Who's to Say What's Obscene?

by Paul Krassner

  “The first time I saw Borat I fell madly in love with him. For a journalist who writes about culture in a major Jewish newspaper, seeing this fictional, mustachioed, deeply offensive, thoroughly anti-Semitic man for the first time on HBO two years ago was more than entertainment. It was a clarion call. . . . Played with fierce doggedness by Israeli-born comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, Borat—supposedly a reporter from Kazakhstan who travels the United States asking his hapless interviewees the most unthinkable of questions—was that mythological beast that all young Jews secretly dream about, a character cool and commanding who puts, if only for a moment, all things Jewish at the cutting edge of popular culture.”

  Well, any movie that serves to unite Jews and anti-Semites can’t be all bad. Certainly, both sides appreciate, for different reasons, Borat’s explanation that the reason he and Azamat—his outstandingly obese “producer”—drive rather than fly across America in this documentary-style parody of a buddy movie is because he’s scared that Jews would hijack their plane “like they did on 9/11.”

  (John Stauber, co-author of Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush’s War on Iraq, told me, “Skilled propagandists can plant gossip, and if it takes root and spreads successfully, it can serve a useful propaganda purpose. For instance, gossip has helped spread the false propaganda that Jews stayed home from work at the World Trade Center on 9/11 because they were warned of the attacks in advance. This is an outrageous lie, but that has not stopped it from being spread and believed by those predisposed to so believe.”)

  To be fair, though, the anti-Semitic listserv—whose editor hasn’t laughed out loud so much since he saw Schindler’s List—also called the Jewish critic “hypocritical.”

  Sacha can be compared to several other performers. Like Lenny Bruce, his sense of irreverence enables him to communicate from the villain’s perspective. Lenny, in his boldest satirical critique, perceived reality from Adolf Eichmann’s point of view. Like Sarah Silverman, Sacha can make light of rape, advising his father, the hometown rapist, to keep his standards high by raping only humans. Sarah pretends in The Aristocrats that she was once raped by show-biz legend Joe Franklin. Like Robin Williams, Sacha becomes the characters he plays so thoroughly it almost seems as if he loses his own center in the process. Like Chevy Chase, he’s a practitioner of pratfalls. Like Andy Kaufman, his sense of absurdity can stretch the patience of an audience beyond its ordinary limits.

  Sacha is the contemporary version of a professional prankster, the latest stage in the evolution of a tradition, from Candid Camera to Tom Green to Punked to correspondents on The Daily Show. He stays in character with the determination of a salmon swimming upstream, blurring the line between courage and foolhardiness, just as Stephen Colbert did so uncompromisingly at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

  On the Tonight show, as Borat, he outdid Mel Gibson’s drunken outburst, informing Jay Leno that “The Jews were responsible for the end of the dinosaur period.” Later, he leaned across the next guest, Martha Stewart, grabbed Leno’s finger in his fist and said, “My sister. This tight.”

  Sacha’s schtick depends on tricking people into becoming his theatrical props, people who tolerate his outrageousness in order to be hospitable and not hurt his feelings. In the process, they reveal the state of their own humanity, for better or worse.

  Of course, everybody sees any film through the filter of their own particular subjectivity, so it’s logical that my friend Nick Kazan, a screenwriter who treats his craft with great respect, would say about Sacha, “His commitment to his character is absolute and admirable, but I wish there’d been a little more narrative focus. A better plot. I wish it hadn’t been just the same as the TV show.”

  Through Kazan, I was able to find a source in the industry who gave me a montage of outtakes from the raw footage of Borat on condition that it neither be auctioned on eBay nor posted on YouTube. I was given permission to describe some of those scenes that remain on the cutting-room floor—a concept, incidentally, that has been laid to rest in the Outdated Metaphors Graveyard by the grace of digital editing.

  However, permission has not been granted concerning the details of a specific scene showing fraternity boys getting drunk in a bar with the producers, due to their lawsuit claiming that they were duped into making racist and sexist remarks, “behavior that they otherwise would not have engaged in.” (This news inspired mention of “the Mel Gibson defense” as instantly as Britney Spears’s divorce inspired mention of her former husband Kevin Federline as “Fed-Ex.”)

