If history is any guide, British comedian Sacha Baron-Cohen, creator ofthe faux-Kazakhstani reporter Borat, is well on his way to becoming thenext Madonna. No, he doesn't sing--apart from a brilliant live rendition of"Throw the Jew Down the Well" recorded before an enthusiastic audience inTuscon, Arizona. But he does something just as important: he gets scholarsto take his largely pedestrian talents seriously enough to convince therest of us that there's more to Borat than we might otherwise think isthere.
The last time a pop culture figure got this much attention from scholarswas back in the 1980s, when Madonna's "Material Girl" act took the worldby storm. Almost as soon as young girls began dressing as virgin-whoresscholars, particularly of the feminist persuasion, began writing about thesignificance of the Madonna phenomenon. Some found her blend ofspirituality and sexuality liberating for women at a moment when Reaganiteconservativism was reaching its political and cultural zenith. Others feltMadonna's image signified the hyper-commodification of sexuality and thesexualization and exploitation of young girls. Whatever they thoughthowever, the important thing was that everyone was talking about Madonna.
Ironically (or perhaps not), Baron Cohen was first brought to the US bythe Material Girl herself, when another character he created, Ali G--thelead character in Baron Cohen's HBO show, "Da Ali G Show"--was featured inthe video of her 2000 mega hit, "Music." Madonna fell in love with the AliG character, supposedly a London-based gangsta rapper wanna-be of SouthAsian heritage, after seeing Baron Cohen's Christmas Special for the BBC.
That's right: A Jewish comedian who portrays a Muslim gangsta rapper doesa Christmas special for the BBC, which then attracts the attention of thequintessentially Catholic Madonna, who goes on to become a devotee of theJewish mystical tradition known as the Kabbala. Maybe there's hope forpeace between the three Abrahamic religions after all, especially ifMadonna moves on to Sufism once the Kabbalah Center takes enough of hermoney. Even if she doesn't, the Madonna-Baron Cohen relationship and therise of Borat offers scholars a gold mine of postmodern analyticalpossibilities.
On Da Ali G show, skits involving Borat generally revolve getting thepredominantly southern, conservative Christians he interviews to discusssex--particularly homosexuality--and bodily functions in much more vulgarmanner than we would imagine they normally do. More interesting, however,are the moments when he uses his supposed ignorance to goad people intorevealing prejudices that most probably didn't know they harbored.
But this isn't what has gotten my colleagues in the field of MiddleEastern and Islamic studies interested (and for many, angry) about Borat.Instead, it's what--or more precisely, whom--Borat supposedly represents.With his dark hair, bushy moustache, and faux-Kazakhstani identity andaccent, it seems that many if not most viewers assume that he is Muslim.And this worries many of my colleagues, who fear that Baron Cohen'sdepiction of Kazakhstan as a backwards, deeply misogynistic andanti-Semitic country, is adding grist to the mill to America's ignoranceof and prejudice towards Islam.
The trouble is, Kazakhstan isn't a Muslim country. More than half thepopulation is in fact Christian (split between Russian Orthodox andUkranian Catholics). And at least from the episodes of the show I haveseen, Borat has done or said nothing to suggest that he is Muslim. Infact, in one episode, where he's campaigning through Mississippi with alocal conservative congressional candidate (whom he earlier got to admitthat Jews are all going to burn in Hell), he explains to a potential voterthat the man will be "strong like Stalin." I don't recall Stalin beingthat popular with the jihadi set, whose example of a strong leader is morelikely to be Salah al-Din.
One of my colleagues suggested that it would have been better if BaronCohen gave Borat a made up identity, similar to the "foreign man"character, created by Andy Kaufman, who ultimately developed into thelovable Latka Gravas on TV's "Taxi." But Latka was a foreigner for akinder and gentler era, when Americans sense of Central Asian geographywas far more sketchy than it has become five years into the war on terror.The anonymous foreigner as floating signifier doesn't work when we'rebuilding an 800 mile long fence to keep out Mexicans and spending hundredsof billions of dollars each year to finance wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, andagainst Islamo-fascism more broadly. Borat's much more cynical naiveteseems more germane to the time in which we're living, when Americans, andAmerica and the world, are more divided than they've been in decades.
In the end the trouble with Borat is not Islam, which has little ifanything to do with the character. It's that he reveals to Americans justhow brutish and ugly we can be underneath our veneer of civility andhospitality. Of course, Iraqis have already discovered this the hard way,while the rest of the world has looked on in disgust. Let's hope Americansget the message Borat has brought from Kazakhstan, and don't just sit inthe theater singing along to his music, like so many patrons of thatcountry and western bar in Tuscon.