For about ten minutes, Borat Subsequent Movie Film is very funny. The grainy opening credits portraying the picture as a production of the Kazakhstan Ministry of Agriculture and Science (I think) are amusing and some of the sequences showing Borat with his family -- one of his sons is covered with hair like a wolf man -- are fairly humorous, assuming that you aren't from Kazakhstan or Rumania (where these scenes were shot). But pretty soon, the one-joke premise sours and film feels like a pointless exercise in cruelty interrupted by a couple of episodes of maudlin sentiment intended to show that the comedian, Sacha Baron Cohen, has a heart after all. Comedy is anarchic by nature and fundamentally cruel -- it's only law is to be funny and all offenses are forgiven if a comedy delivers the goods. But Borat Subsequent Movie Film, with a couple of exceptions isn't funny at all -- it's just an extended exercise of cringeworthy mockery and, after a while, becomes tedious. Like a car crash, however, you can't exactly look away, although you may feel ashamed about watching this thing when the closing credits roll: the film is a 2020 Amazon production for its streaming services and directed by Jason Woliner, although Cohen's paw prints are on everything.
As everyone knows, Borat, a lecherous peasant from Kazakhstan is ordered by the thuggish authorities in his home-country to travel to the United States to deliver a bribe to Mike Pence. The idea is that the boss of Kazakhstan wants to be in the league of strong-man dictators to which the Trump administration has shown obeisance -- people like Bolsanaro and Kim Jung Ill. Initially, the plan seems to send Pence a chimpanzee who, somehow, is the director of Kazakhstan's film industry -- which seems to consist entirely of the production of 16 mm. pornography. Borat's daughter, Tutar, is a stowaway in the crate that ships the monkey to the USA. (She sustains herself by eating the monkey whom she claims "ate himself".) Borat then has to report to his boss that "the monkey has ceased to be alive" -- for some reason, I thought the gags involving the primate were quite funny, maybe, the best jokes in the film. The authorities in Kazakhstan order Borat to continue his mission by delivering his daughter as a gift to Mike Pence. Kazakhstan is shown to be horribly misogynistic: teenage girls are kept in cages and periodically raped and Tutar has been taught that if she touches her vagina it will devour her whole. (She also thinks that if women try to think their heads will explode and that it is a crime against nature for a female to drive a car. Of course, we know that these sorts of things are believed in Saudi Arabia, although for religious reasons, but Cohen's tendency is to "punch down" -- that is, mock the weak and helpless and he seems a little hesitant to take on the Saudis. It's safer to caricature Kazakhstan, a place that no one really knows, that viewers of the movie couldn't find on a map, and that is portrayed as a 1950's Soviet bloc country like Rumania or Albania.) In order to groom his daughter for her mission, Borat encounters various Americans, mostly hillbillies in the Deep South or rural West, whom the film mercilessly entraps and humiliates. Tutar is taken to a debutante counselor for advice as to etiquette at a "coming out" ball in upper crust Atlanta. Along the way, she is advised by a religious nut at a pro-life anti-abortion clinic and seen by a rapacious plastic surgeon who is willing to work on the (ostensibly) 15-year-old girl's nose and breasts -- Borat wants to avoid expensive silicon and suggests augmenting her breasts with potatoes. Along the way, Covid intervenes and Borat has to go into quarantine with two right-wing Qanon followers. With them, he attends a rally in Eugene, Oregon, rather sparsely populated by the folks who later stormed the Capitol, an event that occurred after the picture was released. (Readers will recall that the movie was dropped on Amazon just before the presidential election in an apparent attempt to influence the outcome -- we don't want the Russians meddling in our elections, but, apparently, it's okay if a British comedian with questionable taste (Cohen makes Bennie Hill seem sedate) tries to affect the results at the ballot box.) Borat, dressed as Trump, tries to give his daughter to the alleged pussy-hound, Mike Pence, but is unceremoniously ejected from the political event where the VP is speaking. Rudy Giuliani is conned into a brief interlude with Tutar in which he seems amenable to accepting the girl's sexual blandishments. In the end, Tutar has become a self-aware and sophisticated lady journalist, indeed, a kind of feminist. She and Borat return to their home-country where it is revealed that the hero's mission was just a scheme to infect the world with the Kazakhstan-manufactured Covid, injected into Borat in the guise of good-luck "gypsy tears". Kazakhstan seeks revenge on the World for mocking it when the first Borat movie was released and it's instrument of wrath is the Covid virus. As a happy ending, the anti-Semitic ritual, the running of the Jew, previously a fixture of Kazakhstan's somewhat impoverished folk-life has now been replaced with the running of the Americans -- a parade in which huge paper-mache heads of Donald Trump and a Karen (an entitled White woman) dash around after trampling on a similar effigy representing Dr. Fauci.
