“Ceux qui peuvent vous faire croire à des absurdités, peuvent vous faire commettre des atrocités.” – Voltaire
Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.
I didn’t know this quote, until about a week ago.
I had to prepare a short and efficient presentation for work, about a topic of my choice that I could link to wisdom. I *obviously* decided to talk about Sacha Baron Cohen.
I stumbled upon the following gif, which illustrated perfectly the conclusion to my argument that through characters such as Borat, Sacha Baron Cohen relies on the same mechanisms as Voltaire did in his contes philosophiques to convey social criticism and warn us against hateful prejudice.
I ran my presentation on Wednesday morning, not knowing that the very same day, a mob of antisemitic, white supremacist, nationalist and other hate driven people would succeed in invading the US Capitol to try and stop the normal course of democracy, making this quote no longer relevant for my little exposé, but terrifyingly topical.
So on that note, I thought I would share the gif illustrated essay adaptation of why I believe Sacha Baron Cohen to be today’s Voltaire.
Disclaimer 1: this was a 20 slide presentation with 20 to 40 seconds dedicated per slide, so this is in no way a fully researched academic paper.
Disclaimer 2: SPOILER ALERT, I delve into some specific episodes of the latest Borat film.
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Ingenuousness as wisdom
We are mostly familiar with the Ingenuous figure thanks to works from the 18th century: authors would create characters either foreign, like in Montesquieu’s Lettres Persanes, or naive and ingenuous like in Voltaire’s Candide or L’Ingénu to confront society’s morals to non biased eyes, in order to criticise them.
Eating sugar in Europe comes at this cost.
In these narratives, the truth and often ugliness of human and social behaviours is revealed through the interactions and dialogues that the authors orchestrate between their ingenuous characters, and other characters inspired more or less from real life. Certainly didactic, these stories remain works of fiction.
But what happens when the ingenuous character is taken out of fiction and meets the real world?
You get this: Borat.
Baron Cohen invented an entire gallery of other popular characters such as Ali G or Bruno, but I think Borat crystallises perfectly Baron Cohen’s craft and moral message about hatred, particularly antisemitism (for some context: Baron Cohen was born into a Jewish family, and wrote his thesis on the role of Jews in the American Civil Rights movement) and misogyny.
With the hilarious Da Ali G Show, Baron Cohen already started blurring the lines between reality and fiction. Through many interviews, he had the opportunity to meet all sorts of real personalities (including none other than Donald Trump back in 2003) who had no idea the British “gangsta” sitting across from them was completely fictitious. This ability to trick real people into believing such an exaggerated and naive character could be real is not only extremely funny, but paved the way for Borat.
In Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006), Baron Cohen invents an ingenuous character: Borat, a preposterous Kazakh reporter, who must travel to the United States of America (or “US and A” as he calls them) to learn about American lifestyle and bring back valuable lessons to help improve Kazakhstan. This back story is a mere pretext to confront this fictional character to real Americans.
The film is presented as a documentary, ordered by Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Information. The film style, Borat’s voice over, the interview format, the presence of a producer character… all these elements are devices to make us buy into the documentary cover. Indeed the purpose of Borat is after all to show us non-scripted real life in America. But this documentary cover also serves Baron Cohen’s comedy, as the film obviously remains a parody, heightened by the irreverence of including the government of Kazakhstan into the subterfuge, making the film that much funnier.
What makes Borat the perfect ingenuous figure?
His foreignness to start, which creates a cultural gap between him and Americans. His fictitious Kazakh origins (with Kazakhstan being presented in the film as an extremely antisemite and misogynist country, not to be taken literally but read as a narrative device) justify his very open antisemitism and misogyny. As the film moves forward, this openness reveals a total ignorance on Borat’s behalf. It highlights his naive and ingenuous character, rather than his genuine hatred. Indeed, throughout his encounters we come to realise he has a good heart. He’s (often too) friendly, falls in love, doesn’t discriminate and can even defend the people he meets along the way.
Borat’s ingenuous character achieves two things:
-he either makes people terribly uncomfortable, making them judge him and thus feel superior leading them to act horribly;
-his open antisemitism, misogyny and ignorance make them comfortable enough to reveal their own, and very real, hatreds.
