31 October 2006
In Germany, promotion for the new movie of British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan", has been scaled down following complaints by Sinti and Roma groups who argue that Borat is racist and have asked the courts to intervene. German fans of Borat have been eagerly awaiting the 2 November release of the film. The so-called "mockumentary" featuring a bigoted, fictional reporter from Kazakhstan traveling around the United States satirizes the often shocking prejudices of ordinary Americans. However, the satire has fallen flat with Sinti and Roma in Germany, who say the movie itself is discriminatory. The European Center for Anti-Ziganism Research (EZAF) in Hamburg has filed a series of criminal complaints, arguing that the movie incites violence against Sinti and Roma. Court cases are pending in five German cities against Cohen, the film's German distributor, 20th Century Fox, and a number of television stations and newspapers that ran promotional material for the movie. In response, 20th Century Fox removed all scenes with references to "gypsies," a term Sinti and Roma consider offensive, from television promotional spots for the film. It also took the movie's German-language website off-line.
The controversy centers on how one interprets the Borat figure, a provincial journalist in a bad moustache and cheap suit, who spouts anti-Semitic, racist and sexist prejudices in comically broken English. For fans, Cohen, who is Jewish, uses his alter ego as a means of revealing and ridiculing the deep-seated biases of his unwitting interview partners. But detractors worry that Cohen's wildly popular figure also makes prejudice seem cool. Sinti and Roma in Germany have objected in particular to one film scene between Borat and a provincial American car dealer. Officials for the Kazakh government have also repeatedly protested against the caricature, saying it cast their country in a poor light. In early October, the Kazakh ambassador to the UK wrote a long article for the "Guardian" newspaper accusing Cohen of slandering the former Soviet Republic.
