Taking stupid seriously

LA Times:

BORAT’S interviews fall into roughly two categories. He seeks out self-consciously genteel, almost impossibly schematic “life coaches” of one kind or another — people whose job it is to tell others how to date, tell jokes, find work, etc. — and barrages them with questions, requests and opinions that, despite being completely outrageous, consistently fail to get a rise or a reaction stronger than “We don’t do that here in America” or “That’s not a customary thing to do in the U.S. at all.” On the one hand, you have to admire his interviewees’ tact and even keel. On the other, you can’t believe that they don’t react more strongly than they do.

He also hangs out with “normal people” who happily reveal their prejudices. Shopping for a house, in one TV episode, Borat asks a real estate agent about a windowless room with a metal door for his mentally disabled brother, whether he may bury his wife in the yard if she dies, and whether black people will move into the neighborhood. At the wine tasting, he asks if the black waiter is a slave, to which the “commander” of the Knights of the Vine society in Jackson, Miss., replies that there was “a law that was passed that they could no longer be used as slaves — which is a good thing for them.” (“Oh, good for him, not so good for you!” Borat yelps, picking up an undercurrent that may not have even been evident to them.)

Here.