Saturday, February 20, 2021, Delray Beach, Florida


Notes From My Journal

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The Politics of Goal-Setting

This week’s movie recommendation – Borat Subsequent Moviefilm – is a surprisingly well done bit of political satire aimed at the Trump administration.

But first, speaking of politics, take a look at David Leonhardt’s recent reporting on Biden. Leonhardt had been a big Biden supporter during and since the elections, castigating the Trump administration for everything and treating Biden’s statements and actions with kid gloves. But lately, he’s been less than a fan.

On Wednesday, in his column for the NYT digital edition, Leonhardt wrote:

I have spent some time recently interviewing public-health experts about what the real goal [for fighting COVID] should be, and I came away with a clear message: The Biden administration is not being ambitious enough about vaccinations, at least not in its public statements.

An appropriate goal, experts say, is three million shots per day – probably by April. At that pace, half of adults would receive their first shot by April and all adults who wanted a shot could receive one by June, saving thousands of lives and allowing normal life to return by midsummer.

This is the sort of thinking I love about young reporters. They have so little experience trying to deal with real-world problems that they will say something like that without any idea how dumb it is.

One of the most important lessons I ever learned about amassing support for big and difficult challenges was that it is always better to make the public goal less than, not equal to or greater than, the actual goal you are trying to achieve.

Here, Biden is doing exactly the right thing. His initial goal – to maintain the pace set during the early weeks of the vaccination – was obviously an intentional low-ball. But much better that than basing the number, as Leonhardt does, on what one might want to see, rather than what is probable.

And now, let’s talk about Sacha Baron Cohen’s mockumentary…

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Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, aka Borat 2 (2020)

Directed by Jason Woliner

Starring Sacha Baron Cohen and Maria Bakalova

Available on Amazon Prime Video

I loved Sacha Baron Cohen’s Ali G character since I first saw his amazingly original Ali G TV show back in 2000. I also loved the first Borat film – Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006) – in which he played a Kazakh news anchor, and Brüno (2009), in which he played a fey Austrian fashion reporter. The Dictator (2012), a political satire in the tradition of Woody Allen’s Bananas (1971), was a send-up of Latin American Banana Republics. I didn’t think it was as good as Cohen’s previous efforts, so when I heard that Borat 2 –  Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan – was going to poke fun at the Trump administration, I was afraid it would be much less funny and more meanspirited. It wasn’t.

The ongoing trope of all of Cohen’s comic work is that he inserts his comic persona into real situations where his fellow “actors” are unwitting participants who, in responding to his prompts, expose their prejudices, both petty and profoundly disturbing. He got away with that easily when he was not well known. In recent years, he has become too well known, so to make the pretense work, he’s had to dress up in various disguises, most of which involve a fat suit.

In his previous movies, there was a thin plot that moved the action forward – some challenge his character must face as an outsider in America’s many micro-cultures, such as NYC, the deep south, the military, Washington, DC, and, in this one, MAGA land.

For example:

* In the first Borat, his character sets out to make a documentary about American culture for Kazakhstan, but his plans change when he falls in love with Pamela Anderson after watching Baywatch and makes marrying her his mission.

* In Brüno, his character ventures to America to become the “biggest Austrian superstar since Hitler” after being fired from his position as a fashion reporter.

* In The Dictator, his character travels to New York to address concerns about his nuclear arsenal. Following a failed assassination attempt, he escapes and goes into hiding with the help of a local human rights activist that doesn’t know who he really is.

In Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, the plot is equally thin and contrived: Borat is released from the gulag where he was imprisoned at the end of the first Borat movie (for dishonoring Kazakhstan) and sent on a mission: to deliver a monkey as a gift to then-President Trump in an effort to redeem his country’s honor. Things go awry upon his arrival in the US as he learns that not only does he have a daughter, but she has eaten the President’s gift.

I know, I know, it sounds silly. But it’s very clever… and fun… and funny.

 

Critical Reviews 

 * “What we get instead of the familiar indictment of garden variety, casual racism is a blistering summation of what might be deemed the alternative facts era.” (Newsday)

* “The thrill of Borat Subsequent Moviefilm isn’t just that it takes on the Trump administration, or more pointedly, America under Donald Trump. The thrill is in how smoothly, how improbably, Cohen and his collaborators have engineered it all.” (Rolling Stone)

* “As shocking as it is hilarious, as ridiculous as it is insightful, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm is the comedy we both need and deserve right now.” (Empire Magazine)

 

Interesting Facts 

* According to Amazon, “tens of millions” viewed Borat 2 globally during its first weekend. And MarketCast tracked 1.1 million social media “hits” for the film in the week leading up to and just following its release, making it second only to Hamilton in mentions in 2020.

* Kazakhstan banned the first Borat movie in 2006, but is now taking advantage of the recognition it’s enjoyed as a result of the film by using its catchphrase (“Kazakhstan. Very nice!”) in a campaign to promote tourism.

* Borat 2 was dedicated to Judith Dim Evans (1932-2020), a Holocaust survivor who appears in a segment of the film… despite her daughter’s efforts to have that segment removed. Claiming that her mother thought she was being interviewed for a serious documentary, Michelle Dim St. Pierre filed a lawsuit against Amazon. The judge found no evidence to support the allegation that Evans had been tricked, refused to issue an injunction that would have forced the producers to cut her from the film, and dismissed the case.

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A Letter from Charles Darwin, age 12, to a friend (Jan 4, 1822) 

You must know that after my Georgraphy, she said I should go down to ask for Richards poney, just as I was going, she said she must ask me not a very decent question, that was whether I wash all over every morning. No. Then she said it was quite disgustin, then she asked me if I did every other morning, and I said no, then she said how often I did, and I said once a week, then she said of course you wash your feet every day, and I said no, then she begun saying how very disgusting and went on that way a good while, then she said I ought to do it, I said I would wash my neck and shoulders, then she said you had better do it all over, then I said upon my word I would not, then she told me, and made me promise I would not tell, then I said, well I only wash my feet once a month at school, which I confess is nasty, but I cannot help it, for we have nothing to do it with, so then Caroline pretended to be quite sick, and left the room, so then I went and told my brother, and he burst out in laughing and said I had better tell her to come and wash them herself, besides that she said she did not like sitting by me or Erasmus for we smelt of not washing all over, there we sat arguing away for a good while.

(Source: Letters of Note)

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