How Borat became one of the defin­ing come­dies of the 21^st century

Back in 2006, I snuck into my local mul­ti­plex with two friends to watch Borat: Cul­tur­al Learn­ings of Amer­i­ca for Make Ben­e­fit Glo­ri­ous Nation of Kaza­khstan. Over the next 84 min­utes I laughed hard­er than I have ever laughed at any­thing before or since. The packed cin­e­ma was full of oth­er peo­ple doing exact­ly the same. A few months lat­er, my class­mates and I would watch a suc­ces­sion of teach­ers grow increas­ing­ly pan­icked as they allowed us to watch Borat dur­ing the final weeks of term. It’s fair to say the film was a sensation.

Borat gained instant noto­ri­ety and earned its cre­ator and star, Sacha Baron Cohen, glob­al recog­ni­tion. Ten years ago it res­onat­ed with movie­go­ers chiefly because it com­bined cru­di­ty, nudi­ty and a whole host of polit­i­cal­ly incor­rect moments, trad­ing off of audi­ences’ prej­u­dices and pre­con­cep­tions in order to gen­er­at­ing its edgy, unavoid­ably juve­nile, brand of humour. But how does the film hold up when viewed today?

The first thing that hits you is just how out­ra­geous a char­ac­ter Cohen cre­at­ed with Borat Sagdiyev, the Kaza­khstani reporter. The film begins with him giv­ing a tour of his home­town, along the way intro­duc­ing us to the ​“town rapist, town mechan­ic and abor­tion­ist” and grave­ly announc­ing that his coun­try has prob­lems: ​“eco­nom­ic, social and Jew.” It’s no won­der the Kaza­kh gov­ern­ment threat­ened to sue Cohen after he appeared as Borat at the 2005 MTV Movie Awards.

Of course, Borat is a char­ac­ter designed to be as offen­sive as pos­si­ble, and it’s this that enables him to draw equal­ly enter­tain­ing and obscene behav­iour out of the peo­ple he meets. The only prob­lem is that in doing so, Kaza­khstan is made to stand as a sym­bol for every­thing that is anti­se­mit­ic, misog­y­nis­tic or just plain wrong about Borat.

In real­i­ty, Kaza­khstan is a fair­ly pro­gres­sive place, but for any view­er with no pri­or knowl­edge of the coun­try it was all-too easy to accept this exag­ger­at­ed fic­tion­al Kaza­khstan. If the major­i­ty of the film is punch­ing up by expos­ing some of the frankly embar­rass­ing behav­iour of the Amer­i­can pub­lic, then its por­tray­al of Kaza­khstan is the one time it’s punch­ing down.

The action becomes a lot more provoca­tive (and hilar­i­ous) once Borat arrives in the US. Sim­ply say­ing hel­lo to passers-by is enough to make them sprint sev­er­al blocks away or threat­en to kill him, but it’s when Borat gets into con­ver­sa­tions with ordi­nary peo­ple that the film’s true genius becomes clear. Borat meets a com­e­dy teacher to learn about Amer­i­can humour, and talks about his broth­er Bilov, who is kept in a cage because of his ​‘fun­ny’ ​“facial retar­da­tions”, escap­ing and rap­ing their sis­ter. It’s a gen­uine­ly provoca­tive moment, yet Cohen still man­ages to get his inter­vie­wee to high-five him in celebration.

Cohen uses this same tac­tic to more sub­tle effect lat­er on as a means to show how in Amer­i­ca, mon­ey talks. Borat goes to a car deal­er­ship and the sales­man hap­pi­ly answers his ques­tions about how fast he’d have to dri­ve to kill gyp­sies with­out a hint of con­dem­na­tion. Even worse is a scene in a gun shop where Borat asks for the best gun to defend him from Jews; the own­er calm­ly rec­om­mends either a 9mm or a .45. This encounter – and sev­er­al oth­ers like it – rais­es a trou­bling ques­tion: are these peo­ple just going along with it out of polite­ness and the will to make a sale, or do they think a desire to slaugh­ter Jews or gyp­sies is nor­mal enough not to mer­it comment?

Besides these fair­ly low-key con­ver­sa­tions that lit­ter the film, it is per­haps best known for its stunt set-pieces. In one scene Borat chas­es his pro­duc­er Aza­mat naked through a hotel, inter­rupts a live local TV broad­cast and, most ter­ri­fy­ing­ly of all, insults an entire rodeo audi­ence by trash­ing the one thing they prize more than any­thing else: America.

He starts off well, prais­ing the US Army’s efforts in Iraq in increas­ing­ly hyper­bol­ic fash­ion, until pro­claim­ing, ​“may George Bush drink the blood of every man, woman and child in Iraq!” to deaf­en­ing cheers. The rodeo audi­ence turns from a cheer­ful fam­i­ly bunch into a blood­thirsty mob when Cohen launch­es into a ren­di­tion of the Kaza­kh nation­al anthem before call­ing all Amer­i­cans ​“lit­tle girls”. Although we don’t see much of it on screen, Cohen’s stunt almost caused a riot among the 4,000-strong crowd.

It’s moments like this that made Borat such a unique com­e­dy, one that was tru­ly of its time. It’s hard to imag­ine sim­i­lar gags work­ing today, sim­ply because leaked footage would be all over Twit­ter long before the cam­eras had stopped rolling. There’s no deny­ing that some of the Borat’s humour los­es its poten­cy once you’ve tran­si­tioned ful­ly into adult­hood, but it’s also remark­able how much of the film remains hilar­i­ous, shock­ing and insightful.