Prankster Ethics: Borat and Levinas

This article explores the ethical implications of one of the most celebrated and controversial films of the past decade, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006). The product of a comic provocateur named Sacha Baron Cohen, Borat was hailed as brilliant satire designed to expose the grotesque nature of American racism and antisemitism-an interpretation that the filmmaker took pains to encourage. However, I argue that Borat is a deeply problematic form of cultural intervention, one based on deceit, cruelty, and indiscriminate mockery. By re-framing the film in an intellectual context suggested by the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, one of the key figures in modern ethics, I highlight the ways in which Borat is not the progressive text that its maker intended.