The new Borat thing was funny, and I admire the actors’ abilities to be absolutely unwavering in their delivery, especially in that most of it is improvised. Their humor (Borat and his “daughter”) is incredibly witty. I find most comedy to be insulting to my intelligence, and generally a waste of time if I’m not in a mood for it, but this whole “mockumentary” vibe always warms me up. Borat actually lived for 5 days in character, in the middle of COVID quarantine, with a couple of redneck weird conservative conspiracy theorists, for example.
When I started watching it, though, I was warned of “blackface” as part of the disclaimers on Amazon Prime. I do find it funny that people in America pick and choose the things that they’re offended by rather dutifully, and double standards are always abound.
I’m not offended, of course, we’re just talking about a sequel to a movie that was banned in nearly every Arab country, not to mention the people in Europe that it pissed off, including the Anti-Defamation League. Romani people are white enough to make fun of without question, I guess. And then there’s a holocaust survivor who was interviewed in a church, no less, that thought they were misled and mocked under false pretenses in an interview…
I didn’t see any actual “literal” blackface, though. We’ll see how Sacha Baron Cohen does when he tries out a character from Africa, if his message is so noble.
That said, it was worth watching. American journalism deserves to be mocked. The first one was better, though.