[The true star of “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” is Borat’s
daughter, played by Maria Bakalova. She’s also the source of its
most incisive critique. ] [[link removed]]

PORTSIDE CULTURE

THE NEW BORAT MOVIE’S BEST MOMENTS MOCK A TRUMP-ERA FIXATION ON A
PARTICULAR FEMALE AESTHETIC  
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Alissa Wilkinson
October 23, 2020
Vox
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_ The true star of “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” is Borat’s
daughter, played by Maria Bakalova. She’s also the source of its
most incisive critique. _

Sacha Baron Cohen is back, in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm., Amazon
Studios

 

Sacha Baron Cohen is not the star of his new movie, and I suspect he
knows it.

The true star of _Borat 2_ — excuse me, _Borat Subsequent
Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make
Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan _— is Maria Bakalova,
who plays the daughter of disgraced Kazakh media personality Borat
Sagdiyev (Baron Cohen). Bakalova is actually 24, but in the film, she
is 15-year-old Tutar Sagdiyev, the oldest unmarried woman in
Kazakstan (according to Borat), playing sidekick to her trickster
father on his second trip to America.

Having destroyed the reputation of Kazakhstan with his 2006 film (the
first _Borat_, the one that prompted every dude you know to say
“mah waiiife” for a good decade when he wanted to be funny), Borat
has been doing hard labor as punishment. But he is summoned to the
premier’s office and given the task of offering a gift to
America’s leadership to restore Kazakhstan’s standing in the eyes
of its new president, “McDonald Trump.” He knows just what to
present to Trump’s closest colleague, Michael Pence, vice premier of
America: a monkey.

When he arrives stateside, Borat discovers Tutar has stowed away in
the monkey’s crate for the trip and, well, gotten hungry on the way
over. That makes him realize something: Maybe _she_ would make a
better gift? She is delighted by the idea, lit up by the notion that
she might be the next “queen of America,” like Melania Trump —
who, after all, is from Slovenia. Slovenia’s not all that not close
to Kazakhstan, but it’s closer than America.

To tackle that challenge, though, she’s going to need a makeover.
And in typical Borat fashion — with unsuspecting hairdressers and
dress shop owners and other civilians not quite realizing they’re
the object of fun — Tutar is transformed from a ratty-haired gremlin
into a woman.

[A woman with long blonde hair and a man in underpants squat and
talk.]

Tutar and Borat in _Borat Subsequent Moviefilm._ 

Amazon Studios

Long, dyed-blonde hair with barrel curls, bold lipstick and eye
makeup, and a form-fitting dress: If Tutar’s makeover looks
familiar, it’s because you’ve seen it on TV before. The look that
ruled Hollywood for decades and perhaps reached its apex
in _Baywatch_ star Pamela Anderson (the unlucky object of Borat’s
affection in the first movie) has migrated to Fox News, where many
have noted the clone-like similarities among on-air female talent
[[link removed]].

Bakalova has a tough job in _Subsequent Moviefilm_, playing a
teenager nearly a decade younger than herself. A teenager who has been
living in a stable behind her family’s hovel and fed lies all her
life about what women can and cannot do: Women cannot drive. They
cannot read. They cannot be educated or choose whom to marry or engage
in, uh, sexy times. They cannot touch their “vagines,” because of
the teeth.

But Bakalova plunges into it with aplomb and steals the show from
Baron Cohen, who mostly reprises his old shtick, tricking people into
saying things they probably wouldn’t want to be seen onscreen
saying. Although, who knows? If the past four (let alone 14) years
have shifted anything, it’s our sense of what people will do on
camera, whether to get attention or just because they’re a huge
honking racist.

[A woman and a man in formal clothing enter a ballroom, arm in arm.]

Tutar and Borat at a ball.

 Amazon Studios

In any case, Bakalova’s total commitment to the role is both
impressive and necessary, because this movie requires her to get
leered at by older men. A lot. It happens at stores and in public
places, at a debutante ball (where a man says $500 would be a “fair
price” for her, to the disgust of the man’s daughter), and at a
plastic surgeon’s office, where Tutar and Borat are pricing out the
cost of giving her huge breasts and maybe evening out her nose a
little. And it happens, as you may already know, in a room with Rudy
Giuliani.

The Giuliani moment is what got the most attention after the reviews
started pouring in on Wednesday. In case you were lucky enough to miss
the news: There’s a sequence in the movie in which Tutar — who has
been rejected by Pence at CPAC
[[link removed]],
sort of, and has settled on trying to marry Giuliani because he is
close to Trump and, unlike several former presidential advisers,
isn’t in jail — decides to pose as a journalist to get close to
Giuliani.

Dressed in nude stilettos and a mint-green, skin-tight sheath dress,
she arranges to “interview” Giuliani in a midtown Manhattan hotel
suite, and he agrees. He calls her _darlin’_ a lot and seems
mostly just flattered by the attention in the interview.

Then he follows her into the bedroom, drink in hand. He says
“c’mere, c’mere” several times, moving her closer to him and
removing her microphone. She removes his. He says she should give him
her number and address. He sits on the edge of the bed. He lays down.
He puts his hand down his pants, adjusting something in the crotch
region for about 10 seconds, and then Baron Cohen, clad in a bodysuit
made to look like lingerie, rushes in and declares that Tutar is 15,
“too old for you.”

