Essay of Borat and Sarah Silverman for make benefit of cultural learnings about racism
To get the joke we have to comprehend the context
BY Pike Wright
Illustration by David Anderson
Most celebrities simply walk down the red carpet of the Toronto International Film Festival. Not so Borat Sagdiyev: At his feature film debut, the “Kazakh reporter” (played by British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen) arrived in an ox cart pulled by actors dressed as peasant women in headscarves. He flashed two thumbs up, consciously imitating the quintessentially American gesture. The antics were obviously a reference to what Borat claims is a Kazakh saying: “In my country they say, ‘God, then man, then horse, then dog, then woman, then rat.’” The crowd, whose numbers rivaled those for any Hollywood celebrity at the festival, loved it, cheering him on.
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan— which opened to packed theatres and rave reviews across North America in November—is ostensibly a state-sponsored documentary for Kazakhs to learn about American culture. The film builds upon Borat’s previous appearances on HBO’s comedy Da Ali G Show. A hit in Britain, in North America Borat continues to be wildly popular, to the ire of the Kazakhstan government, which has long fought his misogynist, anti-Semitic and racist portrayal of Kazakh culture. (Though it appears the government has finally got the joke; Kazakhstan’s culture and information minister recently called the film “funny,” acknowledging that Americans are its real target.)
Nothing-is-sacred comedians like Cohen have long exploded these issues through parody, especially as discussions about stereotypes become more taboo in polite conversation. The popularity of comedians such as Margaret Cho, Dave Chappelle, Sarah Silverman and Canada’s Russell Peters reflects the fact that questions of difference, particularly race and cultural difference, fascinate us. Their acts are charged with ethnic humour about their own communities and others that is sure to offend. But is it racist?
While we can measure the immediate success of a joke by the laughter or catcalls it provokes, we can also consider the spontaneous reaction that a joke provokes as indicative of a deeper emotional landscape. Whether we find a joke funny, dirty, racist or just dumb depends on who is telling the joke, and to whom, especially when a comedian is parodying a racist character.
In Borat’s case, the joke is that he isn’t really an anti-Semite. Cohen, his creator, describes himself as an observant Jew. Talking to everyday Americans about patriotism, hunting, politics and dating, Borat’s enthusiastic curiosity, coupled with a dose of stupidity, makes his misogyny and anti-Semitism excusable—he is just a foreigner, after all, with different beliefs that must be tolerated. His ignorance of the inappropriateness of discussing the sexual prowess of his sister or asking how to defend himself against the “Jew claw attack” endears him to his fans.
In one episode of Da Ali G Show, Borat convinces a roomful of country-western fans in Tucson, Arizona, to sing along with a fabricated Kazakh ditty, singing “Throw the Jew down the well / So my country can be free. / You must grab him by his horns, / Then we have a big party.” The audience indulges him, shouting back the chorus and tapping along to the beat, unaware that they’ve been had.
Of course, it is no longer acceptable for comedians or other public figures to take up explicitly racist attitudes—the days of blackface, George Carlin and Andrew Dice Clay are retreating. But racism isn’t. So Cohen uses the bumbling Borat to give voice to racist sentiment. Black comedian Dave Chappelle does the same by playing his character Clayton Bigsby—a blind white supremacist who doesn’t realize that he is black. It is easy to see the humour in this, since we know that Dave Chappelle isn’t actually blind, or a white supremacist. That’s why it’s funny.
But what happens when the audience can’t quite tell which racist remark is, in fact, a parody? In the case of Borat/Cohen, it is obvious when Borat is Borat, and Cohen is Cohen. Even one of Borat’s detractors, the Anti-Defamation League, recognized how the country-western incident worked to expose common anti- Semitic sentiment. (But it still wasn’t amused.)
But in Sarah Silverman’s case, it isn’t so easy. Silverman is an American comic whose stand-up character is a self-obsessed “Jewish-American Princess,” seen most recently in her feature-length film Jesus Is Magic. Her act is charged with outrageous racist statements, delivered in a convincingly serious way. She plays the naive and harmless Jewish girl whose wide-eyed innocence rules out any inappropriate behaviour or beliefs. Or does it?
