally, there's blue America snobbery, as people on the coasts try
> to fathom those who would vote for George W. Bush. The only logical
> explanation is that they are racist, anti-Semitic idiots who can be
> blamelessly ridiculed.
> I suspect this wave of condescension media will repel as many people as
> it thrills. But it does illustrate an interesting shift in the culture.
> Eighty years ago, H. L. Mencken's magazines, The Smart Set and The
> American Mercury, ridiculed exactly the same targets as today's
> condescension mavens: evangelicals, Middle American boobs, etc. (I
> actually think today's comedians are funnier than Mencken, though
> that may be a matter of taste.)
> Then, the condescending Menckenites were a small, educated sect, much
> less popular than the romantics who celebrated the Middle American
> common man in novels, movies and fanfares. Now, however, the Mencken
> sensibility is a mass phenomenon, found on networks and in multiplexes
> all across the country. We've democratized snobbery and turned it
> into a consumption item for the vast educated class. Popular culture
> has traveled from "The Grapes of Wrath" to Borat the magnificent.
> Next Article in Opinion (5 of 11) »Related Searches
> Social Conditions and TrendsCohen, Sacha Baron
> Robert Cohen wrote:
>> I tivoed NIGHTLINE last night, and they have devoted five insightful
>> not laudatory minutes to Borax:
>> And today this NYT columnist publicizes the phenomenon critically:
>> And it's all spelled P-U-B-L-I-C-I-T-Y (just spell it correctly, as the
>> cliche goes)
>> the Yokels
>> E-MailPrint Save By JOHN TIERNEY
>> Published: November 11, 2006
>> I realize I'm supposed to be worried about the dangerous tendencies
>> of the Americans caught on film in "Borat." But I'm more
>> concerned about the Americans sitting in the audience laughing.
>> Skip to next paragraph
>> Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
>> John Tierney.
>> E-Mail John Tierney
>> Columnist Page
>> Podcasts
>> Audio Versions of Op-Ed Columns
>> TimesSelect subscribers can listen to a reading of the day's Op-Ed
>> columns.
>> Yes, it's a funny movie - I was howling along with everyone else.
>> Yes, Sacha Baron Cohen is a comic master. On "Da Ali G Show," he
>> was an equal-opportunity skewer of hip-hop artists, fashionistas and
>> pretentious talking heads. He was a television star making fun of
>> television icons and gaseous poseurs.
>> But "Borat" is more like the class bully picking on the nerds. The
>> hip urbanite ventures into flyover country disguised as a Kazakh yokel
>> to see how the American yokels respond. Are the rednecks just as
>> barbaric?
>> Considering everything Cohen does to them - running naked through a
>> hotel, smashing merchandise in a store, calling a man's wife ugly,
>> presenting a bag of feces at a dinner party - the biggest shock is
>> how politely they respond. Borat manages to goad several people into
>> endorsing his appalling views, but most of the Americans come off as
>> decent souls just trying to be nice to a weird foreigner.
>> The people of Kazakhstan are not so lucky. They're depicted as
>> rapists and prostitutes, bigots and idiots. I instinctively side with
>> comedians when the antidefamation police come after them, but in this
>> case I sympathize with the Kazakhs angry at becoming the new global
>> Polack joke. The country has enough problems as is.
>> I wish Cohen had instead invented a country like Molvania, the subject
>> of the hilarious Jetlag Travel Guide published two years ago. The basic
>> riff is the same as Cohen's - a visit to an impoverished hellhole
>> of a country that used to be part of the Soviet Union. Molvania is "A
>> Land Untouched by Modern Dentistry," blessed with a form of folk
>> music that is unique because of its "emphasis on volume over
>> melody."
>> Its patron saint's day is celebrated with "parades, masses and an
>> international arms fair." In the Miss Molvania pageant, women in
>> nurse uniforms parade on a "specially reinforced stage." Beggars
>> offer piggyback rides - "a charming local custom and the stamina of
>> these emaciated vagrants is nothing short of amazing." The
>> traditional greeting when entering a house is, "Don't shoot."
>> The humor is more deft than in "Borat" - and easier to enjoy
>> because there aren't real Molvanians sitting through a mockery of
>> their national anthem. The Molvanians have their brutal side:
>> witch-burning is still legal, and the annual Running of the Bulls
>> features a frightened herd of cows fleeing from a group of heavily
>> armed men, followed by a barbecue.
>> But there's nothing as buffoonish as the Running of the Jew in
>> "Borat." What bothers me most about the movie is its premise: that
>> villagers who have not embraced Western values are violently
>> anti-Semitic, racist, homophobic and misogynistic. Borat is an absurd
>> caricature, but we wouldn't laugh if we didn't think there was some
>> truth to the stereotype of the morally backward peasant.
>> This is the stereotype that arouses Westerners to become missionaries,
>> and it's not just Christians going out to redeem the peasants.
>> There's also a secular version of this impulse. The anthropologist
>> Richard Shweder calls it "imperial liberalism": the pressure on
>> third world countries to mandate
...
read more »
Reply »
18 From: Robert Cohen - view profile
Date: Mon, Nov 20 2006 3:04 pm
Email: "Robert Cohen"
msn.com>
Groups: alt.fan.letterman
Not yet ratedRating:
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original | Remove | Report Abuse | Find messages by this author
Praise from the left:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20061204/klawans
- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -
Robert Cohen wrote:> This is also more of a sermon than a movie review:
> Robert Cohen wrote:
>> David Brooks the NY TIMES call-u-mist and PBS NEWS HOUR gratuitous
>> kibbitzer also unloads borax onto Borat:
>> Op-Ed Columnist
>> The Heyday of Snobbery
>> E-MailPrint Save By DAVID BROOKS
>> Published: November 16, 2006
>> And so we enter the era of mass condescension. Thanks to the creativity
>> of our cultural entrepreneurs, we enter a time when we can gather in
>> large groups and look down at our mental, social and spiritual
>> inferiors.
