Borat Lawsuit

If you saw the film Borat, you might remember the five Alabama dinner hosts that invited Borat (actor Sacha Baron Cohen) into their home for an American cultural lesson with Kazakhstan Television. Borat, of course, was not working for Kazakhstan Television. His dinner hosts were ignorant of the fact that Borat was an actor, and the scene was being taped for the Borat feature film.

Now they're suing for the humiliation that they claim he put them through. I was wondering how many lawsuits might be filed against the filmmakers not only for insulting unwitting participants, but for not getting releases to have them in the film in the first place. 20th Century Fox claims that releases were signed, but I wonder what the language in them looks like. It should be an interesting case.

Catch the story on the lawsuit here.

Here is what I wrote about Borat back in August:

I watched Borat last night. It disturbed me.

I’d been putting it off for quite a while, because the commercials told me everything I needed to know. He was going to make Americans look dumb, and he was going to do it in a faux-reality TV format.

One thing the film did show me is that it’s becoming more and more hip to pick on Jews. Antisemitism is returning to the days of being acceptable as long as its done to a laugh track. One scene that particularly bothered me involved the title character throwing money at two cockroaches. The roaches represented the elderly Jewish couple that had given him a place to stay for the night.

Yes, yes, I know. It was only a comedy. I can laugh at most anything, and I can dish it out as much as I can take it. Still, I had an unsettling feeling creep over me with every new Jew-bash in the picture.

I pointed out some time ago that Hollywood has no problem bashing Asians. Jews get the same treatment. Try that with blacks, Hispanics, or gays, and your career would be over. It's interesting how the degree of your prejudice is measured by what group you happen to be picking on.

The film did manage to show me that while Americans can appear stupid at the hands of a comedian and his editor, they always appear extremely polite and welcoming. I doubt that’s the effect Borat was going for.

Photo: Yahoo Movies