MORAL OF THE MOVIE

Quite simply, there is a lot of prejudice and intolerance in the United States of America. Even worse, there is a lot of indifference to prejudice/intolerance that allows it to spread and propagate across the nation. By representing all of the negative stereotypes of an intolerant foreigner, Borat shows us a reflection of the worst aspects of American culture: indifferent/intolerant people. The presence of a ridiculously odious/intolerant person like Borat allows these people to show their truest colors: for the most part, they either feel apathetic about this behavior or feel comfortable enough to add on. In doing so, Borat shows us the truly dark side of “US and A” through a series of satirical case studies that makes us laugh at the ridiculousness of intolerance. As such, it is up to us to directly confront intolerance rather than treating it with indifference and/or attributing it to “cultural differences” if we want to shed the U.S. of this dark side in its culture.

WHO I THINK WOULD MOST ENJOY THIS MOVIE

To say the least, this movie is not meant for everyone and has a very specific sense of humor. So, if you like cringey, crass, over-the-top, and extreme humor, then this is the movie that will make you laugh more than anyone else.

ADDITIONAL NOTES/COMMENTARY

All of the previous Political Moral of the Movie reviews have been somewhat old and classics, so I thought it’d be fun to take it back to the early 2000s for a reflection of American politics in a time not so long ago. Borat does much more than provide a reflection, however. The film completely satirizes the politics, culture, and ideologies of the time, which are unfortunately not so different to those of today (as can be seen in Borat’s recently released sequel). Borat 2 was released last weekend on Amazon Prime Video, so if you like this one, then you’ll be sure to enjoy its sequel. Borat is the type of movie that you have to see to believe. Ironically, the hardest parts to believe are the very moments that feature real people and their very real reactions to Borat’s cultural differences (anti-semitism, sexism, etc.). Oh, and those “cultural differences” are surprisingly a big part of American culture as the film goes on to show. Say what you will about the film and the character, but one thing is for sure: Sacha Baron Cohen is seriously committed to the character of Borat throughout the entire “moviefilm”. I might even go as far as to say that his commitment is similar to that of Daniel Day-Lewis (three-time Oscar winner). I never thought of Borat as being played by an actor; rather, he just existed as the Kazakh journalist that some of us have grown to love to quote over the years. More impressively so, he was constantly interacting with real people (not actors) for the majority of the movie, so Sacha Baron Cohen’s improvisational skills take center stage throughout the film. His improv skills make the movie for me because he makes each situation cringy/funnier with every improvisation as he gets better and better reactions out of people when he goes deeper and deeper into the character of Borat. As briefly mentioned in the Moral of the Movie section in the caption, the brilliance behind this satire is the fact that we are all laughing at the ridiculousness of hate like ani-semitism, sexism, and xenophobia. Unfortunately, it shares a side of the U.S. that most people would not like to admit as being ingrained in its culture, but that’s just how things are. The film doesn’t necessarily offer any solutions; it mostly exposes the prevalent problem of intolerance in the American culture. So, I interpreted that the answer could be as easy as doing the opposite of what most people interacting with Borat did. Instead of agreeing with him or attributing it to cultural differences and that’s that, I would say that the solution is to take a firmer stand against intolerance and prejudice. That’s what we’ve seen this past summer with the mass protests and we’ll hopefully see the same demand for change on November 3rd. All in all, Borat (2006) is an over-the-top study of American culture that exposes its dark side full of intolerance and prejudice via polarizing humor.