>> Skip to next paragraph
>> David Brooks.
>> The Way We Live Now
>> Send Your Comments About This Column
>> The columnist posts about issues that shape his perspective and
>> addresses reader feedback.
>> Readers' Comments »
>> Columnist Page »
>> Podcasts
>> Audio Versions of Op-Ed Columns
>> TimesSelect subscribers can listen to a reading of the day's Op-Ed
>> columns.
>> In retrospect, it's easy to see how this cultural moment crept up on
>> us. There is "American Idol," which allows the millions to watch
>> Simon Cowell ridicule people who don't realize how talentless they
>> are. There is the middle segment of "The Daily Show," during which
>> correspondents sometimes go out and use postmodern interviewing
>> techniques to humiliate rural goobers who think they were abducted by
>> aliens or some such.
>> Then there is the rise of culture-war comedians whose jokes heap scorn
>> on the sorts of people who are guaranteed not to be in the audience.
>> ("Megachurches," Bill Maher joked recently on HBO, "are presided
>> over by the same skeevy door-to-door Bible salesmen that we've always
>> had, just in an age of better technology. But they're selling the
>> same thing: fear. Fear to keep you in line."
>> One could list other precursors and signs of the times: network
>> magazine shows that taught TV professionals to use the power of ambush
>> and editing to dominate their non-media-savvy prey; the "Jackass"
>> movies, which acclimatized audiences to the mixture of suffering and
>> laughter. But, of course, the crowning glory of the current moment is
>> the "Borat" movie, an explosively funny rube-baiting session
>> orchestrated by a hilarious bully.
>> 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.
>> Cohen also knows how to rig an unfair fight, and to then ring maximum
>> humiliation and humor out of each situation. The core of his movie is
>> that he and his audience know he is playing a role, and this gives him,
>> and them, power over the less sophisticated stooges who don't. The
>> world becomes divided between the club of those who are in on the joke,
>> and the excluded rubes who aren't. The more tolerant the simpletons
>> try to be toward Borat, the more he drags them into the realm of
>> anti-Semitism and vileness. The more hospitable they try to be, the
>> dumber they appear for not understanding the situation.
>> In a society as fluid as ours, snobbery is constantly changing form,
>> and in the latest wave of condescension media, various strains come
>> together. We Jews know all about Borat's Jewish snobbery - based on
>> the assumption that Middle America's acceptance of Jews must be a
>> mirage, and that underneath every Rotarian there must be a Cossack
>> about to unleash a continental pogrom.
>> There's also that distinct style of young person's snobbery. Young
>> people haven't accomplished much yet so they can only elevate
>> themselves by endlessly celebrating their own superior sensibilities.
>> Finally, there's blue America snobbery, as people on the coasts try
>> to fathom those who would vote for George W. Bush. The only logical
>> explanation is that they are racist, anti-Semitic idiots who can be
>> blamelessly ridiculed.
>> I suspect this wave of condescension media will repel as many people as
>> it thrills. But it does illustrate an interesting shift in the culture.
>> Eighty years ago, H. L. Mencken's magazines, The Smart Set and The
>> American Mercury, ridiculed exactly the same targets as today's
>> condescension mavens: evangelicals, Middle American boobs, etc. (I
>> actually think today's comedians are funnier than Mencken, though
>> that may be a matter of taste.)
>> Then, the condescending Menckenites were a small, educated sect, much
>> less popular than the romantics who celebrated the Middle American
>> common man in novels, movies and fanfares. Now, however, the Mencken
>> sensibility is a mass phenomenon, found on networks and in multiplexes
>> all across the country. We've democratized snobbery and turned it
>> into a consumption item for the vast educated class. Popular culture
>> has traveled from "The Grapes of Wrath" to Borat the magnificent.
>> Next Article in Opinion (5 of 11) »Related Searches
>> Social Conditions and TrendsCohen, Sacha Baron
>> Robert Cohen wrote:
>>> I tivoed NIGHTLINE last night, and they have devoted five insightful
>>> not laudatory minutes to Borax:
>>> And today this NYT columnist publicizes the phenomenon critically:
>>> And it's all spelled P-U-B-L-I-C-I-T-Y (just spell it correctly, as the
>>> cliche goes)
>>> the Yokels
>>> E-MailPrint Save By JOHN TIERNEY
>>> Published: November 11, 2006
>>> I realize I'm supposed to be worried about the dangerous tendencies
>>> of the Americans caught on film in "Borat." But I'm more
>>> concerned about the Americans sitting in the audience laughing.
>>> Skip to next paragraph
>>> Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
>>> John Tierney.
>>> E-Mail John Tierney
>>> Columnist Page
>>> Podcasts
>>> Audio Versions of Op-Ed Columns
>>> TimesSelect subscribers can listen to a reading of the day's Op-Ed
>>> columns.
>>> Yes, it's a funny movie - I was howling along with everyone else.
>>> Yes, Sacha Baron Cohen is a comic master. On "Da Ali G Show," he
>>> was an equal-opportunity skewer of hip-hop artists, fashionistas and
>>> pretentious talking heads. He was a television star making fun of
>>> television icons and gaseous poseurs.
