Boffo Borat

[ Note: I wrote this back in Novemeber when the movie was all the rage. I didn't publish it at the time for reasons that remain mysterious to me. I have to say, though, that at this later date, I haven't noted any particular hipster backlash against Cohen. ]

Now seems the appropriate time to gird myself against the hipster backlash that Sacha Baron Cohen's great success makes an inevitability. It's a tricky thing to like something so popular, a tricky thing that takes some guts. Only recently has it become properly hip to acknowledge one's admiration for Bruce Springsteen -- this largely, I think, due to his (relatively) advanced age and perceived irrelevancy. This perception allows one to look back (ever backwards) at his career and tip one's hat to that which one never allowed oneself to enjoy at the time of his (perceived) relevancy. Bob Dylan had it a little easier by way of his acid temperament and cultivated enigma -- plus, until recently, his lack of visibility. Kurt Cobain died, so he got a pass. I wasn't around, so I don't know what it was like in the sixties when the Beatles wore the two seemingly mutually exclusive hats of experimental artist and teenage sex idol. I know that for my generation, though, or at least my peer group, it endears you not to be overly successful. Oh, what sacrifice it takes to be cool.

This, though, is to be expected, and this I will endure. What I will not endure, however, is the type of critique that I found in an article by Richard Goldstein writing in The Nation, a meta critique wherein he admonishes his good and sensitive readers to dare to examine at what they laugh and why -- and, lo, if you find yourself laughing at/with Borat, you might not be the good liberal that you thought you were. As with so many like articles about Borat and other "controversial" artists, it is resoundingly clear that Goldstein et al don't get the joke. That's fine and dandy. But instead of accepting this simple fact, Goldstein throws accusatory insinuations at his readers and wraps himself in a cloak of faux sanctimony. Rather than admit that this form of comedy is not to his taste, he disparages the movie, and by extension, its creator:

This flimsy mock doc, in the spirit of gross-out shows like Punk'd and Jackass, might have faded into dating-movie oblivion but for the vehement reaction of the Kazakh government. It didn't appreciate Borat's references to a national wine made from equine urine, or his observation that "America is strange country: Women can vote but horses cannot." By protesting, the Kazakhs gave Baron Cohen a place on US news pages.

True, the Kazakhs' protests may have landed Cohen "a place on US news pages," but to say that this is the only thing that kept it from "fading into dating-movie oblivion" is quite a stretch. (Cohen also ended up in the news pages for singing a butchered rendition of the national anthem at a rodeo -- a scene that made it into the movie.) I'm quite certain that this is not a date movie. What it is is a very successful comedy -- so funny that the audience with whom I saw the movie seemed to be in a constant state of near asphysia, struggling to muffle the laughs so as not to miss the next one. And this comparison to Punk'd and Jackass is simply smug snobbery, a way to express his disapproval of the Borat movie by linking it with these shows/movies that he assumes are slightly higher on the grand minaret of taste than porn or soaps. There are some similarities in approaches, but that's about it. I love Jackass. But Jackass doesn't have as its centerpiece a very gifted comedian playing a fictional character.

And in homage to Atrios's "simple answers to simple questions" bit:

Sacha Baron Cohen is pretty much the hottest thing in sketch comedy now. One reason is the question his shtick poses: What are we laughing at?

Answer: A hilarious comedian... who puts himself in hilarious situations.