Borat

While watching Borat I was admittedly entertained by the eccentric humor. Despite my willingness to look past the obvious cultural insensitivities for the sake of the enjoyment of the jokes, there were a few times I was taken out of the movie. One such moment was actually in the opening scene where Borat is walking around his hometown. The realistic location made me automatically assume that they were shooting on location somewhere. This fact that the film crew was on location became ever stranger when I noticed how utterly happy the townspeople seemed to be despite the fact that they were being obviously mocked. I assumed that there must be something amiss. The second film we watched went on to confirm my suspicions and confusion. As the film revealed that the townspeople were tricked into thinking the film was a documentary showed just how underhanded the production of Borat really was. The people were paid but the question then becomes whether there is any compensation at all which can outweigh the cultural shaming and global embarrassment they faced when they were mocked by a major Hollywood production. The misrepresentation of cultures through film, however, is really not limited to just Hollywood productions. Documentaries are often just as guilty as major theatrical productions. Documentaries can often be worse in that they are presented under the assumption that they are factual. Several anthropologists did a film called Taking Pictures which shows how many cultures feel like the very act of filming the menial tasks in their everyday life is demeaning to their culture. While the films are presented to western audiences as informational, the subjects in the films often feel like they are being represented as inferior species that are fair game for research and a few good laughs on account of their oddities.