>>> But "Borat" is more like the class bully picking on the nerds. The
>>> hip urbanite ventures into flyover country disguised as a Kazakh yokel
>>> to see how the American yokels respond. Are the rednecks just as
>>> barbaric?
>>> Considering everything Cohen does to them - running naked through a
>>> hotel, smashing merchandise in a store, calling a man's wife ugly,
>>> presenting a bag of feces at a dinner party - the biggest shock is
>>> how politely they respond. Borat manages to goad several people into
>>> endorsing his appalling views, but most of the Americans come off as
>>> decent souls just trying to be nice to a weird foreigner.
>>> The people of Kazakhstan are not so lucky. They're depicted as
>>> rapists and prostitutes, bigots and idiots. I instinctively side with
>>> comedians when the antidefamation police come after them, but in this
>>> case I sympathize with the Kazakhs angry at becoming the new global
>>> Polack joke. The country has enough problems as is.
>>> I wish Cohen had instead invented a country like Molvania, the subject
>>> of the hilarious Jetlag Travel Guide published two years ago. The basic
>>> riff is the same as Cohen's - a visit to an impoverished hellhole
>>> of a country that used to be part of the Soviet Union. Molvania is "A
>>> Land Untouched by Modern Dentistry," blessed with a form of folk
>>> music that is unique because of its "emphasis on volume over
>>> melody."
>>> Its patron saint's day is celebrated with "parades, masses and an
>>> international arms fair." In the Miss Molvania pageant, women in
>>> nurse uniforms parade on a "specially reinforced stage." Beggars
>>> offer piggyback rides - "a charming local custom and the stamina of
>>> these emaciated vagrants is nothing short of amazing." The
>>> traditional greeting when entering a house is, "Don't shoot."
>>> The humor is more deft than in "Borat" - and easier to enjoy
>>> because there aren't real Molvanians sitting through a mockery of
>>> their national anthem. The Molvanians have their brutal side:
>>> witch-burning is still legal, and the annual Running of the Bulls
>>> features a frightened herd of cows fleeing from a group of heavily
>>> armed men, followed by a barbecue.
>>> But there's nothing as buffoonish as the Running of the Jew in
>>> "Borat." What bothers me most about the movie is its premise: that
>>> villagers who have not embraced Western values are violently
>>> anti-Semitic, racist, homophobic
...
read more »
Robert Cohen wrote:
> I've linked/posted a bunch of movie reviews mostly favorable, some not
> favorable at alt. fan. letterman under "Martin Short."
>
> They contain important commentary/criticism, and thus I think I'll try
> to re-post 'em here into this threrad.
>
> I realize that anybody can go to various movie review websites and have
> at 'em, while the ones I've gathered impress me to so do it this way
> too:
>
> 10 From: Robert Cohen - view profile
> Date: Mon, Nov 6 2006 8:06 pm
> Email: "Robert Cohen"
msn.com>
> Groups: alt.fan.letterman
> Not yet ratedRating:
> show options
> Reply | Reply to Author | Forward | Print | Individual Message | Show
> original | Remove | Report Abuse | Find messages by this author
>
>
> And furthermore, besides Short, here's some de-constructing of BORAT:
>
> http://www.thenation.com/doc/20061120/goldstein
>
>
> 10. Persian Jew (they really think they're sumthin, especially at Purim
>
> when making noise)
> 9. Offensive (The Irving Berlin version of the KKK, i don't know what
> this exactly analogizes)
> 8. Alumnus of snotty British college (they look-down on the
> Southeastern Conference)
> 7. Insulting, incendiary, insolent, inbred, indignant, instigator, Inn
> Holiday, Indiana
> 6. VARIETY headline prediction: MEL BROOKS SUES BORAT ON PROFESSIONAL
> JEALOUSY OF UPSTART GROUNDS
> 5. VARIETY headline prediction #2: MEL GIBSON SUES BORAT FOR PLAGARISM
> 4.---1. USA TODAY editorial: We've Seen That Cockeyed BORAT Movie, And
> So We Give-Up
>
>
>
> This review takes a favorable slant at least in the final paragraph:
>
> http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1108/p02s01-almo.html
>
>
>
> - Hide quoted text -
> - Show quoted text -
>
> Robert Cohen wrote:>> And furthermore, besides Short, here's some de-constructing of BORAT:
>
>
>
>> 10. Persian Jew (they really think they're sumthin, especially at Purim
>> when making noise)
>> 9. Offensive (The Irving Berlin version of the KKK, i don't know what
>> this exactly analogizes)
>> 8. Alumnus of snotty British college (they look-down on the
>> Southeastern Conference)
>> 7. Insulting, incendiary, insolent, inbred, indignant, instigator, Inn
>> Holiday, Indiana
>> 6. VARIETY headline prediction: MEL BROOKS SUES BORAT ON PROFESSIONAL
>> JEALOUSY OF UPSTART GROUNDS
>> 5. VARIETY headline prediction #2: MEL GIBSON SUES BORAT FOR PLAGARISM
>> 4.---1. USA TODAY editorial: We've Seen That Cockeyed BORAT Movie, And
>> So We Give-Up
>
>
>> Marilyn wrote:
>>> randwill wrote:
>>>>The Borat movie is the best reviewed film of the year.
>
>
>>> You heard it here first, kids. Go see it, Alan. Suck it up, Bill. Go with
>>> Alan.
>
>
>
> Reply »
>
> 12 From: Robert Cohen - view profile
> Date: Wed, Nov 8 2006 10:24 pm
> Email: "Robert Cohen"
msn.com>
> Groups: alt.fan.letterman
> Not yet ratedRating:
> show options
> Reply | Reply to Author | Forward | Print | Individual Message | Show
> original | Remove | Report Abuse | Find messages by this author
>
>
> It is my nice policy to engage my vast readershites in semi-equal time
> & semi-fairness two.
