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Borat Bombs But SNL Suggests a Future by Doniphan Blair
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Sasha Baron Cohen as Borat and his daughter, played by the Rumanian actress Maria Bakalova, in 'Borat 2'. photo: courtesy S. B. Cohen
'BORAT 2' (2020) SUCKED I AM SORRY TO
say, since I love Sasha Baron Cohen, both “Borat 1” (2006) and its innovative cinema techniques and Cohen’s strident stance against social media’s fake news.
If Goebbels were alive today he’d be advertising on Facebook, he has said, among much else on the topic (see cineSOURCE article.
“Borat 1” I saw with my daughter, who was laughing hysterically, and my mother, who wasn’t. Hard of hearing, she got very few of the jokes, except the anti-Semitic ones. Being an elderly Jew, she’s familiar with the humor.
The way Cohen severely satirizes everything, including the Holocaust, but through the simple, heartfelt character of Borat—a schmegege, as he would be called in Yiddish—worked. Borat’s naïve insensitivity, blended with his good nature, offended and assuaged in equal proportion.
Not so with “Borat 2”. Although Cohen reprises his brilliant formula of inserting Borat into elaborate setups, perpetrated on unsuspecting people, and filming them documentary style, which produces highly realistic performances, he can’t recapture the magic.
First of all, Borat has changed, as acknowledged by Cohen, who co-wrote with seven others (“Borat 1” needed only three additional writers). Now famous, Borat can’t do his traditional shtick, except in elaborate costumes.
More importantly, the United States has changed. In fact, it has been Boratted.
Can you satirize a farce? Yes, by going even further over the top, Cohen seems to think. By diving daringly into current affairs, like crashing a Mike Pence rally (dressed in Klu Klux Klan robes) or moving in with some conspiracy theorists, he tries his damnedest.
Amazingly, he was able to lure Rudy Giuliani into a room full of cameras, and capture him coming on to a woman he thought was Borat’s 15-year-old daughter. But aside from the obvious—that Rudy is a cad—it doesn’t reveal much meaningful.
Even the pandemic comes off as a minor player, un-mined for its full absurdist possibilities.
Alec Baldin (lft) as Trump and Jim Carrey as Biden on SNL, October 24th. photo: courtesy NBC
Sure, Cohen could have cut the scenes longer, or attempted to show how Borat endeared himself his victims, or tried to dig for more insightful cracks. But the heart would have still been missing.
There were strong moments, often involving Borat’s daughter, masterfully played by the Rumanian actress Maria Bakalova, like when she flipped a few times from submissive, old-school daughter to bitching Borat out. Or when they were discussing breast implants with a plastic surgeon and suddenly switched to Jewish noses.
The most absurd but also heartfelt scene occurs when Borat invades a synagogue, dressed as the medieval caricature of a Jew, with long nose and fingernails, and is confronted by two sympathetic, elderly women, one a Holocaust survivor.
According to the very interesting, actual documentary, “The Untold Truth Of Borat 2” (see it on YouTube , that was one of the only times Cohen, in his long career of foisting strange characters—Borat, Ali G, Bruno, the Dictator—on the unsuspecting people, broke character.
After he explained to the women what he was doing, he befriended the survivor and even helped her make a website telling her story. Sadly, she died shortly before the film was released.
Perhaps "Borat 2" would have worked better if Cohen’s opening up to the Jewish women had been included, flipping the film into real documentary and taking Borat to the next cinema level.
The bottom line is farce in the time of Trump is redundant and new modes of humor are needed.
Saturday Night Live seems to get this. In October 24th edition, where Alec Baldwin and Jim Carrey faced off as as Trump and Baldwin, they were more introspective and exploratory than vicious parodies.
The skit on everyone missing Trump in the boring new Biden world honestly exposed the inner workings of the liberal cast and audience.
I enjoy Stephan Colbert, the George Clooney of comedy, and his masterful skewering of Trump’s morality and Seth Meyers, the Tom Hanks of Jewish comedians, who builds his astute eviscerations through political analysis. But I remain concerned that they are not innovative enough lead us out of our hysterical but humorless a morass.
Louis CK probably could find a way in, by marrying his fallen angel and everyman perspective, but he is still in the doghouse working small clubs.
SNL’s highly multicultural writers room seems to be able to simultaneously self-efface and skewer in a fair enough balance, while exploring the full complexity of our times. They did a lot with racial humor, surely they can for Trumpism, which will persist whether he wins or loses.
Shame, harsh ridicule or annihilating your opponent intellectually has rarely worked on demagogues and narcissists, save Joseph McCarthy. With more average folks, it raises defenses and increases isolation.
To get people’s neurons jiggling from giggling, enough to shift their ideological moorings, we have to entrance them with brilliant art which our reveals our shared humanity and takes it to a new perspective.
Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached .Posted on Nov 03, 2020 - 04:31 PM