Word: cohen
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...course, every time the country responds seriously to these fabrications, Cohen issues a hysterical counterstatement and rakes in more free publicity. After a recent Kazakh advertising supplement in The New York Times designed to show the world how modern and business-friendly the nation really is, Borat responded with a statement blaming the campaign on neighboring Uzbekistan, and threatening a “catapult war” if it did not stop. Luckily for Fox, and unlike “Da Vinci,” Cohen’s film is worth the three-ring press circus; it?...
...Curb Your Enthusiasm” vet, knows how to work with this style of confrontational comedy (popular on shows now from “Curb” to “The Colbert Report”), milking awkward pauses and misunderstandings for all their comedic gold. The lengths Cohen goes to in the effort to actually offend people are staggering; his Southern dinner party doesn’t end until he orders an African-American hooker sent to the plantation house of his hosts...
When Borat asks which firearm would be most suited for shooting a Jew, a gun salesman answers with similar assuredness, and points him towards an appropriate weapon. Another American urges Cohen to shave his mustache so that he looks less like “terrorist.” Upon hitching a ride from a caravan full of frat brothers, amid the generic male jostling, one youth takes the chance to gripe to Borat about how minorities are always “on top” in the United States. The shouts of support when he yells to a crowded stadium...
...Cohen, who is Jewish, (his fiancée, “Wedding Crashers” star Isla Fisher, is converting for their upcoming wedding, as reported in The Evening Standard earlier this year) may easily escape allegations of anti-Semitism, but that alone doesn’t completely redeem his strategy. His thought process in “Borat” seems to be the following: if we present hyperbolic and laughable racism, viewers will see the absurdity underlying all harmful ethnic stereotypes...
...enacting these material fantasies, Cohen isn’t playing Borat as ignorant of America; indeed, these are the American exports famous the world over. If anything, Borat has received the messages our culture has sent all too well, a more sophisticated point that hides beneath the surface-level farce...