Borat: Great Culture-Clash Comedy

Yesterday, I was lucky enough to catch a UK preview of Sacha Baron Cohen's first filmic outing as Kazakhstani journalist Borat, in the brilliantly titled Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.

I've never been a huge fan of Cohen's more famous character, Ali-G, who was originally a late-night phenomenon here in the UK, but is now rarely seen on these shores. In contrast, I've always enjoyed Cohen's Borat sketches, which is strange considering that, as a very sheltered character with little experience of anything outside his own immediate life and culture, Borat is very similar to Ali-G.

The strength of Ali-G was always his ability to catch powerful individuals off-guard through his apparent charm and naivety, essentially tricking people into revealing their true thoughts on controversial subjects, from women in the workplace through to correct dinner-party etiquette.

Borat shares all Ali-G's abilities and more. The Kazakhstani government has rigorously attacked the film for its portrayal of the Kazakhstani people as backward, but the reality is very different. Borat is a physical embodiment of the Kazakhstani stereotype, and can even be seen to represent the way in which many westerners view the eastern-European and Islamic worlds in general. As a character Borat works on two levels; he satirises and mocks as unacceptable the derogotory views of women which are still prevalent in many cultures around the world, whilst simultaneously satirising the US stereotype of middle-eastern cultures by playing up to it.

As with Ali-G, the opinions that Cohen expresses as Borat succeed in drawing out prejudices and laissez-faire attitudes amongst individuals - and even crowds - he meets in the US. In the conservative Republican heartland that is the mid-West, Cohen delivers a particularly ballsy performance and manages to draw applause from a rodeo crowd for inciting little short of the total destruction of Iraq. Only when he asks for President Bush to drink the blood of the Iraqi people in celebration of their destruction, does the crowd begin to waver in their support for the general sentiment. The scenes are remarkably reminiscent of attitudes held towards the Vietnamese people forty years ago, by a people who had little understanding of the culture they were fighting against.

On the surface then, Borat is a culture-clash comedy following a bumbling Kazakhstani reporter as he sets out to document the American way of life, and instead initiates an impromtu roadtrip from New York to LA. So far, so accessible for the MTV generation. That might normally be something of a criticism if it wasn't for the fact that Borat is very, hysterically funny. Then, as if that wasn't enough, look just beneath the surface, and you'll find a biting satire of western prejudice and naivety.