Just Looking ...

The reason why I love watching comedians is because of their observations of ordinary life, such as Cohen’s character Borat which comments on ‘ethnic stereotypes’ among other things. I haven’t seen the film in its entirety (pretty much just what was shown in class) but it did make me think, along with some MadTV characters mentioned in the previous post how I’d react or appear if I was confronted by ‘Borat’. A lot of the stuff we’ve seen seems outrageous to us as we are watching it with the knowledge that this is a ‘mockumentary.’ However instances such as Borat kissing the men and shacking hands with the women as a greeting I might not have thought it as ‘peculiar’ (for lack of a better term) since my family is from a culture where a traditional greeting is to kiss on the cheeks, although it is usually women who do so. Saying this though I do hope that I would clue into what is actually happening (that they are not actually filming a documentary) when someone comes back to the dinner table from the bathroom with a bag of his feces. Especially in a society where television and more recently reality shows play a big part in our ordinary lives, such as with ‘Just for laughs’ or ‘Punk’d’ where they profit from making fools from their participants.