During an appearance on NBC’s Late Night with Conan O’Brien in 2002, Silverman recounted how a friend had advised her to avoid jury duty by writing a racial slur on the selection form—“something really inappropriate, like ‘I hate Chinks.’” Instead, sugary-sweet Silverman explained how she wrote “I love Chinks” because she didn’t want to be considered a racist. An Asian-American media watchdog group protested the use of the slur until the network apologized. Silverman did not.
So does she really think it is OK to say Chink? Silverman never breaks character by smiling at her own outrageousness (as in, “Oh my, did I just say that aloud?”), so we’re left wondering who the real Silverman is. Unlike Cohen, her act intentionally cultivates this ambivalence. If we knew, we could decide if her act is full of racist jokes or full of jokes about racism. Couldn’t we?
She further satirizes the NBC incident in Jesus Is Magic. Playing indignant about being singled out as a racist, she discusses what happened when she was about to go onstage: “The [NBC] segment producer came over to me and said, ‘Instead of nigger, say the N-word,’ and I said, ‘What do you want me to say for Chink?’ And he said, ‘Say Chink.’ ”
But Silverman also gets laughs with every repeat of the slur. The thrill of a taboo word delights. Comedian Dave Chappelle knows this, too, and endlessly used the slur “nigger” on his sketch series Chappelle’s Show. But when it became obvious that loyal viewers, many of them white, were laughing a bit too hard when he said it (and perhaps no longer found the word a problem), Chappelle wondered what his comedy was reinforcing. He walked out of a U.S. $50-million contract with Comedy Central, citing creative differences with the network as reason for quitting.
If slurs sell, are Silverman and Cohen truly subverting racism through race parody, or are they exploiting racist stereotypes to make a buck? The answer lies partially in the comedian’s relationship to the audience and what experience they share. It’s all about context. In the stand-up act of Indo-Canadian comic Russell Peters, he establishes this by asking who’s Chinese, Jamaican, Taiwanese, etc., before he goes on to satirize these groups in relation to his Indian parents, friends and himself. So it’s one thing when an Indian uses a self-naming slur; but it’s another when a white comedian uses the same slur, over and over, continuing a long and systemic history of racial prejudice.
The character of Borat illustrates this question of context as well. While at first he seems to be parodying the “backward” and culturally inappropriate foreigner, in the end, it is his prodding of everyday Americans into expressing their equally racist assumptions that provides comedic effect.
Not everyone Borat talks to is exposed as a racist. Some ignore or politely refute his virulently anti-Semitic and misogynist claims. Their discomfort is palpable, and the audience feels uneasy too. For how would we respond to Borat if we met him on the street? How does this satire challenge our complacency toward racism, anti-Semitism and sexism?
Both Silverman's and Cohen’s comedy suggest they are also satirizing us, the audience—if we laugh at the ignorance of these characters, we distance ourselves from their racism, because that’s not us. We can laugh with impunity in the dark theatre, feeling superior. Or we can walk out, feeling anger about the exploitation (often by white comedians) of our painful experiences of systemic oppression. Comedy doesn’t ever have to say outright, “This is a problem. Let’s do something about it.”
Silverman has her own surprisingly cogent answer to the central dilemma of the racist joke. “We refrain from making fun of people that scare us,” she quips. This is likely why Silverman’s producer thought it acceptable to use a slur against Asians (stereotypically portrayed as docile and servile), but not blacks (stereotypically portrayed as violent). It is also why Cohen, as Borat, can misrepresent littleknown Kazakh culture to comedic effect without any particular repercussions from that country. The power to joke is just that: power.
We can’t expect the comedian to do all the work—the audience also must work to “get” the joke—not just by seeing its humour, but recognizing our personal stake in the comedy. Our reactions to race humour form a map of our comforts, anxieties, fears and responsibilities about race. We would do well to chart a course by it.
