Stereotypes are in everyday life and we should be working hard to rid of this but instead we are promoting typecasts through the media.
In the movie Borat Sacha Baron Cohen portrays a man named Borat who is a Kazakstani reporter. He is sent by the Kazakh Ministry of Information to gain a better understanding of American culture and bring his findings back home. Borat and his advisor Azamat played by Ken Davitian set off to New York City. They face culture shock and are bewildered by the big city. Borat being moved from a very Gemeinschaft country to a Gesellschaft one causes him to be very touchy with strangers. The people whom live in New York City put off his behavior as a folkway and are less than pleasant to him and he starts to lose hope. Then one night while channel-surfing in his hotel room, he discovers the beautiful Baywatch babe Pamela Anderson. He is now determined to go to California marry Anderson and find the true essence of America. On his rode trip there he has many encounters with "typical" Americans.
There are three types of stereotypes in the movie Borat. The first way Borat classifies against people is through the way Borat himself thinks. He believes; Jews are scary, blacks are cool, and women are pea-brained sex machines. In one scene Borat is forced to stay at a bed and breakfast owned by a homely Jewish couple. He and his partner Azamat are terrified and are unable to stay the entire night. In this scene Borat has an obvious font and back stage. His front stage as being calm and reserved and his back stage at being terrified.
The second way Borat promotes a typecast is through the main character. The main character has such extremes norms and values to the point where he is no longer representing the country of Kazakhstan. He is portrayed as ignorant, uncouth, and primitive. In the film Borat sees incest as an okay thing to do. The Americans in the film are ethnocentric and believe this is wrong.
The third way in which Borat holds a mold of how people are looked at is through the director's eyes. The director in this movie was Larry Charles. We look at films and often in enough we do not question why a certain person was chosen for a role. In Borat Charles includes only one African- American whom turns out to be a prostitute. When Borat is eating dinner with members of the power elite, the people sitting at the table are all Caucasian. When Borat goes to a church meeting, everyone is Caucasian. When Borat is in a bus with fraternity students they are once again all Caucasian. Charles was also subconsciously sexist. All working class people in the movie were portrayed as men.
Homophobia was also a part of this film. For example when Borat and his advisor Azamat were wrestling naked the audience seemed to squirm and the bystanders in the movie were appalled. However, when a short clip of Pamela Anderson with a man on a boat came on the people in the movie thought it was "hott".
When looking through this film you realize how large of a barrier language truly is ringing true to the Saphir-Whorf theory. Not only in the way we speak but in symbolic interactions of words. When Borat was trying to learn American jokes he was having trouble with not jokes. "Your suit is black, NOT" I believe he was having trouble with this joke because of the context in which not was used. It was still English but it was used out of context. He also had a language barrier when speaking to "gang" members he did not understand the slang terms.
Borat overall is a humorous movie not intended to hurt people. However, we do need to be more careful of how we portray our "typical" views of society into everyday life. Assuming a life span of 72 the average American will watch 150,000 hours of television, every second creating a new thought of how we percieve things. We should not let the media persuade our ideas of people. We are all part of one race the human race and every person is different and beautiful.