Many moons ago, during a period called the Bush administration, people believed America couldn’t possibly become more parody-able than when Borat first showed up in the country. Lo and behold, the ravages of time have proved everyone wrong–and in the process, somehow managed to make George W. Bush “redeemable” for his actions while in office (he’s not). Regardless, Sacha Baron Cohen’s entire career was built on the ease of pulling apart the U.S.’ fragile structure, starting with Da Ali G Show, at a time when Bush was exposing the problematic divide of the country at its most overt.
Of course, then the Orange One came along to upstage him in that arena. In fact it was 2003’s “Politics,” the third episode in season two of Da Ali G Show, that Baron Cohen as Ali G briefly dupes Trump into being interviewed about an idea he has for a business investment: ice cream gloves. Which are basically like dish gloves but you wear them while eating ice cream. Trying to talk at his level, evidently, Ali asks, “So how long has there been business?” As usual, in super eloquent fashion, Trump responds, “Well, business started from the day one. From early in the world.” Ali indulges him, inquiring, “And what was they doin’ business in back in the day?” Trump bloviates, “Many, many, many years ago, hundreds of millions of years ago before people were doing business, they were trading in rocks and stones and other things.” Except that people have only been on Earth for six million years, making that whole hundreds of millions of years thing, well, a lie. Ali continues, “Who would wanna buy rocks?” Trump shrugs, “I don’t know, man. You gotta ask them that.” To that end, one gets a similar success rate with trying to ask Trump supporters (QAnon included) why they still so staunchly support him in the face of every affront.
That is the ultimate aim of Borat’s sequel, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, timed perfectly as a pièce de résistance to help encourage people to make the “right choice” when they vote. Even though, this time around, it isn’t as easy for Baron Cohen to hide behind the disguise of a now pop culture icon, he manages to find some particularly outré right-wingers to quarantine with. Because yes, all he has to do is ask. What’s more, he has the crutch of a new character to rely on: Borat’s daughter, Tutar Sagdiyeva (Maria Bakalova, a Bulgarian actress that Americans had no awareness of until now). It is through Tutar that Borat is able to secure his most revelatory moments about the fucked up psyche of the United States. Her innocent, childlike nature (she’s twenty-four, yet playing a fifteen-year-old) also helps endear her toward women and render her a delicious snack to men (because yes, old conservative white males are wolves without even the ruse of sheep’s clothing).
This much is apparent at the “Palace of the South,” Hay House, where Borat enlists Tutar in a cotillion so that she can learn how to look and act like a desirable woman for Mike Pence, whom he plans to give Tutar to as a gift so that the president of Kazakhstan can be part of “McDonald Trump’s” “tough guy” club. Borat, happy to be freed from the gulag as punishment for making the first “Moviefilm,” agrees to take Johnny the Monkey as an offering. Initially. But when Tutar hears that her dad, whom she hasn’t met until the instant he rolls up to her cage to say goodbye, is going to America, she stows away in the crate with Johnny (who she eats along the way).
Luckily, Tutar is an even better substitute for “pussy hound” Mike Pence. It is at a Republican convention where he is speaking (specifically about how “under control” COVID-19 is) that Borat walks in all too effortlessly as a Klansman to conceal his Borat-ness. In the bathroom, he changes into a rather convincing Trump getup and tries to deliver Tutar to Pence in front of the crowd. Before this part, the usual go-tos for making fun of right-wing ideology are at play during the first half of the movie, when the restrictions of the pandemic haven’t yet popped off in America. And, to be honest, they never really did–especially not in comparison to what Europe has done to attempt to contain the spread. Which is why Borat encounters a lone white man (maskless, of course) coming out of “AA Loans & Gun Shop” (proudly displaying a sign that reads: “Join NRA Here”) with a case of beer. And why said white man, named Jerry, convinced the virus is a “liberal hoax,” agrees to invite Borat back–no concerns whatsoever about whether or not he’s contaminated–to his house, where he lives with Jim… which is surprisingly “homo” for two conservatives. It is here that Borat “bonds” with the “brotherhood” of the QAnon ilk, asking, “What is more dangerous: this virus, or the Democrats?” The two respond easily, “Democrats.”
To Borat, instead, there is nothing scarier than Tutar unearthing that the manual for owning a daughter is a complete deception, along with other stories cautioning against a woman touching her own vagina, lest the teeth inside of it swallow her entire body whole. But it doesn’t take Tutar long to catch on that women have freedom in America (even if some of them prefer to remain in a subjugated state), as evidenced by seeing so many of them driving. Her revelation prompts her to rebel against her father–because what would a father-daughter narrative be without such a moment? And it comes after she’s already had the idea to give herself as a present to Giuliani instead–once her breast augmentation is done, obviously.
Alas, when Tutar says no to going through with it after touching her vag and realizing everything she’s ever been told is a lie–a pack of conspiracy theories, if you will–Borat is left on his own again. Questioning everything as much as Tutar is post-masturbation, he must be wondering if the “gypsy tears” he was injected with before leaving Kazakhstan really have kept him safe, as the doctor assured him. Of course, he couldn’t have known that all the injection did was prepare him to take coronavirus on what Cardi B would call “motherfucking tour.” Which is in keeping with Giuliani’s theory that it was manufactured in a lab, as he freely tells Tutar during an interview, since she’s now become a right-wing journalist.
As the father-daughter bond that Borat has tried to resist for the majority of the movie, but can’t any longer, reaches its crescendo, he rescues her from the depraved Giuliani, and the two go back to Kazakhstan because even that joint is better than America (though “liberal” Americans would like to believe it’s only a shitty place because Trump is running it). It is solely with the benefit of hindsight from the journey that Borat declares, “The greatest threat to Kazakhstan is no longer the Jew. It is, in fact, the Yankee.” So it is that the Running of the Jew becomes the Running of the American, complete with masked runners trying to escape a giant burger-toting, MAGA hat-wearing white man. And then, even scarier, “Here comes Karen” in an All Lives Matter shirt and with a gun, to boot. An AR-15 she uses to kill a giant Fauci caricature coming down the way with a vaccine.
Just when the crowd thinks America might be saved, Karen shoots Fauci as Borat narrates, “The Americans are victorious in their battle against science.” Whether or not Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan remains not so over the top satire or transcends into prophecy will be revealed come November. Though believing the Biden-Harris ticket is going to be a panacea is yet another instance of American derangement. And the fact that Baron Cohen felt obliged to say of the movie, “We wanted it to be a reminder to women of who they’re voting for—or who they’re not voting for. If you’re a woman and you don’t vote against this guy, then know what you’re doing for your gender,” seems to indicate that mansplaining is permitted if it’s done through the lens of political posturing.
Fittingly, Borat 2 comes on the heels of The Trial of the Chicago 7, in which Baron Cohen portrays 1960s Flower Power mascot Abbie Hoffman. A role he played so well that it seems to indicate he might have gotten slightly stuck in that time in terms of believing that only a man can save a woman from her choices. In any case, Hoffman would undoubtedly approve of the guerilla style and no holds barred message of Borat and his “Subsequent Moviefilm.”
