Thoughts on Borat...

I realize I'm a little late on this one, but how can I not comment on Borat. I have to admit that I was a little surprised to see that this was the first film of the semester. I had heard a lot about the film in the past, but I had never seen it until last week. It was definitely interesting, to say the least. It took me a while to decide whether I thought the movie was a work of comedic genius, or if went a little too far and crossed the line one too many times. I mean, Sacha Baron Cohen was hilarious as the very bold title character, but some of the subject matter was definitely over the top. Overall, I will admit that I did like the film. I wasn't expecting to at first, but I did. As much as one can argue that Borat might have been a bit too extreme and used the comedy as a way to exploit the people of a little known country for our amusement, it did leave an impact. For me personally, the film generated more of an interest in learning, not only more about Kazakhstan, but about a lot of different places that I don't have a great deal of knowledge about just yet. In my opinion, the film made me more aware of my own misconceptions of places that I never really gave much thought to in the past. I mean, I LOVE the Travel Channel, so I have learned a lot about different regions of the world that way, but I've never come across a Passport to Uzbekistan or anything like that, so I think that this film gave me more of an interest in exploring the countries that have essentially been forgotten until now. In this way, I have to say that the film was justified in using such an extreme approach, because it made me, and I'm sure many others as well, look at certain things from a fresh perspective and brought about a desire to know more that I probably wouldn't have otherwise.

Well, thats all I really have to say for this film. I'm looking forward to Mongol and the next installment of "Apples". That book turned out to be so much more interesting than I thought it would! Anyway, see you on the discussion boards!