"Borat" is actually a story of the same nature, but the misunderstanding is magnified many times over. Grandma Liu and Rongguofu are only the difference in life between urban and rural areas; Kazakhstan and the United States span half the world in space, and the stages of social development cannot be compared at all. Not only basic living customs, but also social etiquette, values, aesthetic taste, etc. are also very different. Of course, I don't believe that the real Kazakhstan today is really so ignorant and backward, and all kinds of bizarre and weird phenomena are just artistic exaggerations by the director.
In order to achieve a full funny effect, the film widens the civilization gap between the two countries as much as possible, that is, to make Kazakhstan ignorant and ignorant, backward and backward as much as possible. The protagonist's various words and deeds that are incompatible with modern civilization make people suspect that he has traveled through a thousand years from primitive society on a time machine, or that he is a Martian who flew to earth from outside the sky. He treats the elevator as a room, washes his face with toilet water, and even masturbates in the street. People who don't know the inside story may even regard him as a performance artist.
So the reason why the film is interesting is because of the cultural differences and the distance of communication that the director deliberately played with. In the collisions of the two cultures, our protagonists can always go into battle calmly and unscrupulously. Those who are caught off guard and stunned are always self-righteous Americans. The former's brazenness and the latter's embarrassing helplessness constitute the main joke of the film. When we are laughing to the ground because of the jaw-dropping vulgar performances, we can finally understand how terrible cultural differences are, how terrible is poor communication, and how terrible the "Tower of Babel" is. And for a layman like me, this effect is much more effective than the well-conceived, well-crafted, and deeply conceived Tower of Babel.
Of course, the purpose of the film cannot be to mock the Kazakh people. During the contest between Borat and the great American people, the irony of Americans' arrogance and blindness is revealed everywhere. Moreover, although Borat has done all kinds of despised behaviors, he is not aware of it. It is precisely because of his persistence, simplicity and straightforwardness that he has a candid temperament that is lacking in the Americans who claim to be civilized. . This film is not so much an illustration of the differences between American and Third World cultures, but rather a reflection on its own culture. This kind of technique can also be seen in "Forrest Gump", but Forrest Gump is a member of the American people after all, and the way the film raises questions is not so sharp.
Interestingly, there is a passage in the film where Borat discusses humor with humor experts in the United States. The humor in Borat's concept is ignorant ridicule and a response to vulgarity, while the so-called humor of Americans is to pretend ignorance to arouse each other. misunderstanding. This difference in "humor view" also reflects the difference between the two cultures to a certain extent. Borat's humor is completely natural, heartfelt laughter, while American humor seems steady and elegant, but it is much more hypocritical. The superficial jokes of this film are made entirely by laughing at disadvantaged cultures, but such jokes are not recognized by the mainstream American culture. This is also a place worth pondering.
Mr. Lin Yutang, who invented the word "humor", once said that he wanted to use the word humor to refer to "elegant and harmonious", and his intention was to "sympathize with the heavens and others". The hilarity of many comedy movies is just the means, and the thinking behind it is the real purpose. "Borat" is such a film, through the protagonist's smirk that is extremely incompatible with the real society, it shocks people's accustomed way of thinking. Of course, if you just need to reap the thrill of 80 minutes of leaning back and forth and screaming for stomach pain, this is still your best choice.
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