Headline on Channel 4 News:
"Kazakhstan are threatening to sue Sacha Baron Cohen over his character 'Borat'."
Tee hee.
Yikes! Although he was very hit and miss on the MTV awards, I loved his opening link where he congratulated the MTV producers for being brave enough to let a transvestive open the show (Madonna in that purple leotard thing!)
Pete.
That's insane?how can a country sue a sararist? Mind you, the UK doesn't have protective laws about this kind of thing (unlike the USA), so he could be fair game. If the country somehow won, that would set a VERY dangerous precedent though. Still, most of the west seems to be sleepwalking into a 1984-style police state where you can't disagree with those in power, so expect Cohen to be swinging from the neck within a few months.
They have a point about Borat...he's just so funny though. I still can't quite put my finger on why some comedy foreigners are wrong and some okay. Why is Harry Enfield's Stavros okay (at least at the time) but comedy Indians on "Mind Your Language" not? (a source of frustration for me is that they never repeat It Aint Half Hot Mum presumably because of Michael Bates' Indian character even though he apparently knew India well)
Similarly, it amazes me that Little Britain manages to somehow to get away with characters so clearly handicapped mentally (Eeeeh eeeeh eeeeeeeeh) and physically (I want that one). I always felt the "they're not really handicapped" twist was just a bit of a get-out clause, let's face it, we would still laugh if Andy didn't get out of his wheelchair.
I thought it was to do with how well observed the character is and how well-informed the performer is, but then I don't know anyone from Kazakhstan. It seems to be if you're funny people are to busy laughing to be offended while the problem with "Love Thy Neighbour had was it wasn't as well-written as, say, In Sickness And In Health.
Discuss.
ADE
Yeah, I agree with this. The ones that got to me were Goodness Gracious Me and The Kumars at No. 42. I wanted to like both shows, I felt some strange moral obligation to like them but at the end of the day, both totally turned me off. For some strange reason though I persevered and persevered because of the subject matter.
What a bloody wierdo I am!
Pete.
Father Ted is a good one. We know we are poking fun at a religion known for its patriotism to its faith yet we let it slide. Its funny. It does not try to be superior to its view of itself over the views of the general public and surely we are watching a bored student of life rather than something aimed at being derogative to any faith.
io know. a young ones. with vicars.
oi'm very sorry. abowt moi. boring voice.
Well I don't see why having a go at Catholicism would ever be less than fair game, it's a powerful force over people's lives, which unlike race or nationality, people decided to be part of through their own choice. As John Cleese said of Life Of Brian (I believe), some people deserve to be offended.
I do however feel slightly uncomfortable with Jerry Springer The Opera, perhaps since it's not really in the same league satirically as Life Of Brian, perhaps because it's setting out to wind people up rather than make a point. It feels just a bit of an easy target these days, I'd like them to have a go at the muslims as well but that's just not going to happen.
ADE
I've got a couple of Kazakh friends and apparently this lawsuit thing is as a result of pretty strong popular pressure over there. The problem being that Borat has nothing, nothing at all, to do with the culture or people of Kazakhstan (other than the occasional mention of horsemeat). To most Kazakhs, he looks and sounds Turkish. It's like watching a Japanese guy do a Bulgarian accent to impersonate an Englishman: so wrong as to be just plain daft, were it not for the fact that this is a poor, powerless country, with no representation in the West, which has no chance to overcome this stupidly false stereotype.
With Borat though, it would've been better to have made him come from a fictional country (face it: stick "-akhstan" on the end of anything and you'll have a lot of Western people believing that it's a real Asian place - one that, being fictional, can't take direct offence at.
Either that, or it becomes offencive to all Asia!
Gah!
he should have called himself Stan from Stanakhstan
better yet would have been:
Stanak from Stanakhstan
Part of the brilliance of Andy Kaufman's 'Foriegn Guy' character (later to reappear as Latka in 'Taxi') was it satirises not so much any particular nationality but our own ignorance in the face of foreigners (hence the name). Borat seems to me quite similar since he plays to our every fear we have about meeting foreigners and about meeting someone from that vast expanse of the world where noone ever goes on holiday and is completely alien to us.
The finest episode of Taxi I ever saw was when Latka was conscripted after civil war broke out in his country. Amazingly, it gets through the whole episode without mentioning the country's name, though a platoon of other conscripts arrive just like him to take him away. When they sing their national anthem it's exactly the same tune as 'Windmills Of Your Mind".
ADE
in a way Borat is doing the Kazakhs a favour, by raising their profile in the West and giving them an opportunity to overcome the background stereotypes about eastern European countries which made Borat* so funny.
He should just apologise profusely, then have the character remember that he comes from a different (and fictional) country.
*and before him Molvania and wherever it was the Festrunk brothers came from
The Kazahs throw jews and gyspies down wells for sport so they deserve all they get
well i dunno about kazak, but the azeri blokes from azerbaijan do have very shiney pointy shoes & fine moustaches, they seem to prefer freshly killed goat at family picnics to horsemeat. and that demonstration recently was completely ochestrated & finished neatly at 5.30pm because the west has got a nice tight grip on the oil business & have no intention of letting democracy in.
meanwhile north west scots, are all piss head toadying red neck wankers, SUE ME fuckers !