The film's humor is similar to TV shows like Impractical Jokers and The Carbonara Effect -- these are hidden camera programs in which a mark is subjected to outrageous behavior by the show's star (or stars). The poor bystander is the butt of the joke. Typically, these programs feature an elaborately staged hoax imposed upon an allegedly unsuspecting victim. The mise-en-scene of these programs is identical with the more complicated techniques used in the Borat film -- we see the protagonist imposing himself horribly on the victim and, even, seeking the mark's complicity in what would be felonious conduct; the victim is filmed in a series of reaction shots which are almost always underwhelming. The simple fact is that most people are pretty inexpressive and when they see some awful transgression against social norms will tend to look away or show no response at all. Furthermore, human nature is generally polite and accommodating -- most of the victims of this kind of tomfoolery behave with tolerance and, even, act kindly toward Borat. (This is an odd aspect of Borat's films -- the movies are supposed to demonstrate that American hillbillies are credulous, close-minded and intolerant or bigoted; in fact, the film tends to show the opposite: most people will go along with Borat's idiocy out of a misguided sense of etiquette. The film plays upon a social taboo in an unsavory manner: it's impolite to humiliate and mock others for being "different" -- so most of Borat's victims accept his bizarre behavior assuming that no one should make fun of someone else for being "other". And, yet, the film conspicuously and viciously (and intolerantly) mocks the "otherness" of its hillbilly figures of fun for their very credulity and kindness. The whole enterprise is caught in a moral double-bind -- it makes fun of supposedly intolerant and bigoted people for being tolerant and accepting. Furthermore, the joke soon turns acidulous because most of Borat's victims either are playing along with the ruse or simply don't react at all. The joke is all about what doesn't happen. A good example is the episode involving the plastic surgeon. His demanding officer manager, a polite but efficiently aggressive middle-aged lady, presents the bill to Borat and Tutar for what the film terms "her mutilation." It's about $21,000. When Borat hears the charge, he farts loudly and, then, proposes to pay in cash -- one dollar bills. The woman doesn't mind. Money is money. She ignores the fart and proceeds to carefully count the money, coming up 72 dollars short. Throughout the episode, she is firm but polite. She isn't nonplussed by Borat's weird accent or his antics. The joke is simply that she doesn't really react. In other words, the humor is based upon what doesn't happen -- at no point, does the woman acknowledge that she's in on the joke, nor does she react in any observable way to Borat's rude and incongruous behavior. This pattern is repeated over and over again in the film: a pro-life abortion counselor doesn't react when he's told that Tutar's child "was put into her behind a dumpster" by her father. At the debutante ball, Tutar supposedly gets her period and does a weird lunar dance with her father, finally pulling up her white evening gown to reveal that her crotch is sopping with blood. There's blood all over everything and the camera cuts to the other participants at the debutante ball, all of whom were modestly accepting of the weird tribal dance, but now who seem repelled by the gory mess that they are presented -- so far as I can see the people look away in dismay but they don't really respond in any other observable manner. At a meeting of lady Republicans, Tutar goes into the toilet and masturbates, experimenting to see if the teeth in her vagina will eat her up. Nothing bad happens and, so, she excitedly returns to the lady Republican convention, is invited to speak, and, then, talks graphically about her "cunt" and how it didn't devour her. Some of the women are openly appalled, but most of them seem to think that the girl is just some kind of wacky feminist and, perhaps, has something worthwhile to tell them -- it's pretty clear that none of the women are upset with the proposition that the girl has masturbated. Like another woman earlier in the show, their attitude seems to be tolerant but critical of the fact that things that are not supposed to be discussed in public have been said out loud. But this rule, keeping the stuff in your head silent that is not supposed to be spoken out loud, is, more or less, a universal principle everywhere in the world so it seems to be a bit specious to mock the Republican women for holding to this view. The worst thing that any one says is "someone call an Uber for her." Since the main joke in the film is what doesn't happen -- that is, an extreme response to extreme provocation -- most of the humor simply falls flat: you can't make a movie based almost entirely on things that don't occur.