>
> The following endorsement & offensiveness do not necessarily reflect my
>
> own prejudicial esteem opinion:
>
>
> I personally does like bananas, oranges, grapes, kiwi shoe polish & the
>
> apples are delicious & fine they way they are already now which is the
> way nature is perverted & hybridized.
>
>
> The fine & efficacious chemical in 'em is allegedly odorless &
> tasteless, not like the unpleasant stuff they killed the Jews with..
>
>
> My common sensical philosophy: Out-of-smell, out-of-mind.
>
>
> http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/stories/2006/11/07/1108edk...
>
>
>
>
> - Hide quoted text -
> - Show quoted text -
>
> Robert Cohen wrote:>> This review takes a favorable slant at least in the final paragraph:
>
>
>
>> Robert Cohen wrote:
>>> And furthermore, besides Short, here's some de-constructing of BORAT:
>
>
>
>
>>> 10. Persian Jew (they really think they're sumthin, especially at Purim
>>> when making noise)
>>> 9. Offensive (The Irving Berlin version of the KKK, i don't know what
>>> this exactly analogizes)
>>> 8. Alumnus of snotty British college (they look-down on the
>>> Southeastern Conference)
>>> 7. Insulting, incendiary, insolent, inbred, indignant, instigator, Inn
>>> Holiday, Indiana
>>> 6. VARIETY headline prediction: MEL BROOKS SUES BORAT ON PROFESSIONAL
>>> JEALOUSY OF UPSTART GROUNDS
>>> 5. VARIETY headline prediction #2: MEL GIBSON SUES BORAT FOR PLAGARISM
>>> 4.---1. USA TODAY editorial: We've Seen That Cockeyed BORAT Movie, And
>>> So We Give-Up
>
>
>>> Marilyn wrote:
>>>> randwill wrote:
>>>>>The Borat movie is the best reviewed film of the year.
>
>
>>>> You heard it here first, kids. Go see it, Alan. Suck it up, Bill. Go with
>>>> Alan.
>
>
>
> Reply »
>
> 13 From: Robert Cohen - view profile
> Date: Wed, Nov 8 2006 11:01 pm
> Email: "Robert Cohen"
msn.com>
> Groups: alt.fan.letterman
> Not yet ratedRating:
> show options
> Reply | Reply to Author | Forward | Print | Individual Message | Show
> original | Remove | Report Abuse | Find messages by this author
>
>
> Depiction in 'Borat' doesn't do Kazakhstan justice
>
> By KAMAL FATEHI
> HASH(0x6208a0)
>
>
> Published on: 11/08/06 by ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION (and probably
> copyrighted)
>
>
> Often, when people in the entertainment business want to tell a story
> about an overseas country, they will make one up. A good example is
> "Syriana," a story about Middle Eastern oil, which was set in a
> fictional country with a name that sounded something like Syria.
>
>
> But when Sasha Baron Cohen invented his character "Borat," he didn't
> make up a country. He decided Borat should be from the former Soviet
> republic of Kazakhstan.
>
>
> Special
> (ENLARGE)
> Kamal Fatehi visits a marketplace during his stay in Kazakhstan as a
> Fulbright scholar. 'None of what is portrayed in the movie is what I
> have seen,' he writes.
>
>
> Before Cohen's movie, "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make
> Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan", came out, many people had
> probably never heard of, or at least paid much attention to,
> Kazakhstan. Even some of my well-educated colleagues cannot
> differentiate it from the other former Soviet republics, which include
> Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
>
>
> I once heard a colleague lump Kazakhstan in with the other post-Soviet
> states, referring to them as "all of those 'stan' countries," since
> some of them end in "stan."
>
>
> "Why call them 'stan' countries?" I asked. "You don't say all of those
> 'land' countries. We have Holland, Poland, Switzerland, Iceland,
> Finland . . . you differentiate among those countries."
>
>
> After all, the terms "stan" and "estan" mean "land."
>
>
> Kazakhstan's relative obscurity may be what made it an easy target for
> Cohen's quirky humor. After all, if his fictional journalist came from
> Russia, people would already have images and preconceptions of what
> Russia, and Russians, are like. But meeting someone from Kazakhstan
> would be so unusual that people wouldn't know what to expect, making
> them easier targets.
>
>
> Unfortunately, many people may not realize that Borat's Kazakhstan is
> simply a joke. Since the punch lines are all they know about
> Kazakhstan, their misconceptions may linger.
>
>
> In reality, none of what is portrayed in the movie is what I have seen.
>
>
>
> Kazakhstan is a rapidly modernizing country. The people are highly
> educated. Right now, European and American universities, in cooperation
>
> with Kazakh universities, are offering graduate programs of various
> types.
>
>
> Many American and European oil companies are operating there. One of
> the largest recent discoveries of oil is in Kazakhstan; some predict it
>
> could be larger than oil resources in Kuwait. The nation may become one
>
> of the world's top oil exporters in the next decade.
>
>
> Kazakhstan's cities are very modern. Astana became the capital in 1995.
>
> It was chosen because it is near the center of the country, and it was
> built from the ground up, similar to Brasilia, Brazil. Everything there
>
> is modern, and of the highest quality.
>
>
> The largest city is the former capital of Almaty, formerly known as
> Alma Ata. I stayed in a high-rise hotel in Almaty that was as modern as
>
> any Hyatt hotel in the United States and Europe.
