Borat !!!
October 19, 2007
Borat Sagdiyev (Kazakh and Russian: Борат Сагдиев) is a fictional Kazakh journalist portrayed by British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen. He is the eponymous protagonist of the mockumentary Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. Humour is often derived from Borat’s taboo social and cultural viewpoints, deadpan behaviour, repeating phrases, overexaggerated “third-world” status, and physical humour. Borat is very racist and hates all Jews. He also fears the Gypsies. Especially, he says, the ones who suck blood.
Baron Cohen had played an unnamed foreign reporter with identical looks and similar mannerisms as part of BBC Two’s Comedy Nation in the mid-1990s. By the late 1990s he had developed this character into Borat. Borat’s first appearance was on the BBC in 1998,[1] and by late 2000 Borat was, in his own words, “great success”. 20th Century Fox has stated that a sequel to the popular movie is currently under consideration.[2][3]
Borat is said to have been born on July 30, 1972 in the fictional village of Kuzcek, Kazakhstan, to Asimbala Sagdiyev and Boltok the town Rapist (who is also stated to be his maternal grandfather). He has a 13-year-old son named Hooeylewis and 12-year-old twin boys, named Biram and Bilak, as well as 17 grandchildren. He has an older sister, Natalya (who he says is the number four and the number two prostitute in Kazakhstan [Borat has said both numbers]) and a younger brother, Bilo who is mentally retarded. It is also revealed that he has two wives as well as a mistress, a girlfriend, and a prostitute with whom he has had affairs on several occasions.
Borat is shown to have been married several times, after first having been betrothed to his half-sister’s plough while in his teens. His first wife, Oxanna, was said in the Borat film to have been raped, violated and killed by a bear while taking his brother Bilo for a walk in the forest. Borat was not negatively affected by this tragedy; he thanks the man who brought him the “good news”, and on the contrary, the movie shows that he celebrated his new-found freedom by pursuing Pamela Anderson and eventually marrying Luenell, an African-American prostitute he met while filming his documentary.
In his fictional, professional life, Borat is a journalist and presenter on Kazakh television. According to various in-character interviews given by Sasha Baron-Cohen, Borat attended Astana University, where he studied English, journalism, and plague research. During this time, he created five new plagues which he says “killed over 5 million goats in Uzbekistan.”[4] Prior to this he worked as an ice maker, animal sperm retriever, gypsy catcher and the person who removes dead birds from a computer.[5]
Borat was nominally pagan for most of his life. However, in the film he attends a Pentecostal church service and later converts his village neighbors to Christianity.
Borat greatly admires the political views of Joseph Stalin, saying that both he and Stalin are strong and have powerful “khram” (penis). He is strongly against women’s rights and was especially stunned upon learning of women’s suffrage. In his spare time, he enjoys playing ping pong, sunbathing in a green mankini, disco dancing, spitting, sitting on comfortable chairs, and taking pictures of unsuspecting women while they “make toilet”.
