"Borat" Provokes Lawsuit

“Borat” has already received an inordinate amount of buzz, but I couldn’t help writing this entry after reading that two fraternity boys filed a lawsuit claiming they were tricked into appearing in the mock documentary.

Judging from the movie’s box office proceeds, thousands of people flocked to see it. From Friday to Sunday last week, “Borat” brought in $26.4 million for 20th Century Fox from only 837 theater screens.

I waited in a long line to see “Borat” last Sunday. I found it hilarious, refreshingly irreverent, and at times off-the-wall outrageous (for example, the scene in which Borat, stark naked, fights with his grossly obese, also naked, producer). Since the movie was shot in Romania, a country neighboring and reminiscent of my native Bulgaria, I felt a conflicted, love-hate relationship with Borat’s fictionalized Kazakhstan.

Borat’s encounters with Americans from all over the country provided some of the most biting social commentary I’ve seen in a long time. One of the particularly memorable scenes involved precisely the fraternity boys who get drunk with Borat, making a variety of racist and sexist comments in the process.

In their lawsuit against 20th Century Fox, the frat boys said that they were tricked into participating in the movie, which made them “the object of ridicule, humiliation, mental anguish and emotional and physical distress...”

I can only imagine the shock of the frat boys when they saw themselves on screen, but I’m hardly convinced their lawsuit has any merit. Almost every person Borat encounters on his American journey becomes the target of ridicule and humiliation. Should all of them sue, too?

In separate developments, the movie’s release in Russia has been delayed and the real Kazakh government has threatened a lawsuit on erosion of reputation grounds. (This reaction comes from a country whose President Nursultan Abish-uly Nazarbayev has been “reelected” into office since 1989, usually with at least 90% of the vote.)

Some people have no sense of humor.