- Thanks to Amazon Prime Video for sponsoring this episode.
(light music)
(liquid trickling)
Hey, Wisecrack, Michael here to talk
about our favorite mustachioed reporter, Borat Sagdiyev.
Between giving you an uncontrollable urge to say, "My wife,"
and "Very nice" to every person you see,
his "Subsequent Moviefilm" created more
than a few headlines, about a certain prank
on one Rudolph Giuliani, but political pranking aside,
I'd like to propose a different way to look at the film,
as a wholesome, inspiring fairytale.
- Would you make the sex attack with me?
- If your father was not here.
- Ah!
(high-fiving each other)
- [Michael] Well, not wholesome.
Anything but wholesome, but a fairytale nonetheless.
Welcome to this Wisecrack Edition
on "Borat Subsequent Moviefilm."
(alarm blaring) And spoilers ahead.
First, a recap.
After humiliating his native Kazakhstan with his first film,
Borat now spends his days doing hard labor as punishment.
But after the election of Donald Trump,
the premier of Kazakhstan is looking for an in
with America's head of state,
which is why he wants to send our disgrace to journalists
to America with Kazakhstan's prized possession,
Johnny The Monkey.
From there, let's just say things
don't go so well for Johnny.
(speaking foreign language)
Stuck with no monkey and his feral child,
Tutar, who definitely didn't eat Johnny,
Borat has to improvise a new plan.
He will gift Tutar to Vice President Michael Pence.
- Perfect.
She will be sexy gift for Michael Pence.
- [Michael] A beautiful father/daughter journey follows.
That "Borat Subsequent Moviefilm" is a twisted take
on traditional fairytales is telegraphed from the beginning.
- [Narrator] Once upon a time,
there was a lowly peasant girl called Melania
from (beeping) country, Slovenia.
- This cartoon version of Melania Trump,
who must escape her (beeping) country by marrying a rich
and powerful man is a pretty obvious stand-in
for your typical Cinderella character,
who similarly needs to escape her (beep) home
and asshole sisters.
Of course, Cinderella isn't the only fairytale
with this theme.
Plenty of stories from history share the basic premise
that if you're a woman and life sucks,
marry on up and everything will be okay.
While incorrectly called the original Cinderella,
there is a story told by the Greek geographer Strabo
of a courtesan named Rhodopis.
Courtesan, by the way, is a sex worker who services
high profile clientele, a fate she escapes
when an eagle steals her sandal and drops it on the king.
The king, who seemingly judged people based on the shape
of their feet, met and married Rhodopis.
This tale of upward mobility via footwear, of course,
shares a key similarity to Cinderella.
Her fairy godmother gives her a sick makeover
and sends her off to impress a prince at a royal ball.
A glass slipper is lost and the prince searches
for the mysterious woman that wooed him.
The point is, Cinderella's soot-cover days are over
once she marries the right guy.
Borat takes the already fairly depressing premise
of Cinderella, strips it to its core logic,
and makes it oh so much darker.
Tutar isn't a lowly servant.
She is just a woman from one of the world's
most backward countries.
That country being a fictionalized version of Kazakhstan,
which we will refer to as fake Kazakhstan,
as the real country does not, to my knowledge,
let monkeys hold public office.
- [Borat] Kazakhstan's Minister of Culture,
and number one porno star.
- [Michael] To be true to its fairytale roots,
Borat transports us to a land that seemingly
hasn't developed since Charles Perrault
wrote the familiar Cinderella tale in 1697.
- [Borat] Many brokers leapt from our tallest skyscrapers.
(body thumping) (man grunting)
- [Michael] And to say that fake Kazakhstan's views on women
might be more welcome around the 17th century
is an understatement.
- Nice. (speaking foreign language)
- [Michael] They're not allowed to have jobs or, you know,
do much of anything.
- This is her bowl.
It make her feel safe.
- [Michael] Just like once upon a time.
- The strings in her brain might break
if you try to teach her.
So be careful, please.
- It's worth noting that a less extreme version
of this outrageous claim was common
well into the 20th century.
It was believed even, amongst some doctors,
that if a woman used her brain, it would divert energy
from her womb and thus cause serious harm to her heath.
