Cultural Learnings for Glod
I haven’t seen the Borat movie yet, but everyone says it’s just hilarious. I’m sure I’ll see it soon. Truth be told, however, I’ve always had a bit of trouble with the Borat character. Whereas Ali G is portrayed as uneducated, he’s also a poser, not to mention from a familiar culture. It’s easy to see Ali G for what he is. Similarly, Cohen’s Bruno character (my favorite, actually) is a broad gay stereotype, largely rendered innocuous by the wallop he delivers to his vacuous and pretentious (or homophobic) victims.
The Borat character, however, ‘comes’ from a culture with which few of the viewers are familiar. It allows Cohen to play with a wide range of stereotypes for his victims, but the depictions of Kazakhs has always made me a little uncomfortable. For instance, Kazakhs look nothing like Borat. Nor do they act anything like him, I’d be willing to bet. And while one could claim it’s all in good fun, blackface used to be in good fun, too…
From what I understand, the supposed Kazakh bits are mostly for filler, and the meat of the film is taking racist/homophobic/etc Americans to task. So is my comparison of Borat to blackface a bit of an overreaction? Probably, but maybe we should ask the people of Glod, the Romanian town where Cohen filmed the scenes of his “hometown.”
Mr Tudorache, a deeply religious grandfather who lost his arm in an accident, was one of those who feels most humiliated. For one scene, a rubber sex toy in the shape of a fist was attached to the stump of his missing arm - but he had no idea what it was…
He invited us into his humble home and brought out the best food and drink his family had. Visibly disturbed, he said shakily: ‘Someone from the council said these Americans need a man with no arm for some scenes. I said yes but I never imagined the whole country, or even the whole world, will see me in the cinemas ridiculed in this way. This is disgusting.
‘Our region is very poor, and everyone is trying hard to get out of this misery. It is outrageous to exploit people’s misfortune like this to laugh at them.
According to the story in the Daily Mail, the villagers were only paid a pittance for their work in the film, which they though was either an art piece or documentary. The man who’s house was used as Borat’s said,
‘It was very uncomfortable at the end and there was animal manure all over our home. We endured it because we are poor and badly needed the money, but now we realise we were cheated and taken advantage of in the worst way.
‘All those things they said about us in the film are terribly humiliating. They said we drink horse urine and sleep with our own kin. You say it’s comedy, but how can someone laugh at that?‘
Well put.
If these stories are true, it’s shameful for Cohen et al to treat these people in such a fashion. It’s one thing to get frat boys drunk and let them tie their own nooses, it’s quite another to select people specifically because of their poverty, and then mislead them and rip them off. It’s exceedingly poor form, and the larger cultural disregard is what has always bothered me about the Borat character in the first place.
Links:
Woman selling tomatoes at Zelyony Bazaar in Almaty, south eastern Kazakhstan (Photographer: Anthony Plummer) [Lonely Planet]
Blackface Pic [Tremors Rockabilly]
Borat Film ‘Tricked’ Poor Village Actors [Daily Mail]
