Borat - Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan

By the time I finally saw Borat, every detail of the movie had been reported in detail in the media. Part of Borat's hilarity is that it matches our hunger for reality-show type interaction with candid camera type events and in doing so, exposes the bigotry of its unwitting cast.

The plot is almost beside the point, so I won't go over it in detail here. Suffice it to say that Borat Sagdiyev (Sacha Baron Cohen) is a journalist new to America from Kazakhstan, making a film with his producer Azamat Bagatov (Ken Davitian). They film every experience, from Borat singing a national anthem at a rodeo to Borat hitching a ride with drunk frat boys, Borat running naked in a hotel to Borat attending classes on social etiquette.

Contrary to what the many lawsuits that arose from this film, most of the American citizens compose themselves admirably. Sure, there's the occasional bigoted jerk, but said jerks are easy to spot. If you're shocked about a gun shop owner not blinking when Borat asks for a "gun to kill a Jew" then you haven't been to a gun shop.

And perhaps that's part of the humor. Borat visits places we know exist in America but haven't been there ourselves, and it shows the worst and best we have to offer in typical American fashion...by pointing a camera at it.

But I don't buy it.

One of the key elements of a magician's art is deception. The magician will tell you he has nothing up his sleeve, but he most certainly does. People picked from the audience who supposedly don't know the magician are actually trained plants. In short, magicians lie and we believe them because we want to.

Similarly, Cohen's crafted a charade that this is all raw footage, and yet there's the omnipresent camera with its boom microphone and glaring lights. It's clear that the subjects, if they aren't in on the joke, are certainly pandering to the camera. Until we invent floating invisible cameras or simply violate peoples' rights to make good television, this will always be the case.

Borat is rude, crude, and hilarious. But the amount of navel-gazing it created on behalf of the nation due to its supposedly candid look at America is unwarranted. In the tradition of our reality TV culture, Borat is as authentic as...well, reality TV shows.