Grin and Borat

This page returns from a few days off, which included seeing Sascha Baron Cohen's subversive opus, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazahkstan. Since the film opened to packed cinemas across North America last weekend, the wire has buzzed with accounts of practically everyone who appeared in the movie suing Cohen for being played for intolerant buffoons. To the cinematically wronged would-be plaintiffs, this page has a few thoughts for you to mull over before signing that affidavit:

-You signed a contract. Obviously a manipulatively worded contract, but nonetheless a contract. Cohen must know what he's doing, otherwise Da Ali G Show would never have aired in North America.

-This brand of undercover journalism has been coverd by the First Amendment for decades, from John Howard Griffin's Black Like Me to Tyra Banks' Fat Like Me. If the frat boys successfully sue Cohen because he caught their vino veritas tirades of racism and misogyny on camera, what happens to the Daily Show? Is Michael Moore reduced to Canadian Bacon 2?

-Cohen takes down opponents with judo-like precision. The government of Kazahkstan is furious about their country's portrayal in Borat, to which Cohen deftly deflected the criticism in the Borat personna and called on Kazahkstan officials to "sue the lying Jew" (i.e. Cohen himself) who would produce such propaganda.

-Why are you suing for defamation when you should be suing for royalties? Borat could be one of the highest-grossing films this year. Why not get your cut and call your humiliation a teaching moment? I did something like that six years ago, which is why I'm one of a handful of people with a blog AND real estate in Vancouver! (SPOILER ALERT) If anyone was going to sue, I thought it would have been Pamela Anderson for the staged kidnapping attempt near the end of the film. I guess any publicity is, as Borat says, very nice.