(Borat speaking foreign language)
- [Michael] Anyway, instead of being covered in soot
like Cinderella, Tutar is covered in hay, dirt,
and maybe a little animal manure.
Basically, the film is a blast from a past where
the science of women's stuff was about as advanced
as a Flat Earther's view of the cosmos.
- My dad is the smartest person in the whole flat world.
- [Michael] But of course, Borat and Tutar journey
out of the past into modern America,
a land where the story of Cinderella
is just a popular relic from the past, right?
Well, yes no, as the film constantly questions
how America's own modern fairytales
might be just as backwards as those of a fake Kazakhstan
or 17th-century Europe.
Basically, Borat wants us to see how America
is also a magical land, where a very lucky lady
can find a king or a Rudolph Giuliani.
(sad trombone music)
That's because Tutar's journey is, of course,
a modern American Cinderella story.
- Cinderella? (speaking foreign language)
- [Michael] Not only does she get a new wardrobe,
but a fake tan.
- What color is best for a racist family?
- [Michael] And a haircut that would make
Dog the Bounty Hunter proud.
In Borat's twisted fairytale, the best way for a woman
to live a decent life is to drastically alter her appearance
until she can attract and marry a rich guy,
who's preferably on death's door.
- How old do you like them?
That's the question.
- Nearly dead.
- Okay, then you should get someone
who just had a heart attack.
- Yes. - Okay, high five.
(high fiving each other)
I love that. - High five.
- It might feel like a gross and antiquated narrative,
but it also seems plenty familiar
to many of the film's targets,
other relics of a time more familiar to Cinderella
and Prince Charming versus today, like debutante balls.
In centuries past, a debutante was literally just a woman
who was old enough to finally marry.
And those balls were basically a way for families
to show off their daughters to eligible bachelors
who could come and get it, as it were.
- Sandra Jessica Parker Drummond.
- [Michael] And while we might say
that present day debutante balls are about flexing etiquette
and father/daughter bonding, we also get comments like this.
- That's what we love.
- Yes. - In the South, pretty girls.
- [Michael] Or a guy who jokingly gives Tutar,
I mean, Sandra Jessica Parker Drummond,
a monetary value.
- [Borat] How much you think my daughter is worth?
- $500. - Ooh, thank you.
- [Michael] And he does so right in front
of his disgusted child.
- That's (beeping) gross.
- [Michael] Of course, if we wanna take refuge
in the fact that in America, women can have jobs,
go to debutante balls while on their moon blood-
- We're able to do a lot of things,
even though we have womanly things that we go through every,
moon time, you're talking about.
- And so on.
Borat wants to constantly explore the boundary
of what we find acceptable and why.
So having a come and get it ball for your 15 year old
is maybe a-okay, but a blood-soaked fertility dance
seems to go too far for polite Southern society.
One dresses up a basic biological reality
behind a facade of etiquette and custom,
while one puts that reality right in your face.
Whereas in fake Kazakhstan, a woman must live in a cage
to be financially supported by a man, in real America,
the cage gets a bit metaphorical.
Women are often implicitly and explicitly encouraged
or forced to contort themselves in the quest
to find love/stability.
In this light, we could consider the words
of 18th century philosopher, Mary Wollstonecraft,
also mother of history's greatest goth, who wrote that,
"Women are taught from infancy that beauty is her scepter."
Asa result, "The mind shapes itself to the body,
"and roaming around its gilt cage,
"only seeks to adorn its prison."
(Tutar speaking foreign language)
As if living in Wollstonecraft's gilded cage,
a self-identified sugar baby admits to Tutar that,
for her dreams to come true, she should remain submissive
and also change everything about herself.
And if the message wasn't clear,
when Tutar asks what she can do for men to like her,
her mentor suggests she get a makeover.
- Face to hair to clothes to personality.
- [Michael] That's right, even her personality has to go.
Not only that, she's unable to use her God-given strength.
- But I'm strong.
I can open a barrel with my small hole.
- [Michael] And unlike in Wollstonecraft's time,
a woman's scepter of beauty can be surgically enhanced
according to society's demands.
