Wednesday, October 28, 2020

Borat Belittles Eastern Europeans: Edward Lucas in the Times UK

 Edward Lucas, writing in the Times (UK) points out that the Borat films mock and belittle Eastern Europeans. This mockery would not be acceptable were it directed at any other group. I said the same thing in Bieganski the Brute Polak Stereotype. The new Borat movie, released in 2020, is a reprise of the same ethnic humor from the previous Borat movie. 

An excerpt from the article: "Yet the veneer of humour rests on unthinking orientalism: in effect, racism. Vesna Goldsworthy, an Exeter University professor born in what was then Yugoslavia, notes that Borat's Kazakhstan is a "flag of convenience", embodying a "medley of east European stereotypes". The region, she says, is the "last refuge for feelings of superiority that can't be placed anywhere else", an idea she outlined in her 1998 book Inventing Ruritania: The Imperialism of the Imagination. Toomas Hendrik Ilves, a former president of Estonia, highlights westerners' racism to eastern Europeans more bluntly: "They have often treated us as w**s.""

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1 comment:

  1. Sue Knight's BlogNovember 4, 2020 at 5:17 AM

    Yes. Not that I have seen the movies, or Borat in action, or plan to, but reviews I have read suggest that it is both an obscene and a contemptuous portrayal of a very very safe target.

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