Alexis De Tocqueville came to America in the early 19th century ostensibly to gather information about our penitentiary system, but he was really working undercover, studying the nation and evaluating its culture and people. This allowed him to cash in sweetly on two volumes of Democracy in America - long considered a classic, seminal work in the sociology canon.

In the 21st century, Sascha Cohen has come across the Atlantic to study and expose American culture with his mockumentary movie Borat. In it he assumes the character of Borat, a reporter drafted from his small village by the Kazakhstan Ministry of Information, to film a travelog across America.

Borat arrives bravely in the new world of the West when he and his sultanically obese producer, Azamat, land in New York and board the subway. Borat's overfriendly attempts to meet and greet New York subway riders get some aggressive rejections, and there's even more fluster when his suitcase pops open and a hen flies out.

Later, watching TV in a New York hotel, Borat falls in love with Pamela Anderson and decides she must be his wife. He and Azamat go shopping for a vehicle and settle on an old ice cream truck, then set out for Los Angeles, where Borat hopes to find Anderson.

Along the way, Borat runs into a Fellini-esque succession of American characters, all real people who believed Cohen's act and agreed to be filmed as part of his character's assignment. Borat is always curious about how he can be more like Americans, and they are always eager to help him out.

Gangbangers show him how to wear his pants below the buttline to reveal his underwear, a longsuffering dinner companion accompanies him to the bathroom and explains how to use toilet paper, hotel security tells him he must leave the lobby.

He hooks up with a drunken group of fraternity guys who affectionately advise him that the American man's way is fundamentally to drink heavily and dominate women. He seeks salvation in a Pentecostal church. Ultimately he hones in on Pamela at a bookstore in Orange County, California, where he goes to try to make her his wife, using a sack.

To say that Borat is hilarious is an understatement. Cohen is a brilliant comedian operating much like Andy Kaufman did when he was embroiled in his wrestling acts, which were actually performance art for him. Borat reveals American behavior in all its madness by simply ignoring common folkways and conventions, so that ordinary people feel compelled to stand up for "what's right."

His most common tactic is to violate personal space, such as by trying to kiss subway riders, or interrupting a weatherman delivering the forecast. Apparently, the woman responsible for booking Borat on the morning show where he accosted the weatherman has even been fired from her job, because the TV station was embarrassed.

Ethical issues aside, Borat is an incredibly clever and fresh film that is so full of illusions and allusions, it's easily worth more than one viewing, just to see how it's all put together. The people in the film who are suing him because they were fooled are missing the point - their minor sacrifices will pale in comparison to the stature they will achieve as castmembers in a movie that will go down in history for its depiction of naked, hairy men in a titanic struggle over the image of Pamela Anderson.

Copyright 2006 Metropolitan Community College