>
>
> Alma Ata means "father of apple," and for good reason. Scientists say
> that the first apples as we know them today appeared here. As the Wall
> Street Journal reported in 2003, researchers are now trying to breed
> the characteristics of Kazakhstan's wild apples into the modern fruit
> to make them resistant to pesticides and disease, helping the global
> apple industry.
>
>
> I wanted to see the wild apple orchards when I went to Kazakhstan as a
> Fulbright scholar. They are closed except for scientific purposes, but
> I was allowed in. It was an incredible experience to stand among the
> thousands of wild apple trees.
>
>
> Kazakhstan's economy is improving rapidly. I had a colleague, a Harvard
>
> graduate, who was working in one of the country's more recently
> established universities. He told me several years ago he planned to
> convert all his savings from dollars to tenges, Kazakhstan's currency.
> He said the tenge was appreciating, so he would benefit from it. In the
>
> last few years I could see he was correct; the currency had appreciated
>
> 20 percent.
>
>
> If there is one thing I want people to know about Kazakhstan, it is
> that it is filled with smart, highly educated people who are
> modernizing the country quite rapidly, much faster than Russia. I tell
> people that if I were a citizen of the former Soviet Union, of all the
> republics I could choose, I'd want to live in Kazakhstan.
>
>
> The real Kazakhstan may not be as funny as Borat's Kazakhstan, but it
> would be a shame to consider it one of those "stan' countries, and
> nothing more.
>
>
> · Fulbright scholar Kamal Fatehi, originally from Iran, is a
> professor of international management at Kennesaw State University.
>
>
>
> - Hide quoted text -
> - Show quoted text -
>
> Robert Cohen wrote:>> It is my nice policy to engage my vast readershites in semi-equal time
>> & semi-fairness two.
>
>> The following endorsement & offensiveness do not necessarily reflect my
>> own prejudicial esteem opinion:
>
>
>> I personally does like bananas, oranges, grapes, kiwi shoe polish & the
>> apples are delicious & fine they way they are already now which is the
>> way nature is perverted & hybridized.
>
>
>> The fine & efficacious chemical in 'em is allegedly odorless &
>> tasteless, not like the unpleasant stuff they killed the Jews with..
>
>
>> My common sensical philosophy: Out-of-smell, out-of-mind.
>
>
>
>
>> Robert Cohen wrote:
>>> This review takes a favorable slant at least in the final paragraph:
>
>
>
>
>>> Robert Cohen wrote:
>>>> And furthermore, besides Short, here's some de-constructing of BORAT:
>
>
>
>
>>>> 10. Persian Jew (they really think they're sumthin, especially at Purim
>>>> when making noise)
>>>> 9. Offensive (The Irving Berlin version of the KKK, i don't know what
>>>> this exactly analogizes)
>>>> 8. Alumnus of snotty British college (they look-down on the
>>>> Southeastern Conference)
>>>> 7. Insulting, incendiary, insolent, inbred, indignant, instigator, Inn
>>>> Holiday, Indiana
>>>> 6. VARIETY headline prediction: MEL BROOKS SUES BORAT ON PROFESSIONAL
>>>> JEALOUSY OF UPSTART GROUNDS
>>>> 5. VARIETY headline prediction #2: MEL GIBSON SUES BORAT FOR PLAGARISM
>>>> 4.---1. USA TODAY editorial: We've Seen That Cockeyed BORAT Movie, And
>>>> So We Give-Up
>
>
>>>> Marilyn wrote:
>>>>> randwill wrote:
>>>>>>The Borat movie is the best reviewed film of the year.
>
>
>>>>> You heard it here first, kids. Go see it, Alan. Suck it up, Bill. Go with
>>>>> Alan.
>
>
>
> Reply »
>
> 14 From: Robert Cohen - view profile
> Date: Thurs, Nov 9 2006 8:45 pm
> Email: "Robert Cohen"
msn.com>
> Groups: alt.fan.letterman
> Not yet ratedRating:
> show options
> Reply | Reply to Author | Forward | Print | Individual Message | Show
> original | Remove | Report Abuse | Find messages by this author
>
>
> Frat-Rats Sue Bo-Rat
>
> via the drudge report, i just saw this, and it's too ...uh...much fun
> to not post its link
>
>
> prediction: It's publicity (however true it may be), and Cohen will
> settle out of court in a coupla years after milking the controvery's
> publicity
>
>
> http://www.tmz.com/2006/11/09/borat-lawsuit-high-five
>
>
>
> - Hide quoted text -
> - Show quoted text -
>
> Robert Cohen wrote:>> Depiction in 'Borat' doesn't do Kazakhstan justice
>
>> By KAMAL FATEHI
>> HASH(0x6208a0)
>
>
>> Published on: 11/08/06 by ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION (and probably
>> copyrighted)
>
>
>> Often, when people in the entertainment business want to tell a story
>> about an overseas country, they will make one up. A good example is
>> "Syriana," a story about Middle Eastern oil, which was set in a
>> fictional country with a name that sounded something like Syria.
>
>
>> But when Sasha Baron Cohen invented his character "Borat," he didn't
>> make up a country. He decided Borat should be from the former Soviet
>> republic of Kazakhstan.
>
>
>> Special
>> (ENLARGE)
>> Kamal Fatehi visits a marketplace during his stay in Kazakhstan as a
>> Fulbright scholar. 'None of what is portrayed in the movie is what I
>> have seen,' he writes.