In the end, next to the ill-mannered and clumsy Borat, they’re the hateful people.
Since 2006, Borat has become a cult movie, and this year, Baron Cohen released its sequel: Borat Subsequent Moviefilm. This 2020 film is obviously tainted by Trumpism. Baron Cohen uses the film to condemn Facebook and fake news, conspiracy theory worshippers, white nationalism, antisemitism as always, and particularly sexism and misogyny.
[Spoiler alert] One of my favourite sequences is the one where Borat spends 5 days living with Trump and Qanon supporters who try to convince him that the Clintons drink children’s blood, meanwhile they discredit his Kazakh myths that women are inferior to men, on the basis that they’re “conspiracy theories”.
Many compare the first and second Borat films and claim that the sequel could not live up to the original film due to Borat’s fame nowadays. Indeed, because he is now so recognisable, Baron Cohen has a harder time fully playing with the juxtaposition of his character and the real world. However, I would argue that this creates even more comedy, as it is Borat who must dress up and embody other characters to remain anonymous. Through this mise en abyme, Borat’s characters, even when crafted by Borat and not Baron Cohen, still succeed in tricking people and revealing their worst traits.
Nevertheless, the key ingenuous figure of Borat’s sequel is no longer Borat himself, but a completely new character: Tutar, his 15 year-old daughter (played by Maria Bakalova), whose existence Borat was completely unaware of until the start of the film, and which the misogynist in him is obviously not thrilled about. He takes off again to the “US and A”, and discovers his daughter decided to follow him, disrupting his plans to bring a very clever monkey as a gift to Mike Pence. He then has to make his second journey through America with his foreign, naive and innocent daughter by his side.
Having a female Borat-like character allows Baron Cohen to address more specifically women’s issues in this film, including for instance abortion, socially tabooed periods, or exposure to sex predators.
However, unlike in the 2006 film, Borat’s sequel does not just target Americans’ prejudices, but also Borat’s very own. He carries around a hilarious Kazakh “owner’s manual” on how to raise daughters, filled with over the top myths to maintain women in ignorance. But thanks to her interactions with real American people, Tutar discovers the lies she’s been fed and confronts her father to take back control over her life and her body.
The story leads Tutar to the climactic scene of the movie, where she pretends to be a journalist to meet with Rudy Giuliani in the flesh. As the scene progresses, her naivety and ingenuousness make him more and more comfortable and confident, to the point they end up in a hotel room where he thinks he’s going to be able to sleep with the young woman, until Borat irrupts to stop anything from happening to Tutar.
Since its release, Rudy Giuliani has of course accused the film of manipulating what really happened, to which Baron Cohen replies that people should watch the scene in order to make up their own mind.
However, as much as this scene mirrors the many stories recounted by victims of powerful sexual predators such as Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein, Matt Lauer, Roger Ailes… I believe its purpose is above all narrative. Indeed, regardless of Giuliani’s claims, it is a key moment in Borat’s character arc as in the narrative of the film, he believes his daughter to be in danger and it is at that moment he realises he must protect her from harm.
The addition of Tutar in Borat’s story helps his character develop: he transforms into a real father, who protects his daughter, and even loves her. He can become aware of his own misogyny and adopt feminism.
[Spoiler alert] The film ends with Kazakhstan, a country formerly presented as hostile towards women, becoming a feminist state that fights sexism thanks to the influence of Borat.
In the end, the second Borat film resembles more the genre of Voltaire’s contes philosophiques than the first Borat’s parodic documentary, in that the real world is merely a narrative device that serves as a setting for the fictional interactions between a father and his daughter, allowing Baron Cohen to convey his own anti-sexist and feminist stance.
For more Sacha Baron Cohen material that I personally enjoy:
A video essay on Sacha Baron Cohen’s comedy by NitPix
The best clips of Da Ali G Show
My favourite “Who is America?” episode
Sacha Baron Cohen’s powerful speech at the ADL conference in 2019 about the responsibility of Facebook and other Internet companies in the rise of extremism
This is amazing. I have watched Borat many years ago and never paid attention to the message behind the film, but this makes me want to watch it now as an adult. Also wasn’t aware that a new one came out. Love the cinematic analysis and parallel to Voltaire!