Borat: anything goes

Sascha Baron Cohen makes fun of Kazakhstan, Jews, Americans, people with disabilities and a lot more. But as long as the Kazakhstani TV reporter Borat Sagdiyev is only mirroring our own prejudices and bigotry, it's ok.

The beauty of today's approach to humour is that you can defend anything by saying "I'm only making fun of those who are prejudiced". In this way, you can cater to both intolerants and those who dislike intolerants. If you like to laugh at stupid Americans or male chauvinist jokes, you laugh with Borat. If you dislike people who like chauvinist jokes, you laugh at Borat.

There's little need for ethics, since the mode and content of the performance (be it irony, satire or downright harassment) can be defended by a quick analysis of the motivation behind the humour. In Norway, this humour is occasionally performed by comedians Harald Eia and Otto Jespersen, to mention but a few.

I enjoyed the movie.