The scene is edited, and Giuliani has denied that he was doing
anything untoward
[[link removed]],
saying he was merely tucking in his shirt. (It does look as if he
could plausibly be tucking in his shirt, though I’m not sure why one
would do that while lying down, or why a simple task would take that
long.) After
[[link removed]] the
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I’m not particularly inclined to believe Rudy Giuliani about much of
anything. Here’s a troubling possibility: He was reaching down to
fondle his genitals, potentially without consent or prompting, while
in the room with a virtual stranger who is obviously far younger than
he, but whom he had no reason to think is a teenager.

[Rudy Giuliani lays on a hotel bed, hand down his pants (allegedly
tucking in his shirt), while we see the back of a blonde woman in a
tight mint-colored sheath dress.]

Giuliani and “Tutar” in _that_ scene in _Borat Subsequent
Moviefilm._ 

Amazon Studios

Anyhow. Perhaps more revealing than the incident itself is what the
film points out through Bakalova’s character: A certain womanly
aesthetic, appealing to a certain sort of man, is prevalent enough
that it can be easily exploited.

The Fox News look, after all, is the network’s inheritance from its
founder Roger Ailes, whose sexual harassment
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that women should wear short skirts on camera
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no secret. It’s hardly only conservative men who are inclined to
give credence for no real reason to a pretty young woman who flirts
with them a little. But it’s equally true that conservative men are
certainly susceptible (recall the case of Maria Butina
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and that adopting a particular look can go a long way for
ladder-climbers or would-be grifters
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That’s probably why, watching Tutar’s antics in this film, I found
myself thinking of _White Noise_, a documentary also out this week
that’s about three notorious figures on the alt-right: shit-stirrer
and Pizzagate
[[link removed]] conspiracist
memelord Mike Cernovich, avowed white nationalist Richard Spencer
[[link removed]],
and anti-immigrant
[[link removed]] YouTube
personality Lauren Southern. Directed by journalist Daniel Lombroso,
who spent years following each of the trio around, the movie follows
the trajectory of a certain kind of young, attractive racist American
in public life over the past few years, and the role of the internet
in their rise to fame.

_White Noise _is a great and illuminating film, far more engaging and
smart than most journalistic profiles of each of these people. But
here’s the most striking realization, by the end: This is a portrait
of loud, proud, opportunistic grifters — less ideologues than people
who’ve figured out how to game the system to get the most eyeballs
(and, very importantly, money). Gaming that system, all pastiche and
depthless intensities, is chiefly a function of figuring out how to
project an image your audience finds appealing.

The grifting impulse 
[[link removed]]that
has taken hold in America, from Fyre Festival
[[link removed]] to Anna
Delvey
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Jacob Wohl’s whole deal is
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owes no fealty to specific political parties. The con man is an
archetype as old as time, and certainly a time-honored element of
American culture. The internet has made it very simple to create a
persona of your choice — and far more rewarding to loudly proclaim
it. The way social media platforms enable grifters to scramble to the
top of the heap is something all three of the _White Noise_ subjects
know intimately, and something Lombroso captures with skill.

But it seems at times like Southern understands it the best.
Beautiful, blonde, with an arch smile and a bold, confident exterior,
she fits the archetype precisely. As captured in _White Noise_, she
gives off distinct Regina George vibes, and it works for her as long
as she’s willing to ignore the sexual harassment directed at her.

Living in the boys’ club of white supremacist internet
personalities, she makes it clear that she knows her fame comes from
both her ability to take extreme positions, which “puts her on the
map,” and her visibility as a pretty woman whom men like to watch
laugh at their jokes and say outrageous things that confirm their
biases. In one sequence, we listen in on her side of a phone
conversation with Gavin McInnes
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the (married) founder of the Proud Boys
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that strongly suggests he attempted to get her to sleep with him.
(Onscreen text notes that the filmmakers contacted McInnes and that he
denied that he had done such a thing.)

[A woman and a man sit on a TV show set.]

Lauren Southern and Gavin McInnes in _White Noise._ 

The Atlantic

But Southern is clearly proud of her image, and of the spot in the
white supremacist landscape she’s cultivated. “There’s a lot of
clicks in being contrarian,” she says early on. It’s only later
that the cracks her facade start to show up.

In a sense, the _Borat_ movies are about a grifter, too, though
trying to parse whether Borat or Baron Cohen is the true con artist is
the kind of thought experiment that will tie your gray matter in
knots. But Bakalova’s performance adds another layer to Baron
Cohen’s practical-joking style of comedy. There’s an
unselfconsciousness to the men who drool over her, an ego that
suggests this woman might actually be into them, coupled with a
gleeful cultural mandate to “appreciate” a woman verbally,
salaciously, and not cater to a culture that asks them to refrain and
treat her with respect.

Unless I missed it, _Borat Subsequent Moviefilm_ never tips into
baiting men into decrying the Me Too movement outright. But it’s
clear what the filmmakers are implying: In America, those who idolize
a certain kind of female aesthetic and feel free to ogle are laughably
easy to exploit, whether by grifters, or spies, or social climbers, or
just screwball comedians. And if Bakalova, playing a teenager with a
mediocre dye job and some lopsided lipstick, can lead various men to
embarrassing acts even when they know a camera is around — including
an adviser to the president of the United States — that’s a pretty
damning thing to capture on moviefilm.

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American
Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of
Kazakhstan _is __streaming on Amazon Prime_
[[link removed][]vx[e]21292792[r]google.com[t]w[d]D]_. _White
Noise_ is available to digitally rent on platforms including Apple TV
and Google Play; __see the website for details_
[[link removed]]_._

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