Cinema

Sacha Baron Cohen: Borat Caught Giuliani, and Democracy Is on the Brink

First published in Arabic in October 2020: Sacha Baron Cohen on the Giuliani scene in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, his bulletproof vest and Trump's war on truth.

Husam Sam Asi 24 October 2020

Husam Sam Asi with Sacha Baron Cohen in character as General Aladeen from The Dictator, May 2012.

Once again the British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen has exposed American conservatives, this time in a new satire, the second Borat film. In it the former New York mayor and lawyer to President Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, flirts with the actress who plays Borat’s daughter, who poses as a journalist for a conservative television network, during an interview in a hotel suite. He then follows her into the bedroom, where the hidden camera shows him patting her side before he lies back on the bed and puts his hand down his trousers. Suddenly Baron Cohen bursts into the room shouting that she is 15 and flees with the girl. Giuliani jumps off the bed in shock, chases after Baron Cohen and asks his security men: who is this madman?

On Twitter, Giuliani denied any inappropriate behaviour, pointing out that he never took his clothes off during the scene. He accused Baron Cohen of lying and fabrication, and said he had called the police after the incident.

Speaking to me over Zoom before the film’s release, Baron Cohen said he was worried about the safety of his Bulgarian star, Maria Bakalova, when he saw Giuliani lie down on the bed, because it looked obvious to him that Giuliani was getting ready to sleep with her. So he refused to wait and charged into the room to get her out. He confirmed that after he left, police raided the hotel and searched the room.

“He was obviously so worried that he urged the police to search the place without a search warrant,” Baron Cohen says. “His claim that what he did wasn’t inappropriate reveals the standards of appropriate behaviour towards women in Trump’s gang. I don’t want to judge his behaviour myself. I’ll leave that to the audience to decide for themselves after watching the film. Everyone has their own moral judgement and opinion of him and of me, and I’m happy with the verdict whether it’s for me or against me. I trust the audience and I believe in their judgement.”

Why Borat came back

Borat is a fictional journalist from Kazakhstan, backward in his behaviour, with regressive ideas about women, racist towards black people and anti-Semitic. Baron Cohen created him and first presented him on his comedy programme Da Ali G Show, which began on Britain’s Channel 4 in 2000. In 2006 he made a film about him, in which the Kazakh government sends Borat on a mission to make a documentary about the great United States. When he arrives in New York he sees the model Pamela Anderson on television and decides to travel to California, where she lives, to marry her. He buys an ice-cream van and sets off across America, uncovering among Americans views more backward, and racism against black and Jewish people more virulent, than his own. In the film it is the Americans who become the butt of the joke.

Borat was a huge success in the United States and abroad, and the character became one of the most famous film characters in the world, so it was no longer easy for Baron Cohen to fool people disguised as him. “It never crossed my mind to make another Borat film, because it was impossible,” Baron Cohen laughs. “But at the last congressional elections I wanted to make something that talked about Trump, and when I consulted my friend, the comedian Chris Rock, he suggested I use Borat, because of the great similarity between him and Trump. Both hate women, are racist against black people and support anti-Semitic movements. On top of that, neither cares about democratic principles or respects the press, they hold backward views and they’re both funny. So if I took Borat to Trump supporters, they would reveal even more than before.”

This time the president of Kazakhstan sends Borat on another mission to the United States: to win the friendship of President Donald Trump and raise his country’s standing in the world by offering his 15-year-old daughter as a gift to Mike Pence, Trump’s vice-president. He sets off by sea and lands in the American South, the heartland of Trump’s supporters. But his fame from the first film gives him away, and people chase him wherever he goes, so he is forced to disguise himself as other characters. Then the coronavirus crisis empties the streets as lockdown is imposed. He takes refuge in the home of two Trump supporters and spends five days with them, during which they reveal their hatred of former President Barack Obama, whom they accuse of hating America, and of Bill and Hillary Clinton, who they believe kill children and drink their blood, a rumour spread by conspiracy theorists such as QAnon.