  The scene following the one showing three feminists walking out of Borat’s blatantly misogynist interview is left out, wherein the producers persuade them to return, only to be subjected to the unrelenting Borat’s request that they remove their tops. One of them, artist Linda Stein, has since drawn a small penis on his thong, because, “as he exposed people, he should be able to take what he gives.”

  Another segment—ostensibly to contrast a county jail in California with the brutal conditions of a Kazakhstan prison—was passed over entirely because the film crew was ordered out of the premises when Borat pretended he was being arrested and said, “I like-a this place. Very nice. When you make all the mens do a pyramid, can I be on top?”

  In another scene that was omitted from the final product—if only because it would have interfered with the basic premise, a continuity of innocence, whether faked or real, of Sacha and his participant-victims alike—Pamela Anderson is forewarned that, at a bookstore signing, when he asks her to marry him, he will thrust a Kazakh wedding bag over her head, an act that would otherwise have terrorized her. Plus a scene at Malibu Beach in which Borat—wearing his skimpy jockstrap-style chartreuse bathing suit—chases Pamela and finally tackles her. Also appearing only in the rough cut was footage of her then-husband, musician Kid Rock, pacing back and forth, looking extremely agitatated.

  A few scenes were excised because their inclusion would have resulted in an NC17 rating for Borat instead of an R. One scene involving his handing a plastic bag filled with his fresh feces to the hostess at a dinner party made the cut, but the preceding scene—Borat actually defecating, as seen from the inside the toilet—was deleted for that rating reason, but it was also considered too artsy-fartsy.

  There was a hysterical scene on a porn set where Borat wouldn’t have sex with an actress because her crotch was shaved. To solve the problem, he cuts locks of his own hair off and pastes them to her crotch. But this scene was eliminated, not only because of ratings-fear, but also because it would have been inconsistent with the scene where he tells a car dealer he wants to buy a car that will be “a pussy magnet” for women who “shave down there,” and the dealer suggests a Corvette or a Hummer.

  In the naked wrestling scene with the blubbery yet agile Azamat, a black rectangle would have to be superimposed on Borat’s penis in postproduction because of his erection, which was not a stage direction in the skillfully choreographed script.

  My favorite missing scene, which does allow the revelation of his penis because it’s flaccid—acceptable under the rules of the ratings game—takes place in the office of a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon. Borat is there to discuss having a foreskin sewn back on because he doesn’t want Pamela Anderson to think he’s Jewish on their honeymoon night. After he drops his pants and fishnet underwear, he points to his penis and says, “I have seen on the televisions you will draw lines in magic marker, that is correct?”

  The doctor pauses. He looks puzzled. Then suddenly he realizes something, snaps his fingers and shouts, “Wait! You’re Ali G! You’re Ali G! You used to be on HBO! You’re Ali G!” The crew’s attempt to stifle their laughter fails, but Sacha remains in Borat-character. “Aha,” he says, “so you recognize it, yes?”

  Ironically, the more famous Sacha becomes, the less likely his schtick will work. His cover has been blown, even if he has not.

  GETTING HIGH DOWN UNDER

  In 1988, I was booked to perform at Linc
oln Center, sharing the stage with poet Allen Ginsberg and performance artist Karen Finley, whose infamous reputation for shoving a sweet potato up her ass preceded her appearance. Lenny Bruce had taught me by example about the magic of an opening line that intuitively articulates the consciousness of an audience.

  “Well,” I began, “Allen Ginsberg is very disappointed. He thought that Karen Finley was gonna shove a sweet potato up his ass.”

  Eighteen years later, in May 2006, I was looking forward to seeing Karen again. She had written a novella, George and Martha, about a one-night stand between George Bush and Martha Stewart, and I was scheduled to be on a panel about satire at the Sydney Writers Festival with her and Andy Borowitz, recipient of the “first-ever National Press Club Award for Humor” (unless, of course, that’s just his idea of a joke).

  I flew to Los Angeles, then began a sixteen-hour flight to Australia, only to make a U-turn two hours into the trip because of a mechanical problem resulting in cabin pressure too low for the plane to fly at the necessary altitude. Customer Relations told me that hotel rooms were unavailable, but I got two meal vouchers that were good at any restaurant in the airport except Wolfgang Puck’s and McDonald’s. I spent twenty-seven hours in the L.A. airport, alternating between attempts to sleep and dragging my luggage around. In the bathroom, it stood in front of the urinal next to the one I was using.

