Where Xutos psychoanalyzes other cineplex patrons

Watching Borat in Boise

By Nathaniel Hoffman, 12-09-06

	Borat, not in Boise...

My sister watched Borat on New York’s Upper West side. The audience booed a trailer for a Mel Gibson movie and folks didn’t have to read the subtitles when Borat spoke.

I sat toward the front of the theater in Boise the same Saturday night, bracing myself for the running of the Jews.

And wondering why the guy over my left shoulder was laughing so hard.

My wife and I were likely the only Jewish people in the theater, possibly the only ones in the area code who recognized Borat’s “Kazakh” banter as pretty good diasporic Hebrew.

There were scenes that made me snicker, mutter “Jesus” under my breath, wince. But the movie did not make me laugh out loud like the preview for Reno 911 did.

And while the blond masses behind me did not catch all the Jewish jokes, there were plenty of moments that hit too close to home for my fellow red state movie goers.

The Boise theater was suspiciously subdued during the very real rodeo scene. And when Borat happens upon a Christian revival folks got even quieter.

During the church scene, which could have been funnier, I forced myself to guffaw at Borat’s tongue wagging when no one else was laughing. Did the kids behind me who grew up in churches like this feel the same self consciousness I felt 20 minutes prior when Borat was throwing cash at Jewish cockroaches?

I often find myself representing 5,000 years of Jewish history for folks in Idaho. I always field questions about Israel and the annual Deli Days event the synagogue puts on with the following qualification: This is a mainstream Jewish interpretation if you are interested, but personally I look at it all a bit differently.

In fact, my introduction to Sacha Cohen’s comedy came a few years ago when a hunting buddy showed me some clips to get a Jewish read on the shtick.

I told him we Boise Jews definitely identify with Ali G., Cohen’s white rapper character.

But I also appreciate Borat’s form of questioning as a type of journalism.

While Cohen lies and deceives subject for comedic value, a journalist must nonetheless blend in to the scenery to get people to open up.
You don’t necessarily cover a rodeo with an Ivy League button on your collar and Star of David around your neck.

I went to my first rodeo about six years ago as a reporter for the Press-Tribune. I had to dig up an appropriate hat and shirt for the occasion, just like my brother Cohen did in Virginia.

Standing at the back of the room during the opening banquet in my white hat, I scribbled down notes as a Mormon city councilman roasted a well-known black rodeo clown with fried chicken and watermelon jokes.

The room full of local dignitaries, high school students and rodeo officials laughed warmly when the city councilman told the only black man in the room that folks have to keep their daughters inside every year when he comes to town for the rodeo.

The clown, a willing participant in and practitioner of rodeo circuit humor, smiled his sad clown smile and accepted the roast graciously.
But I skewered the scene the following Sunday in the paper.

The rodeo is fun. But the rodeo culture is full of the type of American religious and social parochialism that continues to plague large swaths of the heartland. That causes people to vote the way they did last week Idaho.

While I condemned the underlying bigotry of the rodeo scene in the pages of a local paper, in a tone that invited accusations of political correctness, Borat skewers that same culture in a tone that is the polar opposite of PC.

Forcing millions of unsuspecting middle American film goers to watch a five minute nude male wrestling match does more to break down that parochialism than any newspaper editorial ever will.

But rodeo humor, like Reno 911 is one dimensional. The shtick is the joke. It’s not a matter of getting the joke. The guy over my left shoulder -- I have no idea where he was coming from. But it struck me that chasing Jewish caricatures through the street and beating their offspring struck him as funny.
Like watching a black rodeo clown shuck and jive is funny.

But it is not as funny in Boise as it is in New York. Or it’s funny in a different way.

Besides the fact that he is kind of into scatological humor, why did my brother-in-law, a rabbinical student, laugh at the running of the Jews?

Because he has studied the pogroms, has lived in Spain, can’t believe Borat, the announcer, is speaking in Hebrew, and because in New York it is so far from the way people think as to be laughable.

But in Idaho, where I choose to live, where people are friendly and where white supremacists were thankfully run out of the state a few years back, I still keep looking over my shoulder.

And practicing my Ali G impression.

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