John Waters vs. Borat the Brute

Both of these not-so-gentlemen humor the world with a penchant for highly offensive musings on sex, substances, and seldomly serious stuff. For my money, humor seems like it almost mandates significantly disgusting or disconcerting content these days if it intends to arouse substantial reactions. John Waters puts on GayFace/VanillaFace, resulting in an irrepressible combo of wry wit and socially relevant chortling.


Borat, along with the two other incarnations of Sacha Baron Cohen, dons BlackFace/KazakhFace/ GayFace in order to cover the gamut of gangsta-ness, orientalizing barbarism, and gaiety. What do these masks convey in this funny world where the funny farm is overflowing with obscene narratives and culturally corrupt concepts?

Culture exists so that it might be corrupted. What is culture if it cannot be misappropriated and mashed up for conspicuous consumption? Comedians are said to be successful upon crossing the point at which they've appropriated appropriately enough to receive comedic license. This license allows for licentiousness and filthy frothings. In the case of Waters, the monologue tends to the familiar and cutesy, albeit nastily nauseating. For Borat the trickster, humor is a game in which he cons his subjects into displaying their alleged animosities and/or miseducations.

For the rodeo islamophobe, the ostensibly Jew-baiting gun merchant, and the frattish rv drunks, Borat eggs on their hatemongering. Borat enjoys bringing people into his universe in order to ridicule their absurdities and revel in the debased qualities of normal folks. Is this noble? Not terribly so. But, it's godforsaken hilarity. That movie has corpses turning giddy. Waters, on the other hand, knows how to document the styles and the accents of the common man, without managing to stick a fork in their collective anus. Waters perhaps does not aim for the same manner of cultural critique as Borat, but the effect in his films is a bit more deferential with respect to class differences, even if not to propriety and behavioral norms.

One looming issue strikes again. In the spirit of Dave Chapelle, are we allowed to make fun of our own people? Can we adopt a people and then code-switch into their ranks in order to become a cultural chameleon? Imeptuous Borat from the Kazakh steppe impersonates a brutish faux Central Asian in order to become an ethnically ambiguous character of his own creation. This character ends up being a hybrid Slav-Jew-Oriental uncouth ignoramous who never ceases to enthrall. Ali G, as a black person who is not actually black, also presents us with a Bamboozled sort of minstrelsy. Cohen no doubt embodes the new age minstrel show. Bruno, for his part perhaps more akin to Waters, is cast as a relentlessly "out" homosexual, who actually was once physically assaulted for his aggressively impudent advances. It is hard to reproduce the comedic effect of Borat on a blog, but his jokes turn poker faces sour, make soccer moms squirm, and leave the rest of us wondering what the net effect of his routine is. Do the offended feel more victimized than the fans feel uplifted?

The movie is designed to draw massive crowds of eager young fans, mouths gaping in awe of the cinematic presence that Borat captures. Conversely, Waters leaves his older cast of onlookers utterly stunned by the various cult films that he's churned out, punctuated by kitschy Cry Baby, virulent Serial Mom, and pop classic-turned Broadway thriller Hairspray.

Waters finds comedic relief in absolutely disgusting tales of anal blossoms, nurses feeding turds to unsuspecting patients, and meth-hooked hyperactive homos. Does this mean that Waters does not have to leave his cultural universe to attain superstardom? The creation of Kazakhstan as imaginary home of Eastern orientalisms and ignorant imbeciles for Borat's unending but misdirected adulation. The real nation that exists independent of Borat's illusions plays no role in this spoof. Nonetheless, it's not just a place represented by villages of angry Romanians who've sued Borat for misrepresenting them on screen and for exposing their virtues (or lack thereof) to the moviegoing set. (I read that the so-called town abortionist was the most irate upon realizing the SUCCESS of the Boratic travesties).

Anyhow, join me on Borat's irreverent and repulsive bandwagon. Be sure to check the official Borat website for a slice of the cheese curd made from his mother's breast milk. Ahh yes, I liiiiike!

Google Video

Google Video is one of Google's best services. It's absolutely incredible. Here are a few that I posted. Peep them jawns:

New Orleans/American Red Cross trip 2005:
Laffy Taffy Canal Street
Lower Ninth Ward New Orleans
Neon Blue Cross Dance
Crunk Juice, Jews, and Jesus
Congregation, Ya Heard Me?

