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[V-Adore]

Can'd. Well-spoken and eloquent.

[pmcd9]

This sounds like a treatment.  Are you gonna pitch it?  Hey man, I know terms, yay!

Also, can'd.

~Paul

[KeithHernandez]

One extra difference with Borat:  He is there to expose racism or, with Bruno, homophobia in our society.  Richards isn't.

[pmcd9]

Speaking of Borat, I've been meaning to say, he (the actor/writer/director) is exposing racism, his own.  the movie is about a kazikstani who hates jews as the movie posits all kazikstani's do, made by a jew who paints a very terrible picture of kazikstani's and christians.  It's racist alright, jewish racism.

[littlefallsmets]

the movie is about a kazikstani who hates jews as the movie posits all kazikstani's do, made by a jew who paints a very terrible picture of kazikstani's and christians.  It's racist alright, jewish racism.

I don't know... I think that the completely ludicrious picture of Kazikstan isn't racism against Kazikstan but... part of the joke on America and Britain.

We're so ignorant of anything outside of our backyard that when our guard is down we'll BELIEVE that... oh... gays are made to wear blue hats and the disabled are kept in cages and half the economy is prostitution and so on in some magical central Asian country we've barely heard of.

That's the conceit of many of the interviews, really, that these people will buy... a dude dropping a deuce in a bag because we're so ignorant of other cultures.

It's a test of... how inhuman will these racist suburbanites believe foreigners are? And it's a test that we pretty clearly don't pass.

As for "Christians"... I dunno, I think American Protestant Christianity sorta hangs itself, livin' on Secession Drive and claiming that it's time to kill all the gays, pretty well. The Borat character is standing there selling rope for cheap, yeah, but America ties the knot and hangs itself, certainly.

That's the point of Kazikstan being so completely unrealistic. Not that Sacha Cohen is racist toward Kazikstan, rather that he's taking all our stereotypes and preconceived notions about the rest of the world, exaggerating them to an unbelievable degree and... he finds a lot of people who are still lazy/bigoted/ignorant enough to go along with them. Believe them.

[Sub_Topical]

And it's a test that we pretty clearly don't pass.

I'd also suggest this is a test that the vast majority of world wouldn't pass either. Framed so as to put the test on the same terms across continents we'd find that every culture has it's bias and ignorance about the different, distant and strange.

Woopee, the US has culturally ignorant and bigoted people. It's the worldwide standard, not the exception.

But hey, if you carry a lot of white guilt around, feel free to publically punch your nuts over this.

That's comedy.

[Ben-San]

The reason Kazakhstan is used is because if he claimed to come from Faketonia nobody would give him an interview. Kazakhstan hits the balance of "most Americans have heard of it a couple times" and "most Americans can't even spell it, much less tell you anything about it".

Every Kazakhstani I've heard say anything about Borat who wasn't affiliated with the Kazakh government (admittedly not many, but a couple) thought it was pretty funny.

[pmcd9]

I didn't say it wasn't funny.

[littlefallsmets]

There's no doubt that... the line between being racist and making fun of racism is maddeningly thin.

That's why it's so funny and profitable when you can actually pull it off, being able to walk that line and not fall over to the wrong side is kind of one of our culture's last taboos. One of the last things that can consistently shock.

The difficulty is... yeah... the difference between Borat and Kramer is only in judicious use of context.

Or, worse, you walk the line properly and it drives you crazy doing it, like a Chappelle.

Starlets are showing the National Enquirer their pu$$ys and... we're like... "oh, that's kinda funny but... eh." Wars are started and spin out of control and a lot of people just kinda don't care either way.

We're running out of shocks.