Borat

My reaction to Borat was that the documentary made me uncomfortable.
Borat acts a sexist, homophobic, and anti-semitic character to show America's prejudice and ignorance about these factors.
While he succeeds in what he wants to depict in the show, I think the fact that most of the people who participated in the show and especially Kazakhstan as a nation did not know what was actually going on and were effected heavily after the show, means that Borat went a bit too far.

First of all, I don't understand how they picked Borat to specifically be a Kazakh and producers deny that they were not trying to convey the actual beliefs, practices or behaviour of anyone associated with Kazakhstan. Then why did they pick an actual country? I think this goes beyond legal issues; if Kazakhstan had been a country powerful enough for people (the viewers of Borat) to actually care, would the producers have picked Kazakhstan? It would've had the same effect even if they had made up a fictitious country if they could have just explained the setting. Because Borat was seen as a representative from the actual country, although his actions were funny, I couldn't erase the feeling of unease throughout the whole show. 

Furthermore, Borat shows the names and face of all of its participants without informing them of what's going on. Some actions and reactions taken by Americans in the show were inappropriate, but the fact that they accepted to talk to Borat or let him do anything was that they didn't expect his weird and norm-braking actions. This put some in a very vulnerable position; read this article http://ww2.roanoke.com/news/roanoke%5C16655.html
Participants were clearly duped and I don't think that it's ethical to include their real names and bash their reputation without them realizing the situation.

It feels like I've been just rambling but what I want to say is that although I think that Borat has a good intent, the way some of the things were depicted was just too much.