Washington Week: Student Voices (O)

COLUMN: A 21st century minstrel show
By Garth Heutel
Daily Texan (U. Texas)
11/22/2006

(U-WIRE) AUSTIN, Texas — The early-to-mid-19th century was the heyday for a historic genre of musical theater. Songs were farcical and characters acted like buffoons, but beneath all of the lowbrow humor was intelligent political commentary.

A common feature of this genre was the "stump speech," in which performers poked fun at social issues and politicians. Acting as clownish caricatures, performers were able to comment on society in a manner unacceptable in other circumstances. The stump speech was the antecedent of today's stand-up comedy routine.

This genre brought us many of the most enduring songs of the 19th century, including "Oh, Susanna" and "Camptown Races." It also brought us memorable characters including "Zip Coon," a swaggering Southern plantation worker and "Jim Crow," an urban would-be sophisticate.

You've probably heard of these shows. They are called minstrel shows. The performers usually paint their faces black and mock slaves. Minstrel shows are terribly racist. We don't have them anymore.

Instead, we have "Borat."

The comedy, starring Sacha Baron Cohen as a journalist from Kazakhstan traveling through America, is being praised by some as a biting satire whose true target is U.S. culture. This may be so, but it's hard to deny that the way in which the film indirectly pokes fun at the United States is by directly poking fun at Kazakhstan and its people.

Like minstrel shows, "Borat" offers some valuable insights about those in power in America, but does so (like minstrel shows) by exploiting the vilest of ethnic and racial stereotypes. Laughing at Borat for crapping in a bag at a dinner party is one step removed from laughing at ol' Zip Coon for thinking he's a "larned scholar."

It's easy to accuse anyone who thinks the film is racist of having no sense of humor. It's easy to dismiss the lawsuits from many of Borat's victims, including the group of Southern fraternity members who travel with Borat and reveal themselves to be racist and misogynist in a scene that would make Strom Thurmond blush.

It's less easy to disregard complaints from the citizens of Glod, Romania, the village filmed as the stand-in for Borat's hometown in Kazakhstan. In the film, these people are presented as bumpkins, anti-Semites, terrorists and rapists.

In reality, they weren't in on the joke. According to their claim, the villagers were told Borat and his crew were filming a documentary about poverty. They had to endure animals being dragged into their house to use as jokes (often leaving manure on their floors). Nicu Tudorache, a villager who lost his arm in an accident, was filmed with an attached prosthetic hand. He was unaware that it was a sex toy, used as a gag. When he was told, he called the act "disgusting."

You might not think that's racist, but whatever it is, it's not nice.

Tepid defenses of "Borat" include the argument that it's excusable because it's social satire, or that Cohen is allowed to do it because he's Jewish (though "Borat" — the film, not the character — is not making fun of Jews).

Such defenses, meager though they are, are of no use to those students who have graced us with their own reenactment of a neo-minstrel show. Last month, first-year University of Texas law students threw a "ghetto-fabulous" party, where the students donned Afro wigs and carried 40-ounce bottles of malt liquor. Oh, and they posted pictures on the Internet. While no students were expelled, the fact that someone, somewhere, still must have a copy of those pictures means it's unlikely that any of these possibly future lawyers will end up in politics.

More recently, two UT undergraduates were kicked out of their fraternity after appearing at a party in blackface makeup. Their pictures were found on Facebook.

At Texas A&M, two students became former students after they portrayed a master disciplining a slave, in blackface, in a video they posted on YouTube. Shock from the racism of these acts might only be outweighed by shock from the stupidity of the actors' self-publicity.

Say all you want about "Borat"'s satirical value, but it's hard to get around the fact that it centers on a racist portrayal. While Cohen's film has made more than $90 million domestically, these students who tried to emulate his schtick fared worse.

Still, even if you're not offended, the film's not all that good. Sure, it exposes America's racism and homophobia, but it's not like that's too hard to do. And any film whose funniest scene involves a fat man's testicles bouncing against another man's face doesn't exactly qualify as comic genius.

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