What do American prooplt think about "Borat" (figure or movie) ?

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cici

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(Sorry for the misspelling in the main-title of this topic) In Europe, the figure and movie "Borat" enjoys a huge success and I wonder how US-citizens think about the movie..... if it's a forbidden movie in the USA, you can watch tons of Borat-clips on YOU-tube .... It seems that (generally speaking) European people just love Borat and american or kazachan people hate Borat. Many people don't understand the point of this kind of humour. One of the points is, that tha actor himself (Sacha Baron Cohen) is a Jew and so his antisemitic jokes are just a kind of self-critiscism. The jews have understood this and so he didn't recieve any threatening / offensive reactions. Also his homophobe jokes are relative if you see him fighting completely nude with his friend (in the movie) in a homoerotic allusive way. Borat's critiscism is against ALL kind of social groups or philosophic spirit - so he's joking about mankind and therefore also himself.

I wonder now if american people feel offended by Borat / what they think about etc. . Probably people who don't like the Simpsons or Michael Moore won't love Borat either - but some self-critic citizens probably will just die laughing, seeing the movie....

Comments?

If this kind of politics is not allowed in this forum, even if we are in the Cafe à la DVX, then I apologize and understand if you close or delete this post.

Yours - Cici
 
Borat was the number one film in it's opening weekend, and has since grossed over 100 million U.S. dollars. I haven't talked to anyone yet who saw it and didn't love it.

Personally, I've been a fan of Cohen for many years. I think he's brilliant.
 
Honestly, I think Americans, among other countries, have found "borat" to be a household name...FAST. The United States is filled with millions of different people, all from different backgrounds and ethnicities...I dont think it is fair to say "European people just love Borat and american or kazachan people hate Borat." Personally, when I went and saw it, I found it gut-wrenching hilarous, and so did dozens of my friends. In my opinion, its not really location based humor, but more of preference based humor. (Like you said about The Simpsons and Michael Moore.) Hopefully others will chime in here and post their opinions.
 
No no no... It's definitely not "forbidden" in the US. That's almost unheard of. I haven't seen it, but it did do very well here. To date (dec 6th), it's grossed $90,504,492 in the U.S. alone, and I believe it was the number one movie at the time of it's opening.

There's really not a lot of controversy surrounding the film, or the actor in general. It's just a comedy, and people love comedy's here. I'm sure there's a few people that are offended by him, but that's the case with anything in that genre... and it's definitely not enough to do any harm to the box office ratings for the movie.

I don't know where you heard that "american people hate borat", but that's just not the case. The young generation LOVE'S him, and the older people... well... they're just old :Drogar-Love(DBG):

All in all, it's a success and so is Sacha Baron Cohen.

-brown
 
Yessir, America loves Borat.

Despite what the world might think, there are a great many of us who are quite good at looking at ourselves in the mirror - especially when it reveals an unwavering view of that bigot neighbor who lives two doors down on the right.

e
 
Wow... in the time I was writing that post, two people beat me tothe punch.

EDIT: and one person beat me to this one!
 
cici said:
One of the points is, that tha actor himself (Sacha Baron Cohen) is a Jew and so his antisemitic jokes are just a kind of self-critiscism.
Click to expand...

I don't think they're "self-criticism;" I think they're intended to make anti-Semites (bigots in general) look moronic, and are therefore criticism of bigots.

The odd thing being, Kazakhstan doesn't have any particular history of Jew-hatred; that's been more a Polish/Russian/Austrian/German/Romanian hobby.
 
And most of the rest of Europe, too. Actually, much of the world.

But there's a road we don't need to go down.

Breaking this down succinctly: movies aren't banned in the US, except for things like child pornography, etc.. It has been highly successful. Most critics and everyone I've talked to said it was hilarious. The only problems which have been reported are from people who said Cohen lied about what he was doing when they signed the release forms to use the footage with them.
 
Yeah, the problem with the media is that it only highlights the negative aspects of things...so Im sure the only media borat realy gets is the people that sue him after the fact for asking them questions and them answering, and then feeling stupid when they watch it on a huge screen-
Im not saying they dont bait them to say what---either way, the people signed a release form, so its all fair game in my eyes-

the movie is hillarious-- even older people I know that have seen it laugh pretty much the whole way through
 
overlandfilms said:
Yessir, America loves Borat.

Despite what the world might think, there are a great many of us who are quite good at looking at ourselves in the mirror - especially when it reveals an unwavering view of that bigot neighbor who lives two doors down on the right.

e
Click to expand...

I thought the biggot neighbor only had a problem with leaf blowers.
 
very interesting to hear your comments .... it's in european news where they say that american and kazachan people hate Borat, but

1) they forgot to say "some" american or "five" american or any percantage .... and

2) as some of you say, it's not adaequat to put all citicens of an ethic group or a country in the same hat and say "American do this and German do that" etc. - I myself wrote in this direction even if my intention was to read opinions ... it's all about statistics and I can see it here in Switzerland: if we vote about anything, you can see huge differences how people vote depending on the city where people live (and I'm talking about a dozen of cities that are about 50 km away from each other ..... Swiss dimensions ;) ) and also the age of people voting - so it's evident, that we'll have also for Borat different opinions, depending on WHO we ask, how many persons we ask, age / gender / origin / etc. . Even the opininons here are just a little extract and a mathematician might say: it's the opinion of internet-using, forum-using, people that are interested in Video (or DVX or whatever) and so it's really a microcosmos and can't be considered either as "American citizens" ... We'd have to ask ALL of them and calculate some percentage .... but as for votes: many just wouldn't want to answer.

What I see for sure: ALL american people can't possibly "hate" Borat, as we've got here half a dozen (or 100% in this thread so far if I understand you right) who don't hate Borat and still are american citizens.

@ Sad Max : "criticism of bigots" seems to me true, as I remember Sacha B. C. saying so himself in an interview

It's very difficult for european people to make themselves a "clean" picture about the U.S. when we get our informations 99,9% from american movies.... In the newspapers, we just read what Bush is saying and doing and that's all news about the USA. So I catch myself too often, believing that the movies represent the american culture - but Hollywood is a world of its own of course and even if the movies show us life in any of the U.S., it's still Hollywood and not NY or Florida or whatever it pretends to be.
 
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Yeah -- don't judge by what you see in the movies or TV shows. For the most part, it isn't really like that.
 
I know I'm treading on thin ice, but please don't assocaite us with our... oh, man... you know.

I'll just say this: there are two types of Americans, those with a stamped passport and those who don't own one at all.

Oh man, I'm so totally banned when Uncle Jarred reads this.

:banned:

e
 
I don't have one at all...but I also don't have the money or means to be travelling anywhere.

As far as Borat....I'd say a great majority of Americans like him.
 
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