Borat is back, but its star says the America the movie was unleashed in back in 2006 is very different than the one its sequel — Borat Subsequent Moviefilm — will be ushered into later this year. Sacha Baron Cohen secretly filmed the movie this year, pandemic and all, and in many ways it’s an attack on the Trump era of America.
We, in fact, had some indication that Cohen was up to something when he showed up at a far right rally earlier in the pandemic. It wasn’t always smooth sailing according to the filmmaker, who despite his very silly demeanor on camera portraying a clueless rube has a very specific message in mind with the new Borat. The film, as many of Baron Cohen’s other projects highlight, is an effort to expose racism and other damaging philosophies in the modern world. But as Cohen explains, things are different with his new film.
In an interview with the New York Times, Baron Cohen’s life is juxtaposed between the Borat character he may be best known for and will reprise in a new film later this year. But it also highlights how racism in America is different things days, largely because of how Trump has changed the discourse according to Baron Cohen.
“In 2005, you needed a character like Borat who was misogynist, racist, anti-Semitic to get people to reveal their inner prejudices,” he said. “Now those inner prejudices are overt. Racists are proud of being racists.’’ When the president is “an overt racist, an overt fascist,’’ he said, “it allows the rest of society to change their dialogue, too.
“My aim here was not to expose racism and anti-Semitism,” he said of the sequel. “The aim is to make people laugh, but we reveal the dangerous slide to authoritarianism.”
Baron Cohen’s movie deals with Trump a lot, and the marketing for the movie includes a Twitter account that’s trolling Trump incessantly. One fun fact about Baron Cohen on Twitter, though. As revealed by the Times interview, he doesn’t have “access” to Twitter and sends what he wants to tweet to someone else to post. It’s probably the best way to handle Twitter, if we’re all being honest with ourselves.