>
>
>> Before Cohen's movie, "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make
>> Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan", came out, many people had
>> probably never heard of, or at least paid much attention to,
>> Kazakhstan. Even some of my well-educated colleagues cannot
>> differentiate it from the other former Soviet republics, which include
>> Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
>
>
>> I once heard a colleague lump Kazakhstan in with the other post-Soviet
>> states, referring to them as "all of those 'stan' countries," since
>> some of them end in "stan."
>
>
>> "Why call them 'stan' countries?" I asked. "You don't say all of those
>> 'land' countries. We have Holland, Poland, Switzerland, Iceland,
>> Finland . . . you differentiate among those countries."
>
>
>> After all, the terms "stan" and "estan" mean "land."
>
>
>> Kazakhstan's relative obscurity may be what made it an easy target for
>> Cohen's quirky humor. After all, if his fictional journalist came from
>> Russia, people would already have images and preconceptions of what
>> Russia, and Russians, are like. But meeting someone from Kazakhstan
>> would be so unusual that people wouldn't know what to expect, making
>> them easier targets.
>
>
>> Unfortunately, many people may not realize that Borat's Kazakhstan is
>> simply a joke. Since the punch lines are all they know about
>> Kazakhstan, their misconceptions may linger.
>
>
>> In reality, none of what is portrayed in the movie is what I have seen.
>
>
>> Kazakhstan is a rapidly modernizing country. The people are highly
>> educated. Right now, European and American universities, in cooperation
>> with Kazakh universities, are offering graduate programs of various
>> types.
>
>
>> Many American and European oil companies are operating there. One of
>> the largest recent discoveries of oil is in Kazakhstan; some predict it
>> could be larger than oil resources in Kuwait. The nation may become one
>> of the world's top oil exporters in the next decade.
>
>
>> Kazakhstan's cities are very modern. Astana became the capital in 1995.
>> It was chosen because it is near the center of the country, and it was
>> built from the ground up, similar to Brasilia, Brazil. Everything there
>> is modern, and of the highest quality.
>
>
>> The largest city is the former capital of Almaty, formerly known as
>> Alma Ata. I stayed in a high-rise hotel in Almaty that was as modern as
>> any Hyatt hotel in the United States and Europe.
>
>
>> Alma Ata means "father of apple," and for good reason. Scientists say
>> that the first apples as we know them today appeared here. As the Wall
>> Street Journal reported in 2003, researchers are now trying to breed
>> the characteristics of Kazakhstan's wild apples into the modern fruit
>> to make them resistant to pesticides and disease, helping the global
>> apple industry.
>
>
>> I wanted to see the wild apple orchards when I went to Kazakhstan as a
>> Fulbright scholar. They are closed except for scientific purposes, but
>> I was allowed in. It was an incredible experience to stand among the
>> thousands of wild apple trees.
>
>
>> Kazakhstan's economy is improving rapidly. I had a colleague, a Harvard
>> graduate, who was working in one of the country's more recently
>> established universities. He told me several years ago he planned to
>> convert all his savings from dollars to tenges, Kazakhstan's currency.
>> He said the tenge was appreciating, so he would benefit from it. In the
>> last few years I could see he was correct; the currency had appreciated
>> 20 percent.
>
>
>> If there is one thing I want people to know about Kazakhstan, it is
>> that it is filled with smart, highly educated people who are
>> modernizing the country quite rapidly, much faster than Russia. I tell
>> people that if I were a citizen of the former Soviet Union, of all the
>> republics I could choose, I'd want to live in Kazakhstan.
>
>
>> The real Kazakhstan may not be as funny as Borat's Kazakhstan, but it
>> would be a shame to consider it one of those "stan' countries, and
>> nothing more.
>
>
>> · Fulbright scholar Kamal Fatehi, originally from Iran, is a
>> professor of international management at Kennesaw State University.
>
>
>> Robert Cohen wrote:
>>> It is my nice policy to engage my vast readershites in semi-equal time
>>> & semi-fairness two.
>
>
>>> The following endorsement & offensiveness do not necessarily reflect my
>>> own prejudicial esteem opinion:
>
>
>>> I personally does like bananas, oranges, grapes, kiwi shoe polish & the
>>> apples are delicious & fine they way they are already now which is the
>>> way nature is perverted & hybridized.
>
>
>>> The fine & efficacious chemical in 'em is allegedly odorless &
>>> tasteless, not like the unpleasant stuff they killed the Jews with..
>
>
>>> My common sensical philosophy: Out-of-smell, out-of-mind.
>
>
>
>
>>> Robert Cohen wrote:
>>>> This review takes a favorable slant at least in the final paragraph:
>
>
>
>
>>>> Robert Cohen wrote:
>>>>> And furthermore, besides Short, here's some de-constructing of BORAT:
>
>
>
>
>>>>> 10. Persian Jew (they really think they're sumthin, especially at Purim
>>>>> when making noise)
>>>>> 9. Offensive (The Irving Berlin version of the KKK, i don't know what
>>>>> this exactly analogizes)
>>>>> 8. Alumnus of snotty British college (they look-down on the
>>>>> Southeastern Conference)
>>>>> 7. Insulting, incendiary, insolent, inbred, indignant, instigator, Inn
>>>>> Holiday, Indiana
>>>>> 6. VARIETY headline prediction: MEL BROOKS SUES BORAT ON PROFESSIONAL
>>>>> JEALOUSY OF UPSTART GROUNDS
>>>>> 5. VARIETY headline prediction #2: MEL GIBSON SUES BORAT FOR PLAGARISM
>>>>> 4.---1. USA TODAY editorial: We've Seen That Cockeyed BORAT Movie, And
>>>>> So We Give-Up
>
>
>>>>> Marilyn wrote:
>>>>>> randwill wrote:
>>>>>>>The Borat movie is the best reviewed film of the year.
