Directory of Lost Causes (By Quentin S. Crisp)

All other countries are run by little girls

Last night I watched the Borat film. I know I'm a little late.

I found it to be brilliant, but excrutiating.

The 'controversy' surrounding the film has already been analysed to death, I think, and I don't really have anything to add to what has been said by others.



Here's a negative review of the film from Mark Kermode (it starts about thirteen minutes into the download/podcast). At one point Kermode says, "If you take away the political incisiveness [of the film] (which I don't think it has), you're left with a simple question: is it funny? For me the answer to that question is no."

I suppose, quite simply, the answer to that question for me was yes.

Apart from being funny, I also found much of the film to be quite jaw-dropping. Perhaps one of the things that most sticks in my mind is where Borat first arrives in New York and greets strangers on the train and in the street, "My name is Borat. I'm new in town. What's your name?" and so on, and is greeted with aggressive hostility. One person addressed responded, "My name's mind your own fucking business." Others threatened violence. Apparently there were over 400 hours of footage shot for the film (which was edited down to 80 minutes), so I imagine that other reactions from strangers, perhaps friendlier and less interesting reactions, were discarded. In a way the hostility of those people shown was understandable; they must have thought they were being approached by a weirdo intent on messing with them in some way, and, of course, they were right, though not in the way they probably imagined. However, I must admit to finding the level of aggression and paranoia quite shocking, even pathological. It might say something about environment, but there's a chicken and egg question here as to what determines environment.

I'm reminded of a story told to me by a Japanese friend some years ago, which I now recall only fuzzily. It concerned an incident that made the news in Japan for a while. A Japanese student was living in America, and had been shot and killed. I don't remember now the beginning of the story, but I believe that the student had entered the garden of someone's house in order to ask directions. The owner of the house took the student to be a trespasser up to no good, and came out with a gun. The homeowner instructed the student to put his hands on his head, which he did. He then, apparently, told the student to "duck". Seems like an odd kind of command, but that is how the story was told. Unfortunately, the student did not know that 'duck' meant anything except a kind of bird, and he was killed. This, my friend informed me, was a topic of conversation for a number of reasons. First of all, there was the problem of English language education in Japan, since very few Japanese would have understood the instruction to duck. Then there was the question of a kind of Japanese naivete with regard to other cultures. Such an incident would never have happened in Japan. For the student, it was probably something unimaginable - something belonging to the realms of fiction. There seems to be an interesting and very sad lesson there in the clash of realities.



Kermode comments that the Borat film is full of "rampant anti-Americanism". Some time back, on the Momus blog, I made some comments about the hostility that many people feel towards America that one American reader felt the need to pick up on as "anti-American". At this point I kind of sigh... I'll just say that I have no problems with people criticising British culture at all. I don't feel like I have to take it personally. Anyway, at a later point in the comments thread someone mentioned Borat, and the fellow who had taken me to task, obviously still a bit agitated, left the following rather memorable comment:

"Borat is such an Ugly American. No, wait, he's a British actor playing a Kazakhstani."

Labels: Borat