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Borat the Trickster: Folklore and the Media, Folklore in the Media

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Natalie Kononenko  and
Svitlana Kukharenko
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Abstract

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006) elicits extreme and contradictory audience responses. Some filmgoers find it amusing and clever, while others consider it repulsive, even obscene. Analyzing the film's hero as a traditional and archetypical trickster figure, a master of contradictions, a violator of boundaries, can help explain audience reaction. But while traditional folklore tricksters act in a fantasy world, Sacha Baron Cohen entered the lives of real people in trickster (dis) guise. For theater audiences removed from the interactions that created Borat, this film might serve the function of traditional trickster narratives, even as those appearing in the film feel exploited. By using real people and real situations, Baron Cohen has also precluded a follow-up or sequel: folkloric tricksters adapt with time, but a person immediately recognizable as a Hollywood figure cannot reassume trickster (dis)guise.

Type
Borat: Selves and Others
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 67 , Issue 1 , Spring 2008 , pp. 8 - 18
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2008

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