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"Shocking and Provocative." "Death-defying satire." "Edgy." "A New Genre." A quick survey of film critics' reviews of Borat reveal language that is drenched in the rhetoric of innovation, avant-gardism, and subversion. The genre that Borat makes use of, the mockumentary, and is indeed generally seen as subversive, in that it undermines the documentary's claim to objectively tell the truth. It is also a relatively new genre, that was spawned by the proliferation of available archival footage since the 1950s, but that has gained increasing popularity over the last 30 years, with This is Spinal Tap often cited as a key catalyzing film by directors and critics alike. As a genre, the mockumentary mobilizes irony, either in the parody of the form of the documentary or in the satirical treatment or critique of an issue. This mobilization can be relatively gentle and mild, such as parodies of the documentary like The Ruttles that mockumentary theorists Jane Roscoe and Craig Hight identify as the first "level" of irony in the mockumentary. For Roscoe and Hight, the "levels" of the mockumentary become increasingly sophisticated, and Level 2 and Level 3 of the mockumentary involve critique / hoax, and deconstruction of the genre, respectively.
So where does Borat fit within these levels? How does it make use of the mockumentary genre? Is it subversive? New? Edgy? In its take-up of the mockumentary, how does Borat position its audience and its subjects in relation to one another and in relation to the documentary form? Borat is both pleasurable and problematic-new yet familiar. The film's use of irony has been recognized as and conflated with critique, but an examination of Borat suggests the need for the disentanglement of this association, and at the very least, a recognition that irony, critique, and subversion are not one and the same. All in all, this film raises some questions about the goals and deployment of irony, the implicit hierarchical ranking of humour, and the positioning of who gets to be "in" on the joke and who is leftoutside on the margins.
Questions of Audience: You're Either With Us or You're Against Us
Sasha Baron Cohen knows that controversy sells. Prior to its theatrical release, Borat make headlines due to its negative reception from...