It’s an interesting case. Most of the movie is Cohen doing patently ridiculous things to an audience who just go “Welp, foreigners sure are weird.” The joke is mostly on the people who are willing to believe that Borat is an accurate representation of what Kazakh people are like.
Yeah, as always with these things, it depends on which party is being made fun of. Like In Tropic Thunder, RDJ’s black face doesn’t make fun of black people, but of Hollywood actors who do ridiculous things for the sake of method acting, so it doesn’t become a racist joke.
Exactly, the joke they are making is simply not racist in nature. At the same time, the idea that using blackface to make a joke about entrenched Hollywood racism trivializes the harm of using blackface isn’t unreasonable. It’s a layered issue, people can land in different places. Ultimately though, the controversy over Tropic Thunder, then and now, being so minimal does indicate that for most viewers, the joke justified itself.
Usually in this kind of comedies fictional countries are used, so noone could be offended. It wouldn’t work here, an interviewee could notice that, so they had to choose one, but anything east of the iron curtain could have worked the same way.
The stereotypes he parodises, all based on some actual things, like the running of the jew is based on Krampus and other old messed up racist fesivities. When he shits on the street it’s joke about how the squat toilet (we call it balkan toilet) is still very common in the region
It’s similar when disney made the Coco cartoon, some american sjws said it would be offensive to mexicans, but in realitythey loved it there.
It’s an interesting case. Most of the movie is Cohen doing patently ridiculous things to an audience who just go “Welp, foreigners sure are weird.” The joke is mostly on the people who are willing to believe that Borat is an accurate representation of what Kazakh people are like.
Yeah, as always with these things, it depends on which party is being made fun of. Like In Tropic Thunder, RDJ’s black face doesn’t make fun of black people, but of Hollywood actors who do ridiculous things for the sake of method acting, so it doesn’t become a racist joke.
Exactly, the joke they are making is simply not racist in nature. At the same time, the idea that using blackface to make a joke about entrenched Hollywood racism trivializes the harm of using blackface isn’t unreasonable. It’s a layered issue, people can land in different places. Ultimately though, the controversy over Tropic Thunder, then and now, being so minimal does indicate that for most viewers, the joke justified itself.
Borat is explicitly racist, on purpose. It’s just that he is mocking the racists, not the race he is portraying.
A lot of people miss the jokes that are making bigots look like morons so we can laugh at them and think it means the show was being bigoted.
Usually in this kind of comedies fictional countries are used, so noone could be offended. It wouldn’t work here, an interviewee could notice that, so they had to choose one, but anything east of the iron curtain could have worked the same way.
The stereotypes he parodises, all based on some actual things, like the running of the jew is based on Krampus and other old messed up racist fesivities. When he shits on the street it’s joke about how the squat toilet (we call it balkan toilet) is still very common in the region
It’s similar when disney made the Coco cartoon, some american sjws said it would be offensive to mexicans, but in realitythey loved it there.
people were upset that rugrats had very jewish great grandparents on the show
totally missing the fact that the creators based them off their own great grandparents
The ending to Coco made me tear up. There, I said it!