Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery Of Prodigious Bribe To American Regime For Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan

And Voting Rights For Felons

2020 was a year that scrambled all of our brains in the same ruddy, gloopy mess, no matter who you were or where you lived. So it shouldn’t be a surprise to know that, in captivity, I struggled to make sense of the return of Borat. I think even Sacha Baron Cohen’s fans knew that since that first film in 2006 it has been diminishing returns as far as the character’s longevity. A return to a mid-00’s relic like Borat, feeding the worst tendencies of a nation of Michael Scotts profoundly pleased with their own fake-Kazahk accents, seemed like a terrible idea, particularly consider the history of awful comedy sequels. Some of those are okay, but none are as good as the original, none strong enough to answer the question, “why does this exist?”

I kind of admire the chutzpah alone to make a “Borat” sequel all those years later. First of all, no comedy sequel can somehow resist that black hole demanding that some of the same gags get repeated in part two. Secondly, Sacha is a much older man, and it’s a bigger ask to commit his body (and, in some cases, well-being) to such a demanding character. But there’s the biggest gamble of all, which is that the first “Borat” was made when Cohen and his character were not at all well-known. It was a challenge enough convincing people Borat is real when he’s an outlandish boob. How do you reintroduce him to audiences who have spent the last decade-plus impersonating him (and poorly)? 

The compromise of course is that this sequel is a much more scripted affair, leaning into highly-conceptualized scenarios and excessive coverage of public events to hide the seams of, probably, someone correctly figuring out we’re dealing with a pretty famous concept of a character. This specifically manifests itself in a second character for Borat to bounce against, his teenage daughter Tutar (Maria Bakalova). He is hoping to deliver a prized monkey to Donald Trump and Mike Pence on behalf of Kazahkstan, but somehow doesn’t realize he has feral offspring tagging along on his journey.

Yes, this is a Trump movie. Cohen is one of several artists who realized their prior satire somehow didn’t work, and in 2016 America turned around to elect an actual clown of a human being. Like many, Cohen realized, somehow, he was being too subtle. Perhaps subtlety was the greatest strength of that first film. Cohen had earlier set about creating a travelogue of America, encountering satire where it was found. What emerged was a testament to how American citizens related to each other, how they treated strangers. How people with aggressive rhetoric often dropped their guard for the new person in front of them who could often appear naive and guileless. But that didn’t mean the satire was bloodless – Cohen also had no problem laughing at Americans for appearing close-minded, ignorant and completely oblivious. The film seemed to say that you could find community with a little bit of sweetness, but you could also find it with hate and toxicity (a theme carried over quite aggressively in “Brüno”).

“Borat 2” is thus made for those people who didn’t get that they were the butt of the joke the first time around. Those who laughed at “Throw The Jew Down The Well” in that first film but didn’t quite understand their own complicity. It is more mission statement than comedy – who are we to mock someone as ridiculous and childlike as Borat to then turn around and pretend Donald Trump is a suitable leader for an entire country? Some of you might find that combative, but maybe that’s the only way to do comedy in a post-Trump world. America elected a President solely because he had the mannerisms of the world’s worst stand-up comedian. Do we even DESERVE to laugh after that? I was in prison in 2016, guys, I watched it happen from afar. Mistakes were made. 

“Borat 2” becomes something of a road movie as the gift of the monkey is replaced by Tutar. But to truly be appreciated by Mike Pence, Tutar has to be domesticated, in the filthiest riff on “My Fair Lady” as one could conceive. During one particularly farcical debutante ball, Tutar experiences her period while performing, leading to a bloody mess all over her dress and across the floor. The joke is twofold: not only are these foreigners sullying a social occasion amidst a sea of stiff upper lips, but there is the political clash between what is supposed to be “high society” and the reality of womens’ bodies, which Borat goes out of his way to emphasize through repeated misogynist treatment of Tutar. There’s a whole audience that would watch this scene, with Bakalova’s exposed, and fake, pubic hairs, and refuse to laugh, upset by the spectacle. These people are the butt of that particular joke.

While Borat is trying to penetrate the (admittedly-porous) Trump inner circle, his character arc becomes about learning to respect women and see his daughter as an individual. And Tutar, who goes from savage to civilized, learns fairly basic tenets of feminism as she becomes a woman, in sometimes graphic detail. These two journeys intertwine with the film’s big set-piece – a sit-down with Rudy Giuliani, who ultimately should have known better (which we have been saying about him for a while now). I shouldn’t spoil this bit, which does look like it’s been edited with a heavier hand than usual. But the man does not come across well, let’s put it like that. 

The movie ends with a request that people vote in 2020, which seems to have worked given the record turnout and yes please don’t confront me with your stupid conspiracy theories about this, yes, especially not you, Dinesh. Voting is tricky for people released from prison, because apparently several states have very different laws as to who gets to vote coming out of prison. This is yet another trouble area for those who have done time. We should expect felons to rejoin society and reinforce local communities and economies, welcoming back after they have served a sentence for their country. But why do we often restrict them? 

The whole issue of why felons should vote is best exemplified by the opposite question: why SHOULDN’T felons vote? Why should their civic duty not be afforded to them? And why should it be such a complex situation? I’m not going to go to bat for the awareness level of people in prison, but a good lot of them are spending their time reading and studying. Maybe they’re not absorbing the most enriching or affecting media, like the white supremacist who poured religiously over the texts of Candace Owens with a highlighter or the creep who religiously tore into that week’s US Weekly every Monday. But again, shoot – you guys elected a 1990 “Simpsons” joke to be President, are you guys out there really that much more knowledgable than a convict?