Affirmative media use of negative stereotypes

Borat as concrete universal

Lidija, Prišing

Kultura

127

66

81

0023-5164

http://scindeks.ceon.rs/article.aspx?query=ISSID%26and%269082&page=0&sor...

2010-2021/06/18/09:27:50

The paper proposes an analysis of stereotype representations in the movie Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006) based on the Hegelian concept of concrete universal in comedy, which then constitutes the ground for reflection on the possibility of positive usage of negative stereotypes, the usage that would make possible to point out the mode in which the stereotypical constructions function, as well as possible way of their subversion within their own domain. We will claim that the character of Borat embodies the Western stereotype of a member of a poor non-capitalist country and that, when confronted with an embodiment of its own stereotypes and prejudices, it becomes evident that the Western society is reduced to nothing but stereotypes as well, but the ones that present themselves as unquestionable. This confrontation brings about a certain short circuit which is the basis for subversion that makes the mechanisms by which stereotypes function visible. As Borat is an embodiment of the above mentioned stereotype, an attempt to classify all the stereotypes in the movie must inevitably fail, because many of them converge in only one character or situation, which brings stereotypical representations to maximum but also to the point of absurd. Nevertheless we will claim that although it seems that the ethnical stereotype is dominant in the movie, it is actually the class stereotype that is the dominant one. The figure of concrete universal at which particular and universal merge is the figure which subverts the very structure in which it appears. Merely its presence in the structure makes the necessarily hidden function mechanisms of the structure visible. Borat is precisely such (concrete universal) character who in the current ideological constellation of dominating global capitalist pretensions points out the moment of potential subversion.