In its (fairly complementary) review of the upcoming film Borat, Manohla Dargis writes:
That Mr. Baron Cohen plays the character’s anti-Semitism for laughs is his most radical gambit. The Anti-Defamation League, for one, has chided him, warning that some people may not be in on the joke. And a sampling of comments on blogs where you can watch some of the older Borat routines, including a singalong in an Arizona bar with the refrain “Throw the Jew down the well,” indicates that the Anti-Defamation League is at least partly right: some people are definitely not in on the joke, though only because some people are too stupid and too racist to understand that the joke is on them. As the 19th-century German thinker August Bebel observed, anti-Semitism is the socialism of fools, a truism Mr. Baron Cohen has embraced with a vengeance.
For those who have not seen any of the show on HBO or any of the hundreds of clips on YouTube, Borat is a Kazakh journalist who (for our purposes) is quite open about his dislike for Jews. In this case, people generally accept it because the actor who plays Borat is himself Jewish (and a Jew can never be anti-Jewish, right?), and his style of humor is to use his characters to poke fun at his interviewees and other victims (thus, when he starts singing about “throwing Jews down the well, so that his country can be free” with an entire bar of red-necks singing along, the joke is really on the people at the bar who got duped into showing their true feelings by innocent Borat).
In the excerpt from the review above, it is noted that not everyone is so enthusiastic about Borat’s style of humor. It is claimed that not everyone is able to “get the joke”, and that many (out of innocence, stupidity or both) accept it at face value and use it as an object of veneration. Although many people will look down on those who do this (for the same reason as we laugh at the people singing in the bar), the fact that it happens so openly is at the very least, quite troubling.
Ultimately the reviewer partially dismisses such concerns with a quote from August Bebel: “anti-Semitism is the socialism of fools”.
But can these concerns be so easily dismissed?
If we look at events in the world outside of Hollywood and unconnected with English comedians, we see other instances of popular anti-Jewish behavior. Newspapers sponsored by Fatah are very open about their ingrained hatred of Jews, while anti-Jewish trends throughout Europe are very much on the rise. And these occurrences have much more significance than some drunk people singing in a bar. These lead to murders and indoctrination of a generation of children for more hatred and war.
Granted, Borat is a funny guy. But does that alone excuse his brand of humor? Or does it help us to ignore and dismiss anti-Jewish behavior that is occurring on a global scale?
(This article was cross-posted on Newsvine)