  Plus I caught up on my packet of research material. I learned that in some ways, the United States and Australia are similar—they are the only two countries in the world to reject the Kyoto Protocol. And in other ways, they’re different—in the United States, seven states, including Alabama and Texas, have banned the sale of sex toys including vibrators, whereas in Australia, prostitutes, strippers and lap dancers can claim deductions for sex toys, condoms, lubricants, gels and oils.

  The next night, Tuesday, May 23, I left again on the same flight, arriving on the morning of Thursday, May 25, airport- and jet-lagged. After shaving and showering in my hotel room, it was time to leave for a panel on obscenity and censorship at the Sydney Theater. Later that afternoon, I performed at a cabaret, and a member of the audience kindly slipped me a generous package of pot. I immediately bought Tally-Ho rolling papers and a lighter with a smiley face, returned to the hotel, got stoned, ate dinner, watched CNN and fell asleep.

  When I woke up, Friday’s Sydney Morning Herald was waiting outside my door. In a front-page review, I was described as the “star entertainer on obscenity. . . . [Krassner] is about to test religious tolerance with a sex scene he is writing between Jesus and Mary Magdalene. She screams, ‘Oh, God!’ And He replies, ‘Yes?’ ” In 1962, Lenny Bruce had been kicked out of Australia for obscenity and blasphemy. Now I felt as if I had avenged him.

  Australia still has a bizarre puritanical streak, though. In December 2008, a man was convicted of possessing child porn for having lewd images of The Simpsons on his hard drive. He could have been sentenced to prison for up to ten years, but instead he was fined $3,000 and placed on two years’ probation. He appealed the decision, arguing that fictional cartoon characters could not be considered people, as they “plainly and deliberately” departed from the human form. But the judge found that while The Simpsons characters had hands with four fingers and their faces were “markedly and deliberately different to those of any possible human being,” the mere fact that that they were not realistic representations of human beings did not mean that they couldn’t be considered people.

  Anyway, except for a few media appearances, that Friday at the Sydney Writers Festival was my day off. It was always fun to hear a distinguished interviewer carefully enunciate the title of my book, One Hand Jerking. One interviewer would only state the subtitle, Reports From an Investigative Satirist. I had the whole afternoon free to explore the wharf. After a bowl of pumpkin soup, I was drawn toward an area in the park by the sound of a voice on the public address system.

  This was May 26, which happened to be the date of an annual commemoration called “Sorry Day.” On that date in 1997, Australians were shocked by an official report that detailed the anguishing evidence of some 30,000 indigenous and mixed-race Aboriginal children having been kidnapped by the government, from 1869 into the early 1970s, and forcing them to live with white families. These people are known as part of “The Stolen Generations.” There was nothing in the media before or after this poignant anniversary, but that evening I talked about it during a radio interview.

  “Terrorism,” I concluded, “begins at home.”

  I also brought up the subject during the satire panel. I was wearing a Sorry Day T-shirt that acknowledged “Australia’s Hidden Agenda: Assimilation, Genocide, What’s Not Talked About.” When I bought the T-shirt, I asked what sizes it came in. The answer was, “Large, Extra Large, and Extra Extra Large.” I told the audience that “I felt like I was in Starbucks. Talk about assimilation. . . .”

  Around fifteen years ago, I met an American who owned a ranch in Australia. He told me about an Aboriginal child he knew who slept on a bed made of leaves and twigs and who went to a school where they had two computers, run by a generator. He had already hacked into the system at MIT, and his next experiment would be the Pentagon. Now he was a young man, and since I was visiting Australia, I had hoped to track him down and find out what he was up to, but unfortunately it was too late—I had to return to the United States.

  I left Sydney on Monday afternoon, May 29, and arrived in Los Angeles on Monday morning, May 29. I had given away the remainder of my marijuana stash, but I kept the lighter and the pack of rolling papers. At a specific point almost near the end of that pack, there was an ungummed, maroon rolling paper to remind customers, “When you’ve got 10 to go, just say Tally-Ho.”

