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March 28, 2024

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Spring Housing Guide

“Borat” controversy being blown out of proportion

Recently, a controversial movie came out entitled “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.”

The movie is about a character played by Sacha Baron Cohen, a British comedian, traveling around the U.S. and playing pranks on people while evoking his eccentric, oddball personality.

People, when filmed, thought they were in a Kazakhstan documentary, but it’s actually an American comedy.

Unfortunately, Cohen now is getting in trouble from multiple groups including citizens from Kazakhstan.

You see, apparently Kazakhstanis are very upset for being portrayed as anti-Semitic, rape and incest-loving, horse urine-drinking sex fiends.

I think this is being blown way out of proportion because it’s just a comedy and is not in any way intended to be an accurate portrayal of how someone from Kazakhstan conducts themselves.

Cohen was just trying to make his character funny, and I think people are overreacting because it’s a fictional comedy movie, not an actual documentary where you expect the movie to have truth to it.

This leads to Russia threatening to not allow people from seeing this movie due to having political ties with Kazakhstan.

This goes to show how politically correct the world has become where some countries don’t want to show a comedy because it offends people of a neighboring country.

This isn’t the only issue for Cohen.

Now Romanians from a village called Glod could be suing Cohen and the filmmakers because they were exploited for the movie.

Cohen and the filmmakers went to Glod to film scenes of ‘Borat’s home village and portrayed the Romanian village as Kazakhstan.

The villagers supposedly thought it was going to be a documentary of the village but they didn’t know for sure since most of them couldn’t speak or understand English.

As a result, the villagers felt they were exploited in the movie.

And they were not happy campers.

One of the villagers said, “All those things they said about us in the film are terribly humiliating. They said we drink horse urine and sleep with our own kin. You say it’s comedy, but how can someone laugh at that?”

The thing I guess people don’t understand is that they are laughing at the fictional part of the story, but not Glod. It’s not like Cohen was in Glod saying that the villagers of Glod like rape.

Cohen said in the movie that he’s in Kazakhstan, which they filmed in Glod, and I understand Kazakhstan more on this issue.

When people see the movie they are going to think these are people of Kazakhstan, not Romania.

If it’s true that Cohen didn’t specify what kind of movie he was making, I can see why they would get upset.

But by speaking out and making a huge deal out of it, this will just encourage more people to see the movie.

Given that “Borat” has been the No. 1 movie for second week in a row, this seems to be the case.

Cohen is also having legal action brought against him by two college students from North Carolina.

Apparently they were filmed in the movie while drunk, engaging in racial slurs.

And according to an article on the Web site NewsMax.com, Cohen interviewed three college students at their fraternity house then took them to a drinking establishment to “loosen up.”

After “heavy drinking” they were presented with consent forms, which all three of them signed, and then taken to a mobile home where they were filmed and “encouraged to continue drinking, which they did.”

In their drunken state, they made racist remarks, mostly about slavery, and said minorities “have all the power” in the U.S.

The lawsuit said, “Believing the film would not be viewed in the United States and at the encouragement of (the filmmakers), plaintiffs engaged in behavior they otherwise would not have engaged in.”

This I think is ridiculous because just drinking alcohol doesn’t make you say racist comments, and if someone is encouraging you to get drunk for a movie then that seems kind of suspicious in the first place.

These students should have thought about what they were getting into before signing a consent form, because if they are trying to get you drunk for a movie then they’re probably expecting some goofy things drunk people would say or do.

This just shows how dumb and ignorant these students are.

Send comments to Alan Calcaterra at [email protected]

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