The film has a couple of sentimental interludes. A kindly Black lady teaches Tutar self-reliance and endorses her desire to be a journalist, while trying to persuade her not to get the plastic surgery that Borat has foisted on her. Two old Jewish ladies who are actual Holocaust survivors treat Borat with compassion and, even, embrace him. Borat is happy that the Holocaust actually occurred because it is an article of faith that the populace in his country murdered Jews in great numbers and he has become depressed over Holocaust denial in the Far Right in the United States. Many jokes involve people who recognize the Borat character on the street and harass him for autographs. Borat's well-known public persona requires Cohen to wear outlandish and grotesque disguises. It's impossible for any of his victims to not understand that they dealing with someone who is heavily and ridiculously disguised -- so what do these people think? Presumably, they are all in on the joke in some respect, playing along with the character. Ultimately, the viewer is left to conclude that all of the interesting stuff in the film has been left on the "cutting room" floor. What were these people told about the motivations of the encounter with Borat (and his daughter)? What happens after the joke is perpetrated? To what degree are the apparent victims of these practical jokes aware of what is going on?. What were people paid? How were their legal rights to be represented in this way procured? It seems problematic that Cohen has to go to rural Oklahoma to find people sufficiently credulous to participate in the film. The viewer is left with the spectacle of some hapless, impoverished boob out in the boondocks being bamboozled by a sophisticated London comedian who has probably spent tens of thousands of dollars designing the practical joke in which the butt of the joke is entangled -- again, this certainly can't be seen as "punching up" or mocking the powers-that-be; rather Borat's victims, particularly, the two Qanon supporters are grossly overmatched by the intricate, and expensive, mechanisms of deception that the film deploys. On some level, these rubes undoubtedly understand that they are being mocked but feel that the picture won't make them look too bad -- and, in fact, one's sympathies are generally with the victims of the practical joke. This is particularly clear in the notorious scene with Rudy Giuliani -- a beautiful girl seductively dressed makes a fool of an old man; the spectacle is repellent and pathetic but it doesn't tell us anything about human nature that we don't already know.
Nothing ages more swiftly and toxically than extremely topical political humor. The January 6, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol casts many scenes in this movie in a particularly troubling light -- the rally in Oregon, for instance, isn't exactly funny in light of what happened in Washington D.C. after the movie was released. The film is over-plotted; unlike most comedies of this kind, it has a complex plot in which all events are motivated and, even, a surprise-ending -- that is, that Borat himself is the vector of international transmission of the Covid-19 virus. There is much gleeful mockery of the notion that the Covid-virus is "the Wuhan flu", that is, some kind of intentionally manufactured biological agent leaked into the world by the Chinese. But, as I write, many pundits have now reversed their previous mockery of this notion and come to the conclusion that we should, at least, investigate whether the virus is an artifact of bio-engineering. This concept was widely mocked as racist (anti-Asian) until suddenly it wasn't being mocked at all and most of the media, now that Trump is gone, have made a 180 degree reversal on their approach to this theory. Rudy Giuliani makes the claim that the virus may be Chinese-engineered, telling Tutar that he doesn't think anyone has ever eaten a bat -- "Do you eat bats?" he asks her. (I always thought it was intrinsically racist to argue that the Chinese were routinely eating bats and that the virus somehow leaped cross-species in that manner. How does a virus in the gut become a respiratory agent?) I know that Giuliani is a goblin and, therefore, properly to be derided, but who has the last laugh here?
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