Borat and Jesus Camp go hand in hand
This weekend I had the peculiar privilege of watching both Borat and Jesus Camp. The first, a hit docu-comedy about a Kazach journalist (played by Sasha Baron-Cohen) who’s traveling through the US and clashes with the local culture while the later is a documentary about a pentocostal teen preacher who’s taking her roll much too seriously.
While Borat was a smash hit in the movie theraters, I found it to be cheap, dirty and low. Very low. Sasha Baron Cohen has decided to film himself while he embaraces every possible ethnic minority and majority social group, pretending to journalists who’s trying to get accustomed to American culture. Some scenes are indeed amusing and humuros (like the one of Borat trying to learn to tell jokes or trying to kiss bystanders on the NYC subway) but others are simply grotesque (Borat nude wrestling with his obese manager, Azamat Bogdanov).
Jesus Camp also has it’s fair share of disturbing scenes (10 and 11 year-olds speaking in tongues trying to communicate with the holy spirit, crying, screaming and contorting in the traditional pentecostal worship style). The movies collide when Borat, destitute and lonely, finds a pentecostal church and joins in the hopla only to find himself being brought on stage and being “touched” by the holy spirit and then falling down to his knees screaming “Jesus, Jesus.”
Even though both movies are radically different, I had the same bitter after taste once I was done watching. Maybe it was the behemot behavior of Borat or the fanatical, blindly obedient conviction of the home schooled children that rattled me. I’m not sure yet. But what I do know that I feel a bit uncomfortable sharing the planet with some of the people I saw on the screen. And to think that they made a serious buck from this…. means that some people actually liked it. That’s even more disturbing.