  In November 2007, the Aboriginal people celebrated the defeat of Minister for Indigenous Affairs Mal Brough, architect of the government’s invasions of Aboriginal communities leading up to the election, just as they had previously celebrated the defeat of Prime Minister John Howard, who had refused, year after year, to simply say to them, “I’m sorry.”

  In 2008, the Australian government finally apologized to its victims.

  In 2009, an indigenous leader and director of the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre complained that “Aboriginal people, and especially members of the Stolen Generations, are probably worse off. . . .”

  HARRY SHEARER HEARS VOICES

  Harry Shearer became an actor when he was 7 years old, at the urging of his piano teacher. When he was a kid on the Jack Benny Show, as the cast was doing a read-through, there was one line in the script where, he told me, “I just got it in my mind to do it with a slight Brooklyn accent, and when I did that, Benny just started howling, banging the table and laughing.” That moment was an auspicious omen of Shearer’s future career.

  Foremost among his many talents is an uncanny ability to mimic with satirical precision the voices, mannerisms and points of view of countless public figures—entertainers, politicians, news anchors—on his radio program, Le Show, which completed its twenty-fifth year on the air in late 2008. It has been broadcast every Sunday morning on KCRW in Santa Monica (“From the edge of America, from the home of the homeless”) and syndicated to around 100 stations in this country, plus one in Berlin, NPR in Europe, an audio feed on Japan’s cable system, and American Forces Radio.

  For more than a quarter century, Shearer has never been paid for doing Le Show, but what about the perks?

  “Well, one of the advantages of doing weekly radio shows is that you tend to forget them as soon as they’re done,” he told me. “The great part, since gaining Internet coverage, is hearing feedback from listeners in places like Japan and Africa, where this broadcast would never be heard on terrestrial radio. But the real highlight, from a life standpoint, has to be when I had a chance meeting on the street, near the newsstand just off Melrose, with somebody who was a fan of the radio show, and whose then-column in the then–LA Reader I was a fan of. It was Matt Groening, and that meeting
led to a little remunerative gig in the Murdochian vineyards.”

  Shearer was referring, of course, to The Simpsons, on which he performs voiceovers of several cartoon personalities. Since he does both Mr. Burns and his assistant, Smithers, I asked, “When you’re taping The Simpsons, do you sometimes just stand there and talk to yourself?”

  “Yes, and that happens a lot,” he said. “When Hank [Azaria] plays Apu and Chief Wiggum, he’ll talk to himself, and when Dan [Castellaneta] plays Homer and his dad, he’ll talk to himself.”

  One of the voices he has done on Le Show is TV journalist Dan Rather. When the Museum of Radio and Television honored Rather, he personally invited Shearer to attend. Shearer wanted to discuss issues, but Rather preferred to talk about Spinal Tap, the classic rock ’n’ roll mockumentary where Shearer played Derek Smalls, the bassist in the band.

  Ironically, the band was put together and existed only for the sake of the movie, yet ended up going on tour. During their London appearance, Shearer entered the brunch place at the hotel where they were staying—still dressed as his character, with fake hair extensions but a real beard—and he was awe-stricken by a gifted vocalist, Judith Owen. Eventually they got married, and they now divide their time between Santa Monica and New Orleans. Sometimes when she performs at a club, Shearer accompanies her on the electric bass. And in keeping with his eclectic taste in music and his keen sense of nepotism, he often plays songs from her albums on Le Show.

  Shearer always presents a few “copyrighted” features on his program. I won a bet with Nancy that they’re not really copyrighted, and perhaps as a result of that bet, he introduced “Tales of Airport Security,” where he reads listeners’ accounts of such misadventures, as “a copyrighted feature of this broadcast, and when I say that, of course I am lying. That’s full disclosure, ladies and gentlemen.”

  Another “copyrighted feature”—“If it ain’t copyrighted,” Shearer admits, “who knows the difference?”—is “Apologies of the Week,” ranging from the creator of a comic strip, Get Fuzzy, apologizing for suggesting that Pittsburth smells bad, to the president of Serbia apologizing for evil committed during the war in Bosnia; from Brazil’s government apologizing to the country’s senior citizens for forcing them to show up at Social Security offices to prove they’re not dead, to Burger King apologizing to a woman who was ordered by a franchise employee to stop breast-feeding her baby or leave, because it made a customer uncomfortable.