>
>
>>>>>> You heard it here first, kids. Go see it, Alan. Suck it up, Bill. Go with
>>>>>> Alan.
>
>
>
> Reply »
>
> 15 From: Robert Cohen - view profile
> Date: Sat, Nov 11 2006 9:06 am
> Email: "Robert Cohen"
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> Groups: alt.fan.letterman
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>
>
> I tivoed NIGHTLINE last night, and they have devoted five insightful
> not laudatory minutes to Borax:
>
> And today this NYT columnist publicizes the phenomenon critically:
>
>
> And it's all spelled P-U-B-L-I-C-I-T-Y (just spell it correctly, as the
>
> cliche goes)
>
>
> http://select.nytimes.com/2006/11/11/opinion/11tierney.html?hp
>
>
> the Yokels
> E-MailPrint Save By JOHN TIERNEY
> Published: November 11, 2006
> I realize I'm supposed to be worried about the dangerous tendencies
> of the Americans caught on film in "Borat." But I'm more
> concerned about the Americans sitting in the audience laughing.
>
>
> Skip to next paragraph
>
>
> Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
> John Tierney.
>
>
> E-Mail John Tierney
> Columnist Page
>
>
> Podcasts
> Audio Versions of Op-Ed Columns
> TimesSelect subscribers can listen to a reading of the day's Op-Ed
> columns.
>
>
> Yes, it's a funny movie - I was howling along with everyone else.
> Yes, Sacha Baron Cohen is a comic master. On "Da Ali G Show," he
> was an equal-opportunity skewer of hip-hop artists, fashionistas and
> pretentious talking heads. He was a television star making fun of
> television icons and gaseous poseurs.
>
>
> But "Borat" is more like the class bully picking on the nerds. The
> hip urbanite ventures into flyover country disguised as a Kazakh yokel
> to see how the American yokels respond. Are the rednecks just as
> barbaric?
>
>
> Considering everything Cohen does to them - running naked through a
> hotel, smashing merchandise in a store, calling a man's wife ugly,
> presenting a bag of feces at a dinner party - the biggest shock is
> how politely they respond. Borat manages to goad several people into
> endorsing his appalling views, but most of the Americans come off as
> decent souls just trying to be nice to a weird foreigner.
>
>
> The people of Kazakhstan are not so lucky. They're depicted as
> rapists and prostitutes, bigots and idiots. I instinctively side with
> comedians when the antidefamation police come after them, but in this
> case I sympathize with the Kazakhs angry at becoming the new global
> Polack joke. The country has enough problems as is.
>
>
> I wish Cohen had instead invented a country like Molvania, the subject
> of the hilarious Jetlag Travel Guide published two years ago. The basic
>
> riff is the same as Cohen's - a visit to an impoverished hellhole
> of a country that used to be part of the Soviet Union. Molvania is "A
> Land Untouched by Modern Dentistry," blessed with a form of folk
> music that is unique because of its "emphasis on volume over
> melody."
>
>
> Its patron saint's day is celebrated with "parades, masses and an
> international arms fair." In the Miss Molvania pageant, women in
> nurse uniforms parade on a "specially reinforced stage." Beggars
> offer piggyback rides - "a charming local custom and the stamina of
> these emaciated vagrants is nothing short of amazing." The
> traditional greeting when entering a house is, "Don't shoot."
>
>
> The humor is more deft than in "Borat" - and easier to enjoy
> because there aren't real Molvanians sitting through a mockery of
> their national anthem. The Molvanians have their brutal side:
> witch-burning is still legal, and the annual Running of the Bulls
> features a frightened herd of cows fleeing from a group of heavily
> armed men, followed by a barbecue.
>
>
> But there's nothing as buffoonish as the Running of the Jew in
> "Borat." What bothers me most about the movie is its premise: that
> villagers who have not embraced Western values are violently
> anti-Semitic, racist, homophobic and misogynistic. Borat is an absurd
> caricature, but we wouldn't laugh if we didn't think there was some
> truth to the stereotype of the morally backward peasant.
>
>
> This is the stereotype that arouses Westerners to become missionaries,
> and it's not just Christians going out to redeem the peasants.
> There's also a secular version of this impulse. The anthropologist
> Richard Shweder calls it "imperial liberalism": the pressure on
> third world countries to mandate Western notions of individual rights
> even when they conflict with local customs and family traditions.
>
>
> If you went into a real Kazakh village (as opposed to the one in
> "Borat," which was actually in Romania), you'd find a lot of
> people - women as well as men - who frown on American values. They
> admire some of our freedoms and rights, but they also see the flip side
>
> of Western individualism: weaker families. They feel sorry for all the
> children separated from parents, all the adults living alone.
>
>
> You'd also find plenty of villagers eager to import Western
> technology, like the iPods coveted by the villagers in "Borat," and
> eager to educate their children so they can have opportunities beyond
> the village. As the children move to cities, they'll become richer
> and adopt Western values on their own.
>
>
> In the meantime, they don't need our guidance, let alone sneers from
> a Cambridge-educated comic affecting moral superiority. Some Kazakhs
> are trying to defend their country's honor by pointing to the
> country's high rate of literacy and low rate of anti-Semitism, but
> they know they can't compete with Hollywood. As long as we make the
> movies, the laugh's on them.