“The first Borat film exposed the ugly, hideous underbelly of American society,” says Baron Cohen. “But I realised that all of that underbelly has now been exposed and is openly promoted by the American president. So the aim of this film is to show the humanity of these people who hold these appalling ideas. Those two men are very kind and generous, but they have been poisoned by conspiracy theories broadcast on social media and the internet, where there is no distinction between real information and conspiracy theories. The terrifying thing is that conspiracy theories spread much faster than the truth, because the truth is boring. I wanted to show the reason behind the vast division in the world and the hostility between different groups. Because in reality, if we took our facts from reliable sources, we would find we have a lot in common as human beings. That’s why we have to pass laws to regulate social media and the internet to confront this danger.”

A bulletproof vest under the disguise

Baron Cohen felt that danger personally when he went with his hosts to a rally of extremists who back gun rights. Disguised in another costume, he climbed on to the stage and sang songs against Democrats and the press, including a line about chopping up journalists like the Saudis do. The demonstrators applauded and sang along with gusto.

“I often put myself in uncomfortable situations, and sometimes I feel my heart pounding with fear and I hesitate to do the scene,” says Baron Cohen. “I do my best to overcome the fear and remind myself why I’m making the film and that it’s my duty, because if I don’t do it now, I will never help change reality, and I’ll be ashamed of myself in the future. I have two choices: to confront reality or to watch it.”

The scene with the extremists, armed with every kind of weapon, was the most dangerous he has done in his career. He decided to go ahead even though, he says, he knew the FBI had foiled a plan to open fire during the rally. For the first time in his life he wore a bulletproof vest under his disguise. “I didn’t want to be killed by a stray bullet,” Baron Cohen laughs. “But the scene was important because I wanted to warn that democracy is standing on the edge of a cliff and we are about to fall into the abyss of autocracy, where we are denied freedom of expression and anyone who dares to disagree with or challenge the authorities and their supporters is jailed or perhaps killed. The fear I felt in front of those extremists should frighten all of us, and if we want to free ourselves from that fear, we have to stand up to them.”

Baron Cohen believes Trump embodies that danger, which is why he decided to make the film and release it before the American presidential election, hoping to push Americans to the ballot box to vote Trump out and save democracy, in America and all over the world, where leaders have come to power with right-wing ideas no different from Trump’s autocratic ones.

“I think the cleverest move Trump made was to use the phrase ‘fake news’, which gave him power in the first place, against legitimate news sources,” says Baron Cohen. “As we know, the basis of spreading lies is to repeat them until they become the truth in people’s minds, so that they reject everything else. And because America is the most influential country in the world, electing an authoritarian demagogue like Trump contributed to the decline of democracy in other countries and the election of authoritarians like him. I think the other factor in the spread of these autocracies is the false information fed and spread by social media. Democracy depends on a shared truth, while autocracy depends on shared lies, and because lies are more exciting than the truth and spread faster and much further, democracy is in danger all over the world.”

The joke that stopped being shocking

I have met Baron Cohen several times, professionally in interviews and socially at Hollywood events and parties, and this is the first time he has spoken with such urgent seriousness, betraying his anxiety about the future of the world and of humanity. Even so, he reminds me that he worked hard to make Borat the funniest of his films. In fact the second Borat lacks the humour of the first, because what it presents is no longer strange, appalling or shocking. The world has changed a great deal since the first film came out in 2006, thanks to social media, which has turned those ideas, and stranger and uglier ones, into mainstream ideas.

“I’m a comedian and an actor before anything else, and I’m no philosopher or academic,” says Baron Cohen. “I wish people listened to academics and experts instead of demagogues and ignoramuses. I always feel uncomfortable expressing my ideas in public, because people listen to me because I’m famous. The coronavirus crisis swept through humanity because we don’t listen to scientists and specialists. I’m not optimistic these days, because I feel humanity is in danger.”