The Hypocrisy and Selective Wokeness Behind Progressive America’s Embrace of Borat
While I’ve been living in Seattle for the past four years, I am actually from Kazakhstan. I have complex feelings about the character of Borat, Sacha Baron Cohen’s vehicle for satirizing American xenophobia and ignorance. Although many people in the Kazakh cultural bubble have discussed this extensively, this discussion is mostly in Russian and doesn’t appear in the West’s discourse around Borat. With the recent release of Borat 2, I feel it’s important to connect these two cultural discourses now more than ever. Because Cohen didn’t use a fake country for his character’s origins, his choice of Kazakhstan has real consequences for real people.
We are in an important historical moment. Very different regions of the globe have to recognize each other through synchronous global media for the first time after thousands of years of cultural isolation. (Thanks, Internet!) Unfortunately, cultural and linguistic barriers prevent us from having enough context to understand each other. The distribution of global power and media has allowed the more privileged portions of the globe to remain in willful ignorance of the rest of us. We should all aspire to understand our brothers and sisters around the globe with respect and dignity, and Borat, despite its attempts to highlight the problem of western ignorance, is not the way to do this.
Let’s get this out of the way first: Although I feel silly having to point this out, many people watching the Borat films are astoundingly unaware that Borat’s Kazakhstan has no truth in reality whatsoever, except its location on a map and our flag. Contrary to the impression created in the film, most of us aren’t even ethnically European! We are proudly Central Asian, a thorough mix of east and west. Borat’s fictional Kazakhstan does not at all represent the Kazakh language, culture, or people. For example, scenes from Borat’s fictional hometown were filmed in Romania.
Kazakhstan was never a traditional tourist destination, but following the release of the first movie in 2006, we had a huge influx of tourists. Many of these British and American tourists did not know Borat’s Kazakhstan was fictional until they landed. In a way, I felt sorry for these sorts of people, but now I find myself having to deal with them in my daily life by living here in America. It’s as if the satire behind Borat flew right over their heads.
In my experience, roughly one out of the three times when I meet an American (within or outside the US), the only thing they know about Kazakhstan is Borat, and these people really believe in the reality of Borat’s Kazakhstan. Even after I try to politely explain to them that Kazakhstan was used as a prop in a satire of people just like them, they still want to believe in Cohen’s fiction. I get a sense that having a foreign group to look down on makes them feel pride in their Americanness, which is, in part, what Borat is trying to satire in the first place! Ignorance should never be grounds for pride, yet America is filled with both. I am writing this because I believe America can be better than that.
In this way, I appreciate Borat’s cutting satire of America’s profound ignorance of the rest of the world, its false sense of superiority, and, ultimately, its xenophobia. This problem is so very real. It’s real for the climate, for international peace, for international trade & politics, for struggling refugees and well-to-do immigrants, and me personally as a Kazakh person. I have encountered this conceited ignorance in my daily life throughout my time living here, and it hurts. It makes me feel like I cannot have a home here unless I put on the mask of self-absorbed American culture rather than my own and hide my accent and unique way of seeing the world.
Perhaps Baron Cohen believed that choosing a real country to serve as the target of American conceit would add weight to the satire and provocation. Americans might begin to see their superiority complex for what it is if the character appeared to come from an actual country they knew nothing about.
So while choosing Kazakhstan may bolster Borat’s satirical value, and I could stop here and even agree with Cohen’s purpose, my negative feelings as a Kazakh at the butt of the joke far outweigh the positive. I see privileged hypocrisy in the critical acclaim and positive attention that many so-called progressive Americans have bestowed upon Baron Cohen’s satire.
Borat’s appropriation of our identity has been extremely offensive for many Kazakh people, especially many who lack the context of Cohen’s satire. For Kazakh people without this context, the movie is nothing but false, disrespectful, and insulting. To the many Kazakhs who have watched Borat without an understanding of America’s ignorance problem, Cohen appears to be nothing more than an ignorant western bully who carelessly poses as one of us to introduce our culture and nation to the world in the most false and disrespectful way imaginable.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, I’ve seen how well-meaning people in the US want to believe that they have progressive values and aspire to be seen from the outside as “good people” without following through. My experience has been that Americans who wear the progressive label with pride often do so for the sake of appearances while showing little if any interest in actual fraternity with other peoples. Is it out of ignorance? Or fear?
They are more afraid of being accused of ignorance or offending someone than actual connection and diversity in their lives. Frequently they signal the progressive virtues they aspire to because they don’t want to be a victim of cancel culture. They don’t want to be called out or punished with unemployment. They don’t want others talking negatively about them behind their backs for some unintentional transgression against progressive ideals or woke-ness.
In doing so, though, they miss the forest for the trees. Many of the same self-described “progressive” people who act so sensitive about whether or not their colleague is using the correct gender pronouns or expresses outrage about someone wearing a Native American warrior costume for Halloween then go home at the end of the day and watch Borat steal my identity at other people’s expense. And they will do this without a second thought, unaware — or unconcerned — that it has caused real harm to millions of Kazakhs — especially those of us who live and travel beyond Kazakhstan’s borders.
Borat was released in 2006. Initially, it didn’t bother me. I thought that as time went on, the Borat problem we Kazakhs face would fade away. Unfortunately, millions of Kazakhs and I have to put that fantasy to bed with Amazon’s recent release of Borat 2 and its train of critical acclaim and positive media coverage, from Jimmy Kimmel to the New York Times and many others.
It’s deeply disappointing that after all the truly inspiring cultural progress I’ve witnessed and participated in during my time in America, there’s no discussion around Borat’s appropriation. Despite the progress of the MeToo movement and the normalization of the Black Lives Matter movement, I see deep hypocrisy on the American left whenever Borat crops up.
Given that Baron Cohen’s theft of Kazakh identity is a defiling form of cultural appropriation, how can you accept this so-called entertainment while ignoring its unjust degradation of a proud but much less privileged nation and culture, and at the same time consider yourself a progressive? In my humble opinion, you cannot.
