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| January 12, 2007 The Tao of Waitressing by Lindsay Luckey, insurgent49 The Brilliance of a Borat: Part 2
What makes us uncomfortable? 
So having you seen a Borat yet? If you haven’t
by now, it’s probably because you’ve heard so much about it
that you feel like
you’ve seen it, or it’s a conscious decision to not see
it. “Why would I want to go pay to be offended for an hour
and a half?” as my family friend put it. If you haven’t seen it, you’ve at least heard of it. And if you’ve heard of it, you’ve probably heard about that scene. You know … the one that, if you were already squirming during the rest of the movie, you walked out during this scene. Or if you were starting to catch your breath from laughing so hard, you completely lost it here. When I was watching, I was in the latter group. I actually covered my eyes and squealed and couldn’t believe what I was seeing when I peered through my fingers. So what was the scene that had everyone in the aisles, either leaving or rolling? Two friends with imperfect bodies … wrestling. Yes, they were two grown men. Yes, they were naked. And yes, they were sometimes in poses that were sexually suggestive. Very suggestive. And yes, they ran through a hotel and yes, they interrupted a conference and yes, they had a disturbing amount of body hair. But those last details were just icing on the cake. By the time they were running through the hotel you had already adjusted to seeing the men naked and wrestling and the rest of the scene was just appreciating everyone else’s reactions … the poor people with them in the elevator, the shocked stockbrokers whose conference was the scene of the arrest. But what was very revealing to me was my own reaction. How incredibly uncomfortable and shocking it was. And how everyone else in the theater reacted. Disbelief, horror, offense, laughter, disgust. Curious to hear everyone talking about the movie afterward and how so much of the discussion focused on that scene. And even when it wasn’t the only thing people could talk about, it was frequently described as the most memorable. In a movie that dealt with so many issues and had so many things to be offended about, I find it interesting that that was what got so many people all riled up. I guess a major factor is that it was visual and many of the other questionable things were only words and ideas. In Hollywood and in our living rooms, we don’t flinch (much) when we see people beat up, shot, stabbed, raped, robbed or at war. On TV and in movies, we are used to seeing scenes of intimacy with men and women, men and women of different races and women and women. Perhaps lesbian love scenes are still not mainstream but seeing women friends being affectionate with one another certainly is. And I know of quite a few people who pay good money to see women friends being more than just friends on videos that arrive in mailboxes with unmarked packaging. So why was the image of these two men so jarring? If you added a couple of spandex suits, you’d have been watching a high school wrestling match. If you added diapers, it would be reminiscent of sumo wrestling. If you added loin cloths or olive leaves or whatever the Greeks wore, you’d have been watching an ancient Olympic event. The point is that in the movie, two heterosexual men friends had a fight and it happened to be when they were both naked. In this same movie, a crowd of Americans cheered when Borat announced his support for our War of Terror, a cowboy told Borat that we’re hoping to be able to hang gays in our country the way Borat does in his, and a Hummer salesman gave a sincere answer about how fast he thought Borat would have to drive through a group of gypsies to kill them. Maybe we ought to reevaluate what we revere, what we abhor and what we accept just because we’ve seen it so many times. Lindsay Luckey is a waitress and aspiring Renaissance woman. She lives and works in undisclosed locations in downtown Anchorage, and can be reached at lindsay@insurgent49.com. 'The Tao of waitressing' appears on insurgent49.com every Friday. |
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January 5, 2006 December 29, 2006 December 22, 2006 December 15, 2006 December 8, 2006 - also by this writer - The Least We Can Do The Tao of Waitressing |
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Reserved. in-sur-gent (in sur'jent), n. 1. a member of a group which revolts against the policies of its leadership. |
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