Baseball or Borat?
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Went to my first Marlins game of the season last night (Fish shut out the Braves 4-0) with my friend David, whose wife is from Kazakhstan and doesn't like baseball.
Around the fifth inning, he told me that when the movie Borat came out his wife refused to see it. So he went by himself.
Later I wondered which of the two - Borat or the Marlins - would be the more disagreeable for her to watch?
What do you think? (Imagine yourself - as you've probably never done - a young Kazakh woman living in America.)
AP Photo/Twentieth Century Fox/Alexandra Lambrinidis




Comments
I find sports more offensive, hahaha. I'm just not one of those "cool" kinds of gals, who likes to have beers and wings and watch games with the guys (although I did watch the superbowl this year). On the other hand, my husband and his work associates and friends are video game makers; instead of watching baseball all day, I watch them play games. Sigh. As they say in Mallrats, "Hell hath no fury like a woman's scorn for Sega."
As for Borat, while its true that I've never had to sit through an entire movie that outwardly seems geared toward insulting my culture, I think most people, at least fans of Sasha Baron Cohen, understand that what was even more appalling than his antics was the reaction of certain Americans to them. This is someone who wrote his college thesis, I believe, about oppression and slavery.
Anyway, when people make fun of Asians, and even Americans, I can usually find the humor in it. Margaret Cho making fun of her Korean mother, Chris Kattan and Molly Shannon mocking South Florida teens in "Goth Talk"...even poking fun at a subculture can be illuminating. There's usually a bit of truth to jokes - where would the humor be if there weren't?
Posted by: jen | April 16, 2008 12:40 PM