New York City and Republican Convention 2004:
Das Wideo of Some Krauts
Jesse Jackson Live at the Republican Convention
Riot Police Intimidate Protesters During Republican Convention
Penny and the Jets

Summer Adventures 2005:
Camels in the Negev Desert
Malaka Malaka
The Sistine Chapel
Gibraltar Monkey

Final Spring at UPenn 2005:
Beno As Jesus, Mohamed, Moses, Taliban, Viking, and Rabbi
Rows of Corn
Goofy A-Bomb
Roasty Toasty: Hot Dog Vendor

Relatives Being Musical 2005:
Kohnstamm Family Orchestra

Vicarious Homeric Experience

These days we all get unlimited access to the craziest experiences through various pop culture media. Perhaps because our everyday lives have become more sterile and predictable, movies and the internet have had to make up for the outrageous stories and exchanges that are no longer possible in hyper-organized, regimented existences. Take this picture of a young woman with Homer Simpson tatooed upon her nether region. This tatoo artist's rendition of those Homeric lips is pretty fly. I assume that this is indeed a permanent tatoo and that this young woman probably didn't know hundreds of thousands of strangers across the weblogistan would have visual access to her genital region. Thanks young Betty for providing us the pleasure of viewing your tatoo artist's illustration. You allow us to see phenomenal art on the internet that we would otherwise never have had the opportunity to peep.

This is the beauty of pop culture these days. Every instance that we submit to the power of entertainment media, we encounter episodes that are created precisely because we would likely not run into such events or images elsewhere. Interpersonal violence and pornography are two broad categories of experience that generally broaden our horizons as we are exposed to them in the media. For better or for worse, our entertainment options today permit us to indulge ourselves in sights that range from absolutely horrendous and shockingly gruesome to fanatically arousing and absurdly tantalizing. Either way, the vast majority of what we perceive on beaming screens is beyond the pale of our caveman ancestors.

There are a few examples of gruesome images in movies that I've viewed over the course of the past week. Capote features both gangland-style shotgun killings and a mildly conclusive act of capital punishment by hanging, which rapidly contorts the spine until it snaps. Munich, despite all its excessive sentimentality and over-produced inducements, provides cheap action thrills, replete with blood smattering walls and body parts rolling around on the ground. These two movies derive their cinematic energy from the shock and disbelief that goes into the witnessing of violent behavior. Regardless of how sophisticated the descriptive mechanisms are to embellish the tales, both films hinge on primordial violence and the subsequent reaction of political and literary agents.

There are three more examples that I wish to cite. Dancer in the Dark also is resolved in the brutal hanging of a blind Bjork, whose mystical aura is stamped out by heartless punishers and an uncompromising criminal justice system. Next, the Hungarian film Kontroll depicts the savagery encountered by subway employees as they check for peoples' tickets. With bodies shoved into the tracks and mutilated appendages galore, the movie cleverly portrays the struggle of Budapest metro workers to perform their daily grind. Lastly, Million Dollar Baby features a sliced tongue that leads to a geyser of blood, nastily broken noses, and a series of other viscerally horrific boxing-related injuries.

Given these five films I've just seen that deal in seriously gory images, I'm not really sure what to conclude about my cinematic preferences. Do I preselect movies that are bound to be visually extreme? Is there a basic standard of nastiness that must be displayed for a movie to excite? Are these specific films even that extreme in their depictions, relative to other films? Most of these images are definitely extreme enough that normal people would not encounter them in the course of a lifetime. Maybe the role of our entertainment culture is to provide us with enough vicarious experience that we don't actually seek to replicate such scenes in our own actual lives. Maybe humans emotionally need to be exposed to an extreme level of disgusting physical pain and suffering so that we can psychologically limit such experience to the realm of the imagination. Does this fantasy world represent a universal human aspiration? I suppose the violence of our movies does not directly correlate with our problems with gun culture and international militarism. But, it is certainly an expression of something deep within our zeitgeist.

Back to skin. Sexually amusing or enthralling images are certainly an outlet for much of the repression that characterizes American sexuality. Does the media consciously seek to provide us with enough vicarious experience (sex and gore) so that we remain distracted and immersed inadvertently in the spectacular convergence of drama and technology that we cannot possibly seek extreme pleasures in the real world? The virtual experience accessible to the modern-day media consumer is incredible. Dilbert can go to sleep happy because he was thoroughly fufilled by looking at his cousin Homer Simpson tatooed onto the underside of a comely young lady. If only Dilbert could see Homer's lips in person...then he wouldn't need the internets. And, if we fed heretics to the lions in Madison Square Garden, then Hollywood would be out of business.