At least one of my roommates thinks that he’s an idiot, a buffoon who gets laughs by saying dirty things and humiliating innocent people. The government of Kazakhstan agrees.
But pasty-faced Sacha Baron Cohen, also known as Borat Sagdiyev, is actually a modern-day genius.
His new movie “Culture Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan” should be required viewing for every Georgetown student, professor and administrator.
He’s making a statement about the discrimination in our world today, about the subtle hatred that happens even at Georgetown. The community owes it to itself to listen.
For the past few years, Cohen, a British actor who first found fame as the host of “Da Ali G Show,” has been running around America and Britain pretending to be a sex-crazed racist and anti-Semitic Kazakh reporter named Borat. But while trying to uncover “American ways,” Borat often portrays an unflattering image of Kazakh culture – and this is why the Kazakh government doesn’t like him. Borat talks about his private parts, claims Kazakh women can’t vote and is virulently anti-Semitic (Cohen is Jewish).
His point? To make people laugh while exposing Americans’ smug cultural self-superiority and to reveal our society’s underlying xenophobia and anti-Semitism: in other words, the nasty stuff nobody likes to talk about.
On television, Borat has gotten well-educated Americans to admit they’d like to bring back slavery and even coaxed a room full of Arizonans to sing a rendition of “Throw the Jew Down the Well.”
While it’s all funny, it’s also frightening that intelligent Americans will say such things. It’s 40 years after the Civil Rights Movement but there are still deep divisions in our society. We need to confront these tensions, even at Georgetown.
Hatred is a fact of life on the Hilltop. It’s just that here people are too smart to openly say that they’re anti-Semitic or racist. Instead, it takes on subtler forms.
Remember a few years ago when the black community was in an uproar over a racist e-mail sent to community leaders?
Remember the rampant complaints of discrimination that prompted administrators to create a flawed – but well-intentioned – bias reporting system?
What about the hateful debates between Georgetown’s pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli groups that have often verged on slander?
Or the menorah that freshmen stole and carted to Harbin Hall?
Those are symptoms of a larger problem, one that nobody’s quite gotten a handle on and that administrators cheerfully avoid confronting unless something high-profile happens. But the tension simmers below the surface, waiting for a big event to make it explode.
One day, something will prompt Georgetown’s ethnic and racial tensions to be fully exposed, and it won’t be pretty.
But maybe, with more characters like Borat in popular culture, we can laugh a little beforehand and stop lying to ourselves about this “colorblind” society.
Several weeks ago, Cohen, posing as Borat, appeared outside Kazakhstan’s embassy in Washington, D.C. for a press conference before Secret Service agents arrived and made him leave.
Speaking in character, he told a swarm of reporters that complaints by the Kazakh government were “disgusting fabrications.”
Then he marched to the White House, where he tried to hand-deliver a movie screening invitation to President Bush.
You probably missed the premiere screening at Georgetown’s Loews Theater. But you ought to see Borat when he appears for real on the big screen. You’ll laugh, blanch a couple times then scratch your head.
You’ll wonder how Borat coaxed Americans’ disturbing thoughts out of their heads. And you’ll wonder if your classmates sometimes think the same things.
Moises D. Mendoza is a senior in the School of Foreign Service and former editor in chief of THE HOYA. He can be reached at mendozathehoya.com. DAYS ON THE HILLTOP appears every Tuesday.
