Borat, Babel and just an Opinion
My colleague saw “Borat” this weekend. I saw “Babel”. Borat is still on the list along with the documentary “Inconvenient Truth”. I need to complete all my quotas before going back to India. The good thing about Amsterdam is you get to watch unlimited movies in the theatre for just 17.50 Euros a month. The bad thing is not many movies get released here. At one time, I had exhausted all the movies in the theatres. Now for the next two weeks, it will be fun again with “Casino Royale” and “Dhoom 2″ releasing next week.
Back to “Borat”, my colleague did not like the way the Kazakhstan was portrayed in the movie. She feels it was very insulting. Actually “Borat” is highly criticized because the fun it poked on the country of Kazakhstan.
The actor who played “Borat”, Sacha Baron Cohen was also criticized and sued.
In his defense he says
“The joke is not on Kazakhstan. I think the joke is on people who can believe that the Kazakhstan that I describe can exist.“
He further adds
“Borat works essentially as a tool. By himself being anti-Semitic, he lets people lower their guard and expose their own prejudice, whether it’s anti-Semitism or an acceptance of anti-Semitism.”
My colleague was disgusted by the cheap portrayal of truth about any country. She refuses to believe that Kazakhstan is anywhere like the country that is shown in the film.
That makes Cohen’s argument stronger. My colleague does not believe in what is shown in the film because she believes that everything is false which is very true. She does not believe in the movie at all and at the same time, feels it was in extremely bad taste. She also believes that Cohen is making the above statement because now he has been criticized so much of making fun of others, he is trying to save himself with other bullshit.
This brings me to another movie which I saw, “Babel”. Babel takes place in Morocco, Spain, US and Japan where people from different country are linked to each other through an event. The story is when a series of events are triggered when two teenage boys are target practicing with their rifle and the bullet accidentally hits an American tourist. A colleague who watched the movie with me does not have a good feeling about Morocco. The harsh dessert where the story triggers off and the danger shown in the movie is a little disturbing.
The next time he decides to take a holiday, it would be certainly not Morocco. “Borat” and “Babel” looked at two countries of which nothing is known in the media. However, the movie achieves exactly the opposite result. “Borat” while making fun of Kazakhstan is unbelievable while the serious “Babel” makes you scarred of the unknown.
The question is what kind of an image does a Movie present about a country or a culture and till what extent it is to be believed? It obviously depends on every individual but the movie/media does influences how we think. The Iraq war is a fine example.
Both Kazakhstan and Morocco may not be the as shown in the movies but the movies do establishes a picture of the country in our mind. The way India is projected in Hollywood leaves a lot to be desired. Recently saw trailers of a Dutch movie, “Zoop in India” on TV here. The trailer had typical Indian characteristics like elephants, tyrant kings/thakurs and yes turban-clad clean-shaven men. India does have turban clad men but mostly are Sikhs. There are a very small percentage of people at least in the cities who wear turbans.
Coming back to Babel and Borat, I guess “Borat” succeeded in creating a positive image about Kazakhstan by showing lies and making fun of the country and “Babel” failed to show the other side of Morocco by telling a more serious story.
Tags: Medium
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
- Interesting observations Punds… Going for Borat tonite. Haven’t yet watched Babel… perhaps will have to wait until it’s DVD is released.
Borat was funny as hell. And smart. It helps if you have seen a few episodes of Da Ali G Show before you watch the movie. You get his style of satirical, prank comedy. A smart film, full of laughs. However, I disagree with all those people who say it is one of the funniest films ever made. Not true. I also felt that the film lacked the cunning and subtlety of the British version of Sacha Baron Cohen’s phenomenal show. It was far more intelligent. Borat caters unabashedly to American humor. In your face kind of stuff.
Borat was bad. Most of the friends I went with found it funny but the humor was cheap. There was an old american couple sitting in the front row and they felt insulted.