>
>
> Next Article in Opinion (6 of 14) »Related Articles
> Kazakhs Shrug at 'Borat' While the State Fumes (September 28, 2006)
> BOLDFACE (December 23, 2005)Related Searches
> KazakhstanCohen, Sacha BaronThird World and Developing CountriesComedy
> and HumorNext Article in Opinion (6 of 14) »
>
>
> Inside NYTimes.com
> Fashion & Style » Technology » Travel » Books »
>
>
> Burning Man Spreads Its Flame
> PlayStation 3 on Rescue Mission
>
>
>
> - Hide quoted text -
> - Show quoted text -
>
> Robert Cohen wrote:>> Frat-Rats Sue Bo-Rat
>
>> via the drudge report, i just saw this, and it's too ...uh...much fun
>> to not post its link
>
>
>> prediction: It's publicity (however true it may be), and Cohen will
>> settle out of court in a coupla years after milking the controvery's
>> publicity
>
>
>
>
>> Robert Cohen wrote:
>>> Depiction in 'Borat' doesn't do Kazakhstan justice
>
>
>>> By KAMAL FATEHI
>>> HASH(0x6208a0)
>
>
>>> Published on: 11/08/06 by ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION (and probably
>>> copyrighted)
>
>
>>> Often, when people in the entertainment business want to tell a story
>>> about an overseas country, they will make one up. A good example is
>>> "Syriana," a story about Middle Eastern oil, which was set in a
>>> fictional country with a name that sounded something like Syria.
>
>
>>> But when Sasha Baron Cohen invented his character "Borat," he didn't
>>> make up a country. He decided Borat should be from the former Soviet
>>> republic of Kazakhstan.
>
>
>>> Special
>>> (ENLARGE)
>>> Kamal Fatehi visits a marketplace during his stay in Kazakhstan as a
>>> Fulbright scholar. 'None of what is portrayed in the movie is what I
>>> have seen,' he writes.
>
>
>>> Before Cohen's movie, "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make
>>> Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan", came out, many people had
>>> probably never heard of, or at least paid much attention to,
>>> Kazakhstan. Even some of my well-educated colleagues cannot
>>> differentiate it from the other former Soviet republics, which include
>>> Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
>
>
>>> I once heard a colleague lump Kazakhstan in with the other post-Soviet
>>> states, referring to them as "all of those 'stan' countries," since
>>> some of them end in "stan."
>
>
>>> "Why call them 'stan' countries?" I asked. "You don't say all of those
>>> 'land' countries. We have Holland, Poland, Switzerland, Iceland,
>>> Finland . . . you differentiate among those countries."
>
>
>>> After all, the terms "stan" and "estan" mean "land."
>
>
>>> Kazakhstan's relative obscurity may be what made it an easy target for
>>> Cohen's quirky humor. After all, if his fictional journalist came from
>>> Russia, people would already have images and preconceptions of what
>>> Russia, and Russians, are like. But meeting someone from Kazakhstan
>>> would be so unusual that people wouldn't know what to expect, making
>>> them easier targets.
>
>
>>> Unfortunately, many people may not realize that Borat's Kazakhstan is
>>> simply a joke. Since the punch lines are all they know about
>>> Kazakhstan, their misconceptions may linger.
>
>
>>> In reality, none of what is portrayed in the movie is what I have seen.
>
>
>>> Kazakhstan is a rapidly modernizing country. The people are highly
>>> educated. Right now, European and American universities, in cooperation
>>> with Kazakh universities, are offering graduate programs of various
>>> types.
>
>
>>> Many American and European oil companies are operating there. One of
>>> the largest recent discoveries of oil is in Kazakhstan; some predict it
>>> could be larger than oil resources in Kuwait. The nation may become one
>>> of the world's top oil exporters in the next decade.
>
>
>>> Kazakhstan's cities are very modern. Astana became the capital in 1995.
>>> It was chosen because it is near the center of the country, and it was
>>> built from the ground up, similar to Brasilia, Brazil. Everything there
>>> is modern, and of the highest quality.
>
>
>>> The largest city is the former capital of Almaty, formerly known as
>>> Alma Ata. I stayed in a high-rise hotel in Almaty that was as modern as
>>> any Hyatt hotel in the United States and Europe.
>
>
>>> Alma Ata means "father of apple," and for good reason. Scientists say
>>> that the first apples as we know them today appeared here. As the Wall
>>> Street Journal reported in 2003, researchers are now trying to breed
>>> the characteristics of Kazakhstan's wild apples into the modern fruit
>>> to make them resistant to pesticides and disease, helping the global
>>> apple industry.
>
>
>>> I wanted to see the wild apple orchards when I went to Kazakhstan as a
>>> Fulbright scholar. They are closed except for scientific purposes, but
>>> I was allowed in. It was an incredible experience to stand among the
>>> thousands of wild apple trees.
>
>
>>> Kazakhstan's economy is improving
>
>
>
> ...
> read more »
>
> Reply »
>
>
> -
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> sirblob1@
hotmail.com wrote:
>> we go to the heartland of the u.s. to a rodeo infested with our very
>> own jingoistic rich-a-likes, then we head off to a class-conscious
>> bunch of bores, then we bust into a meeting of capitalists naked, hop
>> onto a caravan with 3 mackie meets frankenstein drunk students who
>> whine about how the u.s. is so incredibly socialist, how slavery was
>> much better and how only the minorities have power (yes, they're
>> talking of the u.s., of all places), and then we meet george peatty who
>> tells borat how much jesus loves him. then the pamela anderson climax.
>> wonderful mooee. but didnt tell me anything i didnt know. still, a
>> miracle to have this in a neo-conservative owned media, and of all
>> places, shown in the u.s. ah well. surely political incorrectness is
>> really about taking the piss out of how damn stupid right wing
>> americans are? is this the comic equivalent to michael moore's bowling
>> for columbine?
