Borat
There's a new lady in the office who sits next to me. She's in her early twenties and very nice.So today she asked me what I was doing this weekend, and I said I was going to see the Borat movie.
She said "Oh," and there's this little, awkward pause. Then she said "Oh, I didn't know older people were a fan."
Headshot!
"Ouch!" I said, and started laughing.
"No!" she protested, now totally flustered. "I mean, I was trying to explain it to my dad, and he just didn't get it."
"Ouch again!" I said. She was beet red at this point. It was great.
I now feel very, very old. But I'm listening to the new Beck album (which is not shit, in marked contrast to the new Who album)--or is Beck old now, too?
As you might have guessed, we're going to see Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorioius Nation of Kazakhstan later today.
I demanded we see it on day one, which I rarely do with movies anymore. But Sacha Baron Cohen is a real comic genius, one of those people who might come along once every twenty years.
Last night, Cohen was on The Daily Show, which was being filmed on the campus of Ohio State University. And Cohen came out as his Borat character.
For the first half of the interview, Borat was hilarious, the hapless king of the malaprop. It was very, very funny stuff. He got everyone on his side.
Then, as soon as he did, he "found out" that Jon Stewart was Jewish.
He spit in the cup of water that Jon Stewart handed him. He did other things, too, but that was the one that stands out in my mind.
So all the people who were laughing their asses off were now totally uncomfortable. They felt guilty that they'd identified with this character.
Which was, in a nutshell, why it was so hilarious. He got everyone in the audience on his side--and then obliterated his side. It was incredibly funny, and it was razor-sharp.
That's what great comedians do. They make you laugh and they make you feel incredibly uncomfortable, often at the same time.
I don't think I've ever seen anyone so expertly skewer racism as adeptly as Cohen. Sometimes it's almost painful to watch (which is another sign of great comedy). I saw a New York Times profile of Borat (and the movie) this morning (read it here), and I was really struck by this paragraph:
“If the comic can berate and finally blow the bully out of the water,” Mr. Lewis once wrote, “he has hitched himself to an identifiable human purpose.” Sacha Baron Cohen doesn’t blow bullies out of the water; he obliterates them.
That's a great description. It wouldn't work as comedy, though, if Cohen wasn't so funny. He is, though.
The movie starts at 5:10. Can't wait.
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