Criticized as unfair smear against Kazakhstan There have been arguments that the film's portrayal of the people of
Kazakhstan is unfair and unjustified. On 19 October 2006, the
BBC reported that Kazakhstan's Deputy Foreign Minister,
Rakhat Aliyev, had invited Baron Cohen to visit Kazakhstan to see how inaccurate his portrayals were. In an interview, Aliyev asserted that "His trip could yield a lot of discoveries—that women not only travel inside buses but also drive their own cars, that we make
wine from grapes, that Jews can freely attend synagogues and so on."
Denigration of Roma Borat's movie has been accused of promoting
antiziganism. The film has been criticised for several scenes portraying Borat's fictional "Kazakh" village which were actually filmed in the impoverished Roma village of
Glod in
Romania.
USA Today reports that poverty-stricken villagers were offered between $3.30 and $5.50 to bring animals into their houses and other gag scenes for the movie that some people described as humiliating. The studio contends that participants were paid double the rate recommended by the Romanian film office for extras. Additionally, Baron Cohen personally donated $5,000 to the village, as well as computers and school supplies. Two villagers of Glod hired controversial
reparation attorney
Ed Fagan to sue the makers of the film for $30 million for human rights abuses. Fagan intended to submit lawsuits in New York and Florida state courts, as well as in
Frankfurt,
Germany. Fagan said that he hoped to "teach Hollywood a very expensive lesson." The lawsuit was thrown out by U.S. District Judge
Loretta Preska in a hearing in early December 2006 on the ground that the charges were too vague to stand up in court. "Borat essentially works as a tool. By himself pretending to be anti-Semitic, he lets people lower their guard and expose their own prejudice," Baron Cohen explained to
Rolling Stone. Baron Cohen, the grandson of a
Holocaust survivor, says he wishes in particular to expose the role of indifference: (The exact line from Kershaw's 1983 book
Popular Opinion and Political Dissent in the Third Reich was that "the road to Auschwitz was built by hate, but paved with indifference".) However, the
Anti-Defamation League, a United States–based group that "...combat[s] anti-Semitism and bigotry of all kinds", complained to
HBO after Borat performed his
country and western song "
In My Country There Is Problem". It called on people to "throw the Jew down the well", warning that "you must be careful of his teeth" and that "you must grab him by his money", and was welcomed with applause and participation by some members of an audience in
Tucson, Arizona. The full chorus goes: "Throw the Jew down the well / So my country can be free / You must grab him by his horns / Then we have a big party." Regarding the enthusiastic response to "In My Country There Is Problem", he says, "Did it reveal that they were anti-Semitic? Perhaps. But maybe it just revealed that they were indifferent to anti-Semitism." In another scene, Borat visits the Serengeti Range ranch in Texas, where the owner of the ranch, Gene Gordon confides that he believes the Holocaust was a necessity for Germany. He further implies that he would have no moral qualms about running a ranch where people can hunt, in Borat's words, "deer...then Jew." An interview with James Broadwater, an
evangelical Christian and
Republican candidate for the
United States' Congress from
Mississippi, caused Broadwater to receive some hate emails after an episode of
Da Ali G Show aired in which Broadwater stated that all non-Christians (including Jews) will go to Hell. He was told that the interview would be played in foreign countries to teach others about the American political system. Broadwater later posted a letter on his website denouncing
Da Ali G Show, explaining that his statement referred to a theological belief that anyone that "accepts
Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour will spend eternity in Heaven, while everyone who rejects Him will spend eternity in Hell." Broadwater did not apologise for his comments. Instead, he insisted that "the liberal, anti-God media needs to be brought under the strict control of the
FCC, and that as soon as possible." In the film, Borat continues his anti-Semitic stance. When he mentions his decision to avoid flying while in America, Borat says that his colleague "insists we not fly in case
the Jews repeat their attack of
9/11". Later, he finds himself in a bed & breakfast run by a kind elderly Jewish couple. He tries to "escape", and throws money at two
woodlice that have crawled into his room, apparently believing that the Jewish hosts have
shapeshifted into the tiny woodlice. He was amazed that they had managed to look human, and states that one "can hardly see their horns". Borat is completely oblivious to his hosts' religious beliefs or ethnicity when he first meets them, despite how obvious it is: the man wears a
kippah and the woman openly displays her paintings of Jewish people all over the house. Borat does not understand until the woman explicitly states to him: "I'm Jewish." The film has enjoyed particular success in Israel because Israeli filmgoers understand what Borat is really saying when he is supposedly spouting Kazakh: throughout the film, Borat speaks fluent
Hebrew with some phrases in
Polish, and his assistant speaks
Armenian.
Views on the Iraq War On 7 January 2005, after convincing the authorities that he was shooting a documentary film, Baron Cohen managed to infuriate a crowd at a
rodeo in
Salem, Virginia. Even though the crowd first cheered at the beginning of his statements of support for the
Iraq War: He then went on to sing an out-of-tune rendition of "
The Star-Spangled Banner" with the lyrics replaced by those of the fictitious "
Kazakh national anthem" "O Kazakhstan" used at the end of the film (composed by
Erran Baron Cohen), beginning with "Kazakhstan, greatest country in the world / All other countries are run by little girls..." The crowd was not pleased. One witness stated that "if he [Baron Cohen] had been out there a minute longer, I think somebody would have shot him [...] people were booing him,
flipping him off." For his own safety, Baron Cohen was escorted from the venue (much of the event appears in the movie). A credible news report about the incident, aired on a local television station, is included in the DVD extras. ==References==