Talking about the film, “Borat”, most people would somewhat heard of its name before, the film is known amongst the crowd as being funny and to some extends, outrageous. Yes, we all know that Borat is hilarious, but what actually made us laugh so much? Underneath the neon green bikini and the funny accent, the core of the humor actually lied within the way the Borat interacts with his surroundings. The way he response to the world, is different as that he is different from us; his view of the world is ought to be different…. But is he really? Well, as we may guess, Borat is a character played by the actor Sacha Boron Cohen, Borat is a news reporter from Kazakhstan, trying to make a documentary of the United States. What made the film hilarious is to see Borat’s reaction to such common thing in the American modern life, since Borat is from Kazakhstan; all of his perceptions and understanding are based from his cultural background. Well, we entirely believe in this character when actually Borat doesn’t resemble much of the real Kazakhstan and the people at all, the whole “tradition” and the image of Borat’s Kazakhstan has been created entirely in this film, hence why the country’s response was furious. However, as the audience, we couldn’t care less about the fact that the image being portrayed as a developing, nuclear filled, polluted nation is actually pure creation because for us, it seems too real. With every details during the scene, we linked this image of Borat’s Kazakhstan with images of the developing part of eastern Europe and Russia and hence, due to the fact that not much people actually know Kazakhstan prior to the release of the film, we believe in the image being shown, honestly, I actually believed that the scene in Kazakhstan was real, while in fact, as I realized later, the villagers, the chickens and donkeys were all staged. Hence, this firstly introduced us to the idea of simulation, where the idea of “pretending” goes beyond just wearing a mask but actually being the character, having the real symptoms, as a result, a simulation is much more effective into making people really believe in it.
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| Borat and his version of Kazakhstan |
Moreover, as we believed in the recreational Kazakhstan, the
character of Borat is much more real to us, in fact, just like the country,
Borat himself is a simulation. Hence, there were moments during the film where
it appeared to be real, despite the fact that some parts were more likely to be
staged, we would still believe in it, since the characters and even the
settings were simulations. As a result, Borat was successful in being funny as
it was able to transform itself, from a film to a “documentary” through the
realistic details in the scenes and in the characters. Thus when we entirely
believe in the character of Borat as a real person, everything he did had much
more impact as we feel that it was so truthful and original. Hence, that is
why, personally I think Borat is funny, the fact that it was able to
exaggerated some humorous with the innocence and honesty of the character as he
seems so real.
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| Actual Kazakhs wearing their traditional costume - can you see any relation to what’s portrayed in Borat? |
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| The city of Aktau, Kazakhstan |
Another aspect of Borat that made it funny was the fact
that, in many times, the funny parts were quite unexpected, despite the
mundane, ordinary situations, Borat’s responses often came to us as a surprise,
as we are so used to the modern culture that we didn’t expect such reactions
from the character. Thus, we laughed at his way of thinking and his reactions to
American culture, as we never thought of such responses before. To add more,
those funny-moments are often situations where we all could relates to,
combined with such well simulation by the character, the whole scene or even
the whole film was able to make us believe that it was real.
To sum up, Borat might not be the most successful film, it
has its own issues just like any other films but when looking at the humorous aspect,
we have to admit that it had done a reasonably good job and I think that the
main reason that we find the film funny is not because of the obvious things on
the surface but more or so the reality and the believability of the film. Borat
himself wouldn’t be as funny if he lacks that “truthfulness” and “honesty”
which pushed him beyond the boundary of just “acting” to becoming a kind of a “simulation”,
and that simulation is what created more impact on us, as it blurred the
deceptive boundary of acting, which as a result, made us believe and relates to
the film even more.
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