Reply #25: Neither Actually [View All]

[gorgan]

Borat is one of the secondary characters Baron Cohen's developed for his english series, Da Ali G Show. Ali G is a north London white youth who fancies himself a ghetto hip hop hipster. The substance of the show involes Ali G interviewing prominent people (e.g. Donald Trump, Newt Gingrich), acting the fool, seeing if he can bait his victims into revealing themselves. He's often successful.

Borat has segments between Ali G's exploits on the show. Borat's Ali G segments are very similar to the movie. In one show, he visits a gun club in Dallas, TX. He tells his subject, a member of the club, that in Kazakhstan, they use hardened criminals as targets. The gun club members thinks this is a great idea, but one unfortunately that probably won't fly here in the US of A.

Boris the gay German fashion critic is the third character he developed for Da Ali G Show. Like Borat, he appears in segments between Ali G segments.

Personally Boris is my favorite. In one memorable show he's gets fashion designer who just showed at the event Boris is covering to completely contradiction himself like 6 times (Boris: I loved the heaviness of this show. Designer: Yes, that's what we wanted. <cut to> Boris: The best thing about this show was how light and airy it was--it just floated away. Designer: Well, that's exactly the response I was aiming for).

Baron Cohen is often squirm-inducing, but never boring.