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please stop this nonsense
I'm sick of waiting for somebody else to say it first:
"Borat" is a fucking minstrel show. All this self-congratulatory chuckling and guffawing about how SBC and his film crew tricked some working class rednecks in the fly-over states into going along with the naive (though no less toxic) racism and misogyny of the Borat caricature makes me fucking sick. Go ahead, Blue State Glee Club, pat yourself on the back some more. Crow to each other about how much more sophisticated and funny YOUR racism is than the racism of the rural and poor.
What if Sascha Baron-Cohen just actually put on black face - but convincingly - and pretended to be from Mali, and tricked some working class jocks into joining in with some songs about female genital mutilation, or some such bullshit? How fucking funny would that be? Would that be enough to phase you, smarmy white america, you fucker? Probably not.
White irony is everywhere - this urge to distance ourselves from the institutions by which we benefit at the expense of others. We do it most compellingly through humor and art that distracts us and numbs us with how shocking and transgressive it is. This is the culture that exists as if only to answer the impish and chortling question "Wouldn't that be fucked up?"
It's not transgressive or shocking, sadly - would that it were. It's a dusty old corpse in a moth-eaten suit, leering at itself in the mirror, congratulating itself on how new and exciting it is. White supremacy is alive and well, and people of color continue to get brutalized by it, and white folks like me continue to benefit from it. Until that is no longer true, please count me out (and please, really - are you white? count yourself out) from every attempt to insulate yourself with irony and cynicism from the system that you are embedded in. Antiracism is not some hook I'm hoping to get let off of, it's the life I want for myself. Until we dismantle white supremacy, the problems of engagement - not escape - are the problems I want.
Really, I can't help but think that in 10 years, the fact that this movie was made will be as unthinkable and embarrassing as the making of "The Toy" is in retrospect - that 80s flick wherein Richard Pryor is semi-willingly purchased/rented by a white tycoon as a plaything for his spoiled child. Or maybe I'm naive - maybe "The Toy" could just as easily be made today. Maybe the sequel will come out next year. Maybe Sasca-Baron Cohen will play the white tycoon AND his despotic child AND the indentured-plaything Central Asian yokel with a heart of gold (albeit hilariously bigoted), and it will really all be tied up in a tidy little package at last.
Oh, shit.
"Borat" is a fucking minstrel show. All this self-congratulatory chuckling and guffawing about how SBC and his film crew tricked some working class rednecks in the fly-over states into going along with the naive (though no less toxic) racism and misogyny of the Borat caricature makes me fucking sick. Go ahead, Blue State Glee Club, pat yourself on the back some more. Crow to each other about how much more sophisticated and funny YOUR racism is than the racism of the rural and poor.
What if Sascha Baron-Cohen just actually put on black face - but convincingly - and pretended to be from Mali, and tricked some working class jocks into joining in with some songs about female genital mutilation, or some such bullshit? How fucking funny would that be? Would that be enough to phase you, smarmy white america, you fucker? Probably not.
White irony is everywhere - this urge to distance ourselves from the institutions by which we benefit at the expense of others. We do it most compellingly through humor and art that distracts us and numbs us with how shocking and transgressive it is. This is the culture that exists as if only to answer the impish and chortling question "Wouldn't that be fucked up?"
It's not transgressive or shocking, sadly - would that it were. It's a dusty old corpse in a moth-eaten suit, leering at itself in the mirror, congratulating itself on how new and exciting it is. White supremacy is alive and well, and people of color continue to get brutalized by it, and white folks like me continue to benefit from it. Until that is no longer true, please count me out (and please, really - are you white? count yourself out) from every attempt to insulate yourself with irony and cynicism from the system that you are embedded in. Antiracism is not some hook I'm hoping to get let off of, it's the life I want for myself. Until we dismantle white supremacy, the problems of engagement - not escape - are the problems I want.
Really, I can't help but think that in 10 years, the fact that this movie was made will be as unthinkable and embarrassing as the making of "The Toy" is in retrospect - that 80s flick wherein Richard Pryor is semi-willingly purchased/rented by a white tycoon as a plaything for his spoiled child. Or maybe I'm naive - maybe "The Toy" could just as easily be made today. Maybe the sequel will come out next year. Maybe Sasca-Baron Cohen will play the white tycoon AND his despotic child AND the indentured-plaything Central Asian yokel with a heart of gold (albeit hilariously bigoted), and it will really all be tied up in a tidy little package at last.
Oh, shit.
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