When I saw the list of movies Sara gave as examples, of course I had to choose Borat. This movie is hilarious on so many accounts, and I would hate myself for missing an opportunity to analyze this movie on an academic level. The movie is about a reporter from Kazakhstan coming to America to see what our culture is like. Although, throughout the movie, his goal switches to meeting/marrying Pamela Anderson after he watched a few episodes of Baywatch. It may not me the most accurate depiction of a foreigner trying to acclimate to the culture of the United States, but it sure is a good laugh! (Unfortunately, there are not a lot of clips from this movie accessible on YouTube, so I'll try to paint an image in your mind of the scenes.)
One of the first scenes in the movie when Borat makes it to the United States is when he is on the streets. Apparently, where he comes from, kissing/hugging strangers is completely acceptable. This, we can relate to to proxemics, or the study of how people use personal space to communicate. In America, people are very used to being independent, and we don't like it when random strangers touch us. This has to do with the four distance zones discussed in Chapter 4 of our text book Intercultural Communication in Contexts (Judith N. Martin / Thomas K. Nakayama). They discuss the four levels of distances zones briefly. We have Intimate, Personal, Social, and Public. Borat tries to be "over-friendly" with some random strangers on the street, which in Kazakhstan is apparently not considered rude/strange. Borat finds out right away (and the hard way) that there are very distinct differences between the cultural norms of his native land, and the United State's cultural norms.
The character Borat has a very, very low level of intercultural competence. In other words, Borat has no idea how to behave or act appropriately in this new culture. A scene comes to mind when he is at a dinner party with some older folks from America (one being a pastor.) This dinner party is meant to teach Borat some proper dinner party behaviors. It's a dinner party to practice dinner parties at! Everything is going about as smooth as it can be with this trickster in the room, until his "guest" finally arrives. His guest turns out to be a prostitute that he ran into earlier in the movie. One of the beginning scenes of the movie, Borant introduces his sister as being the #4 prostitute in all of Kazakhstan something that he seemed to be very proud of. Maybe in Borat's culture, prostitution is not frowned upon. In our culture, it is very frowned upon and illegal. Borat's low level of intercultural competence got in the way of his judgement on this new culture. He didn't see anything wrong with this picture, which ensured some laughs from us viewers.
Interpretive methods of data collecting relies more on the qualitative data gathered through study and research. Borat does a great job trying to learn how to act/behave in America not by the critical, or social science approach, but with the interpretive approach. He seeks out certain people, and gathers his data from those people. The scene in Borat when he is trying to learn how to understand American humor is a great example of this. He's not researching past information collected, or working with numbers/quantitative data, he is actively seeking to better his understanding of the material by talking to an individual. This is more what the interpretive method of data collecting is all about. He learns a little bit about American humor, in a very humorous way I might add.
Overall, the movie is meant to be a joke, but it also really applies to our subject matter. Adapting to a new culture is a hard thing to do, but it CAN be done. Borat might not be a star example of this, but the movie is definitely an example.
Cheers
Joshua Lundell.
Works Cited
Martin, J. N., & Nakayama T. K. (2013) Intercultural Communication in Cotexts, Sixth Edition. Newyork, NY: McGraw-Hill
Borat is interesting because I saw Borat in a much different light than you- I saw it more as Borat punking/trolling people by forcing them to confront another culture with different and intentionally offputting norms (to the American sensibility, anyway). I saw it more as an attempt to force Americans to confront our own uncomfortableness with other cultures.
ReplyDeleteGood point Ryan. I struggle sometimes when I am watching certain popular culture texts like Borat or South Park that bring to light issues of class, race, ethnicity, intergroup contact, etc. I go back and forth thinking is this a text that resists power or a text that reinforces? I think South Park's F Word episode is one of those things and that's what makes pop culture such an intriguing text for intercultural communication. We can read these texts in so many different ways.
DeleteHonestly, I haven't seen this movie before. I've heard it is very funny though, and I like that you watched it again to analyze it on a different level. I liked how you explained the patterns you saw in the film and how it related to what we are studying in class.
ReplyDeleteGood work. My only comment for improvement would be to add more visuals and bring these points to life. Good practice for the cultural reporter video. Great detail with written communication!
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