Roach motel on planet hell (1/4/07)
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Borat! : Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. [Larry Charles, 2006. Written by Sacha Baron Cohen, Anthony Hines, Peter Baynham, Dan Mazer, Todd Phillips. Performed by Sacha Baron Cohen.]
The roving goodwill ambassador from the land of outdoor plumbing, horsedrawn automobiles [120 miles a week and you can eat the old engine when you get a new one], and that famed tourist attraction the annual Running of the Jews, while visiting New York on a journalistic embassy is initiated into the mysteries of the television remote by a helpful hotel employee, absorbs his first episode of
Baywatch [though surely this strains credulity: Baywatch has been syndicated in 140 countries and seen by over a billion people], gets a good look at Pamela Anderson in her red water panties, discovers that his life’s ambition has now become to make romance explosion on her stomach, and embarks on a pilgrimage to Malibu through the very heart of American darkness, driving an ice cream truck and accompanied by his stalwart producer Azamat — and, naturally, the invisible camera crew who record his many observations of American life and manners.
Of course nothing can be more educational than a good documentary, and from this one we learn: that Kazakhstan is the greatest of countries, because all others are ruled by girlies, and have not such good potassium; that there trophies are handed out to the best prostitutes [viz. Borat’s sister]; that the female of the Jewish species is [like Burroughs’ Martians] oviparous; that though in the best of all possible worlds one would want to bring all of the Marx Brothers back from the dead, one can make do with Chico and Harpo combined in the same person; that it makes a certain sense to wash your face in the toilet; that you can jack off in public in front of a department store window lingerie display and not immediately get arrested [though, see below]; that Pamela Anderson has the asshole of a sevenyearold; that women have brains smaller than squirrels; that the GM salesman really does know where the pussy magnet is located on the Hummer, but he isn’t going to tell you; that when this is a Christian nation again, they’ll hang all the queers; that you can tell if a guy is a terrorist by his mustache; that a rodeo crowd in Virginia seems to have been perfectly willing to believe that the American objectives in the campaign in Mesopotamia are that George Bush should drink the blood of every man, woman, and child in Iraq, and that not so much as a lizard should survive to inhabit that stinking desert for the next thousand years; that this same crowd nonetheless failed to see the humor in Borat’s singing a parody of the national anthem, and spawned a mob that tried to lynch him after the show; that a garage sale is the best place to look for gypsy’s tears; that the best gun to defend yourself against a Jew is probably the nine millimeter; that a tortoise is not a dog; that you can’t coach speed, but you can coach etiquette [at any rate in Alabama they try]; that scientific insight is not advanced by changing every variable at once, and, therefore, it is difficult to tell whether the dinner party of tightassed Southern white morons is most scandalized by the fact that Borat’s uninvited companion is black, that she’s a prostitute, or just that she’s so fat; that humor is nonetheless advanced whatever the reason; that though it is socially acceptable to show photographs of your relatives to break the ice with strangers, these should probably not include pictures of your son’s dick, no matter what pride you may feel that he grew three centimeters in the last year; that incidentally this doesn’t seem to compromise the R rating; that bags of pubic hair are not negotiable currency outside central Asia; that it is impolite to borrow someone else’s stash of Baywatch memorabilia to jack off, at least without permission; that if the real estate bubble had not already burst, the spectacle of Borat and Azamat running into a mortgage brokers’ convention stark naked to wrestle one another before the podium probably would have stuck a pin in it; that though there is nothing funnier than a naked fat hairy guy’s disgusting ass being ground into your face, it may prove difficult to get the odor of his testes out of your mustache; that there was someone left on the face of the earth who hadn’t seen Pam blow Tommy on a rented yacht; that Pentacostal Baptists are beyond parody; that this is indeed another fine mess you’ve got me into; that the way to win a woman’s heart is to throw a bag over her head and carry her off by main force; that, well, no, maybe not; that there’s no place like home; that the old Monty Python gag about running the credits in a foreign language is still funny; that the bag of fecal matter Borat carried back to the table from the bathroom at the dinner party in Birmingham was provided by someone else, who is duly noted in the credits; that you can still pack a theater, even for the Tuesday matinee, if the movie is good enough; and that Michael Moore cannot possibly top this, and might want to hang it up.
The particular genius of this, of course, the marvel at which your jaw cannot fail to drop, is that Cohen and his collaborators did not so much write a script and then travel to shoot scenes on location — though there is a [musically accentuated] dramatic arc with a familiar shape, it is at best schematic — but rather formed the conception around a previously-established character, and then acted it out; i.e. this is not a fictional narrative in the usual sense, but the documentary record of a piece of performance art, a lengthy and obviously risky improvisation. — People have talked a lot about guerilla filmmaking, I mean to say, but this is without question the first time that I have really seen it. — So it is not entirely surprising to discover: that warrants were issued for the arrest of Sacha Baron Cohen; that his producer spent a night in jail in New York and his assistant director literally chewed up and swallowed the sheet listing the names of the crew before the eyes of the police to prevent them from arresting anyone else; that Cohen was on other occasions interrogated not only by the police but by the Secret Service; that a dozen police cruisers once surrounded the ice cream truck, but Cohen outwitted them and escaped; and that the FBI trailed the production across the country — because, of course, they were “suspected of being terrorists”. As, in due course, we shall all be.
“America have most beautiful womens in world,” says Borat. “It also capital for democracy and porno. I like! I so excite to do my movie!” — Me too. — And fuck David Brooks if he doesn’t get the joke.
____________A-whaling for to go (10/11/06)
