Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost its Edge in Computing
Book
In 1944, Britain led the world in electronic computing. By 1974, the British computer industry was...
Black Gods of the Asphalt: Religion, Hip-Hop, and Street Basketball
Book
J-Rod moves like a small tank on the court, his face mean, staring down his opponents. "I play just...
Death in the Shape of a Young Girl: Women's Political Violence in the Red Army Faction
Book
In the early 1970s, a number of West German left-wing activists took up arms, believing that...
In Womens Words: Violence & Everyday Life During the Indonesian Occupation of East Timor, 19751999
Book
Drawing primarily upon oral history interviews, this study presents a woman-centred history of the...
What Women Want: An Agenda for the Women's Movement
Book
What Women Want is a trenchant examination of the struggle for women's equality, and a prescription...
A Superpower Transformed: The Remaking of American Foreign Relations in the 1970s
Book
During the 1970s, American foreign policy faced a predicament of clashing imperatives-US decision...
Arab Fall: How the Muslim Brotherhood Won and Lost Egypt in 891 Days
Book
How did Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood win power so quickly after the dramatic "Arab Spring" uprising...
Ethical Imperialism: Institutional Review Boards and the Social Sciences, 1965-2009
Book
University researchers in the United States seeking to observe, survey, or interview people are...
Gaza Under Hamas: From Islamic Democracy to Islamist Governance
Bjorn Brenner and Magnus Ranstorp
Book
Hamas is designated a terrorist organization by Israel, the EU, the USA and the UN. It has made...
LeftSideCut (3778 KP) rated Borat (2006) in Movies
Oct 22, 2020
Borat is offensive in so many ways, but I'll be damned if it isn't clever. The character is anti-semitic, sexist, and homophobic. Of course, Cohen himself isn't any of these things, but this role he plays truly brings out the worst in real life people that he interviews for his "documentary". As soon as he says something unorthodox, his subject will let their guard down, feel comfortable, and join in. It's quite something, and results in Cohen exposing the ugliness of somenof these people.
The over-arching narrative is thread bare (and honestly not intended to be the main focus) but climaxes in such a hilariously surreal fashion.
I'm not conviced that some of the stuff in this movie would fly now (at the time of writing, the second Borat movie is due to release tomorrow so we will see!), but Cohen's recent series, Who Is America?, showed clear as day that he is still as sharp, brutal, and out for blood as he ever has been.
Borat is another fine semi-exposé, that is frequently hilarious, and constantly disturbing, that is still as relevant and needed now as it was back in 2006.