Cohen Defends Borat
Borat Sagdiyev, the fictional Kazakh journalist invented and portrayed by the 35-year-old British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen for Da Ali G Show, television show in which Borat interviews people who believe that he is a real Kazakhstani television journalist, often committing cultural solecisms, exposing racist, sexist and simply bizarre views both of his own and those he is interviewing. Now that he has made his cinematic premier in the film "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan", he sparked much controversy.
On November 9 The Russian government banned the movie saying: "it could offend viewers in relation to certain ethnic groups and religions." Borat portrays his countrymen as absurd, primitive, racist, sexist and just downright weird. The Kazakhstani Foreign Minister threatened to sue Cohen yet the local authorities didn`t ban the movie but rather strongly urged it not be distributed in the country. 20th Century Fox`s distribution subsidiary in the region agreed not to show it there. The European Center for Antiziganism Research, who work to fight negative attitudes towards gypsies have filed suit in Germany and 20th Century Fox took scenes with reference to gypsies out of the film trailers in Germany. In the film Borat says some shocking anti-Semitic things.
Cohen who is him a devout Jew says he purposely made his character prejudice. "Borat essentially works as a tool," He said in an interview to Rolling Stone, "By himself being anti-Semitic, he lets people lower their guard and expose their own prejudice, whether it`s anti-Semitism or an acceptance of anti-Semitism," he says.
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