HomeDid we over-media 'Borat' to death?
Oct 26, 2006, 11:42 AM | by Scott Brown
Categories: Film
Yesterday’s newsflash: We, the foot soldiers of amalgamated media, love Borat (pictured)! Today’s newsflash: You don’t know who he is!
Well, some of you do. But not enough to warrant the planned 2000-screen rollout of comedian Sacha Baron Cohen’s excoriating satire Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. Twentieth Century Fox has narrowed the Borat invasion to a more indie-friendly 800 screens, not because of the controversy with Kazakhstan or (as far as we know) a Fox-y fear of heartland backlash, but simply because most people simply don’t know Borat from Borax.
Could you come cold to Borat, "get" the joke and be wildly entertained? Absolutely. But if that question has to be asked at all, that’s too much ambiguity for the distribution wizards. They’re looking for "awareness," which also happens to be the lowest standard doctors look for in coma patients. (A measure of the esteem in which you’re held, gentle reader.) And, statistically speaking, the nation is not "aware" of Borat. They also worry that people won’t read the conceit unless they’re already "in on the joke." Golly, they must think you’re pretty stupid.
But you know what? They’re right. Not about the stupid part -- the jury’s out on that one. They’re right about the awareness thing and the breadth of the appeal. I freely admit a media conspiracy surrounding Borat: It’s a conspiracy of taste.
I don’t think of myself as a snob (I have other people to do that for me), but I confess, I like things that make me laugh. Jim Belushi farting conventionally doesn’t. Cartman farting anarchically does. So does Baron Cohen ripping this great nation a new one with fearless satiric flair. Baron Cohen’s great, Sellersesque even. He’s done something remarkable, he deserves to be seen, and we of the Media-nati desperately want to make him a fait accompli -- for all the right reasons, too. But because it’s for all the right reasons, we’ve been perhaps a bit too willing to jump aboard Borat’s promo train. Perhaps that wasn’t good for us -- or for Borat.
Because (and we forget this sometimes) you haven’t seen this movie yet. And our perfectly virtuous campaign to convince you of its (very real) genius began so early, and reached such a shrill pitch, it simultaneously convinced Fox to pursue an unrealistic rollout and convinced "early adopters" that Borat wasn’t an underground sensation, but a corporate stratagem. (In fact, it’s both.)
The fact of the matter is: You, discriminating media consumer, discovered Waiting for Guffman, Office Space, and Tenacious D. And you deserve to discover Borat, before we buzzkill it with highminded hype. We tried to make this an arranged marriage. We should've just let y'all flirt.
So, from all of us here at the Death Star, I apologize: to you, media consumers; to Borat; and to the nation of Kazakhstan, to whom we are sending 80 vats of our finest fermented horse urine.
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