the Dalaverse

I went to see "Borat" this afternoon, and discovered that it really is that funny. We've been talking about the Freudian theory of comedy, in which we laugh because the comedy is tapping into our anxieties, and this movie is like that concept dialed up to eleven. I actually scrunched down in my seat and watched bits of it through my fingers, it was so uncomfortably hilarious. I'd say that a lot of it had to have been scripted, but I watch "The Daily Show" every day, and they are always able to find people ready and willing to make asses of themselves on television without having the slightest fucking clue what's going on (and one can generally tell if somebody's even partly in on the joke). Even if the fratboys who are sueing are telling the truth (they claim that the filmmakers got them drunk and misrepresented the purpose of the moviem and goaded them into making comments like there ought to be slavery in the U.S. and the minorities get all the breaks -- through a drunk and stupid filter, of course), they still cooperated by...getting drunk and saying really offensive and embarrassing things on camera. In other words, I fully believe that what they were skewering is the truth, even if they coaxed that truth out of their subjects.

Those frat boys, and the guy at the rodeo who sincerely celebrated the idea of stringing up homosexuals, and various stereotypes made me deeply, deeply uncomfortable, and it felt that much better to excise it through laughter. On the one hand, I'm sittiing there horrified, and on the other it's so fucking ridiculous that it's funny. It's funny precisely because it's not funny, I guess? And the worst/best part of all was where Borat, having lost everything (including his faithful chicken), wanders into a revival meeting (Pentecostal, I think). He was easily taken in by the grandstand preaching and the ecstatic moaning and the speaking in tongues and the falling down with the Spirit. It was horrifying and it was hysterical. I'm sitting here alternately giggling and shifting in my seat just thinking about it.

And maybe I related a bit too much to Borat's intense fangirling of Pamela Anderson. It was also a satisfying conclusion that didn't fall apart the way so many comedies do at the end -- Borat throwing the sack over his prospective bride and Pam running screaming out into the parking lot was easy to see coming, but no less funny for that. "Pamela, I am not attracted to you anymore...NOT!"

Oh lord, it was funny. If you don't mind satire so extreme that you sit there with your mouth hanging open in shock, dismay, awe and delight. Personally, that's one of my favorite flavors.