Borat

For those of you who have not heard of this movie, here is the premise: an English actor (Sacha Baron Cohen) pretends to be a journalist from Kazakhstan. He travels across America, allegedly making a documentary about his travels. As he interviews people, he performs outrageous stunts under the guise of “Kazakhstan rituals/beliefs/customs” in order to get reactions from real American people, and he films the full extent of these antics.

The idea sounded funny and a potentially interesting way to reveal the prejudices of Americans until I realized that the entire mocumentary is filmed in the South. There, Sacha manages to find the most racist, bigoted, Confederate-flag-waving people possible to represent America. The fact that these people exist is bad enough, but to make an entire movie in which they represent our country to the world is simply one more ax-swing at a country that simply does not need to be cut down any more than it has been already. Fellow Holland-houser Carl defended us best: “It would be like filming in just northern England and making the assumption that all English people are uneducated.”