Last weekend, despite misgivings, I shelled out $7.75 and saw “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.” A mockumentary, the film purports to follow Kazakh journalist Borat Sagdiyev as he travels across the U.S., hoping to learn enough to propel Kazakhstan from second to first world status.

Reviews, both published and word-of-mouth, hail the film as a comic masterpiece of “squirm humor,” the kind made popular by television shows like “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “The Office.” The Borat character, conceived and performed by British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, is a naïve boor – sexist, homophobic and wildly anti-Semitic. As he travels America displaying his prejudices, he is met with either revulsion of expressions of bigotry similar to his own. Some reviews claim the film’s genius lies in that Mr. Baron Cohen has created a character that serves as a mirror to reflect some of America’s uglier tendencies.

I’ll admit I laughed; Mr. Baron Cohen is an accomplished comedian. I’ll also admit I have no sympathy for the jackasses who fell into Borat’s trap and stood there with a camera running and recommended guns or vehicles suitable for killing Jews. They’re idiots and deserve the contumely heaped on them.

Many people the film mocks, however, are not jackasses. Foremost among them are Kazakhs. My own experience of Kazakhs is limited, but I’m sure they are not the mean-spirited rapists and products of incest Mr. Baron Cohen portrays them to be. They suffer from lack of education, lack of access to the media and centuries of bad government. Due to all that and more, the average Kazakh is probably not very sophisticated or enlightened, but that doesn’t mean those of us who have the advantages listed above have any grounds to make sport of them. The “Kazakhstan” scenes in the film were shot in Romania, with villagers who – according to press reports – were misled about the nature of the project they took part in and are unhappy about being ridiculed.

Borat talks to Americans about killing Jews and gays, about buying wives and yoking them to plows, to elicit similar sentiments just below the surface in America (the American south, actually). Many of the people in the film are – if anything – too polite as Borat insults their wives, disrupts their television broadcasts and waves bags of shit in their faces. Nor were they as happy to go along with Borat’s bigotry as the film suggests. According to the Internet Movie Database, the police were summoned 91 times during the making of the movie.

If Mr. Baron Cohen’s mission is to cast a cynical eye on American prejudice, it’s odd that Borat is not portrayed as racist. He makes friends with and learns slang from young African American men; he finds true love with an African American prostitute. What gives? I’m guessing racism didn’t fare well in Mr. Baron Cohen’s test groups; perhaps it was too uncomfortable to watch. Perhaps African Americans are still outsiders in our society in ways women, Jews and gays are not.

We may never know what Mr. Baron Cohen was thinking when he made the movie; he will only appear in character at events promoting the film and serious discussion is pointless with Borat. Hiding behind his moustache, accent and cheap suit Mr. Baron Cohen neither makes grand claims nor answers serious questions about his work. It’s a level of unaccountability the White House must envy.

Name-calling isn’t humor; that’s why Air America is as unentertaining on the left as Rush Limbaugh is on the right. The strong mocking the weak is not humor; it’s bullying. Sexist frat boys, homophobic cowboys, anti-Semitic gun store owners and Hummer salesmen deserve everything they get, but the bulk of Mr. Baron Cohen’s film invites us to laugh over the supposed shortcomings of an ersatz Kazakh and his kin. It’s not funny the way comedian Barry Humphries (Dame Edna) wasn’t funny when he joked that he doesn’t speak Spanish because there’s no one worth speaking to. It’s not funny the way Michael Richards wasn’t funny when he loosed a racist rant in a L.A. comedy club. Being a bully is not edgy or satirical; it’s just mean.

© Mark Floegel, 2006

Internet Movie Database: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0443453/trivia