Enter a film called Borat. Of course, most savvy pop culture enthusiasts will know from watching the Borat segments on "Da Ali G Show" that Sacha Baron Cohen is a 10th-level Paladin in the ATOC. He is able to fearlessly put himself into situations that most of us would cower from, and not break character, no matter what the result … even the threat of physical violence. So I went into Borat expecting that it would show me how it's done. What surprised me was that Cohen proved he's willing to go much further than most of us in the name of comedy. Now, it would be inaccurate to peg Borat as a simple prank movie, a la Jackass. Similarly, it's also wrong to interpret it as a political statement (although its revelations are more real and more relevant than, say, Michael Moore's heavy-handed theater of accusation). It utilizes elements of both of those approaches, sure. But at its root, Borat is about pushing the boundaries of comfort in pursuit of humor—the audience's comfort, the participants' comfort, and even the performers' comfort. For how many of us would, fully nude, stare down the smelly asshole of a fat pseudo-Kazakh man just to get a laugh? Much has been made of Cohen's achievement in revealing the primal bigotry and xenophobia of Americans. And this is all true. In character as Borat, Cohen plays off American unfamiliarity with other cultures, and encourages American idiots to say what they really think. And while the results may be disturbing, they are also liberating: for who is truly shocked to find that frat boys hate women, or that cowboys hate gays? The movie does not endeavor to expose us in a "Dateline NBC" sort of way, so much as to show that stereotypes are indeed powerful—whether they be the stereotypes of other cultures, or our own. Of course, critics and audiences get caught up in whether the portrayal of Khazakh culture is "offensive," missing the fact that Cohen's depiction is so wildly over-the-top that you'd have to be pretty narrow-minded to miss the exaggeration and/or misrepresentation. The fact that so many people in the film accept "Borat's" terrible opinions as valid—whether they are liberally forgiving or conservatively dismissive—reinforces the humor. Cohen is having a really big laugh at everyone's expense … but he never loses sight of the heart. I laughed boisterously at most of this movie. Yet, I also found it to be unexpectedly sweet, as when Borat connects with a group of black teens on a corner, or seems to woo a prostitute simply by treating her like a real person. So while Cohen is unafraid in pushing the discomfort as far as it can go—and certainly everyone who wants to see Borat as a liberal socio-political statement must have been at least a bit squeamish by that nude wrestling scene—in the end, this is at once a really sweet movie and a meaningful one. It is missing the point to either applaud it for its political stance or for its gut-busting humor. Beneath all of the questionable, wonderful, objectionable, and outrageous insanity is a movie that tells us to connect. The success of Borat, predictably, will increasingly lead to backlash and bad imitations. And while Cohen's Borat schtick isn't hard to see through once you're in on the joke, it doesn't diminish the staying power of the film itself, which, like Spinal Tap, will bear out satisfied re-watchings for decades.
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