Enter plastic surgeons who seem happy to give women
their own supposedly Ugly Duckling story
by making them feel bad about their noses.
- A little refinement of the nose.
- What's wrong with my nose?
- [Michael] All in the business of finding Prince Charming.
- I want very much her to be attract to top level guy.
- [Michael] The fictionalization
of Kazakhstan's backwardness is really important here
because as the story goes, life in America is a fairy tale.
We're in the land of abundance, of equality,
pizza with crusts made out of breadsticks, and so on.
Fake Kazakhstan is less a dig at real Kazakhstan,
and more a dig on how some Americans view
the rest of the world is some kind of backwater nightmare,
a faraway land without the magic of castles
and fairy godmothers, if you will.
The distressed film look of the intro with translations
over Russian text connects fake Kazakhstan with the image
of a backward Soviet Republic that an American viewer
might conjure up: gulags and all.
But when Borat comes to America and finds his worst views
often welcome, the viewer is left to question
how advanced we really are.
- Who wants to chop 'em up like the Saudis do?
(audience cheering)
- But the idea isn't just that bad people do bad things,
although that's certainly a part of it.
It's that people are convinced to love,
or at least tolerate their cages, metaphorical or otherwise.
Borat, I'd argue, wants to raise the question.
Do fairy tales have a role in convincing women
that it's normal, even desirable to change your personality
and appearance in your search for love?
Tutar, raised on this weird Daughter's Owner Manual,
and the Melania story, begs for a nice cage
for her husband to keep her in.
Not unlike our sugar baby expert, Tutar has learned
how to behave according to social expectations,
ones that demand submission, even weakness from women
in search of Prince Charming.
Of course, it's not fair to say that women in America
are still living in the 19th century,
or even pseudo-Kazakhstan.
And this is played for laughs as Borat is surprised
that a woman can own a store.
(Tutar speaking foreign language)
(Borat speaking foreign language)
- [Michael] Or Tutar learns that women can drive.
- [Woman] Women can drive.
(Tutar crying)
- [Michael] Unlike the first movie,
"Subsequent Moviefilm" is not only happy to roast people
for saying and doing awful things,
but to show that it's not all hopeless.
Even our conspiracy theorists pushed back
against Borat's claim that women can't think.
- The women here have rights.
- [Man] They can do whatever they want.
- They have a brain like we have a brain.
- [Michael] But then they wish
that their political opponents had less rights than they do,
so we're one for two.
- They should have a bit less rights than you.
High five. - They should.
- By exploring modern America through the eyes
of a disgraced journalist and an idealistic daughter
raised on fairytale narratives,
"Borat Subsequent Moviefilm" is able
to shine a light on many dark corners of American culture.
If the classic fairytale teaches young women
that they'll finally be happy and whole
once they have the adoring gaze of a prince,
the fairytale we get in this film is one
where our heroine realizes her own self-worth.
(bright klezmer music)
- May the patriarchy go to hell.
- Nice!
- No, nice!
- Don't mansplain to me.
- [Michael] So while U.S. and A may have taught
the Sagdiyevs about fashion, mobile technology-
- Ghost with blue shirt, answer me.
You are demon?
- [Michael] And journalist integrity,
maybe the Sagdiyevs also taught us
something about ourselves.
Also, Tutar definitely ate Johnny alive,
and that's something we all have to live with.
Now this all misses a big component
of "Subsequent Moviefilm": Pranks.
While Sasha Baron Cohen has been pranking
establishment figures for decades,
it's worth understanding the long list
of historical pranksters who paved this way.
You know, people who dumped a bunch of money on Wall Street
and watched people fight each other for it,
or the famous comedian who roasted dating shows
by appearing in costume and crying when he lost.
So what does Borat have to do with that,
and people's creepy papal effigies?
You'll have to check it out
in our "Subsequent YouTube Videofilm" that we made,
featuring yours truly.
It gets into some honestly cool history
of messing with people.
It's over at the Amazon Prime Video YouTube channel,
which you can find by clicking here.
And be sure to subscribe and tell them Wisecrack sent you.
Thanks again to Amazon Prime Video for sponsoring us
to cover one of our favorite artists and as always,
thanks for watching.
Later!
(upbeat music)