Borat: The Psychology of Going Along With It
Borat is often talked about as offensive comedy that exposes prejudice. That is true, but it is also the easy version, and the easy version does not explain why the film still feels so socially radioactive.
The sharper reading is that Borat is about permission.
The film is not funny, uncomfortable and revealing simply because Borat says outrageous things. It works because he walks into ordinary social situations and changes the rules just enough that other people have to decide what they are willing to tolerate, laugh at, correct, excuse, join in with, or politely endure while their soul quietly leaves the room.
That is the psychology of the film. Not just prejudice. Not just satire. The horrible little gap between discomfort and refusal.
What the film is about
Borat follows Borat Sagdiyev, a fictional Kazakh journalist travelling across America to make a documentary. He interviews politicians, attends social events, visits ordinary homes, disrupts public spaces, and repeatedly places real people inside absurd, uncomfortable or openly offensive interactions.
The setup looks simple: an outrageous outsider enters American culture and misunderstands it. But the film is doing something more slippery. Borat is not only being ridiculous in public. He is testing rooms.
Some people challenge him. Some indulge him. Some laugh nervously. Some try to remain polite even when politeness has clearly become a trap. Some reveal views they might not have volunteered if the situation had not seemed to give them cover.
The film’s real subject is not Borat as a person. He is barely a person in the ordinary sense. He is a social instrument with a moustache. The real subject is what happens around him.
Why this film works for a psychology movie night
Borat works for a psychology movie night because it turns social interaction into a stress test. The film keeps asking what people do when a situation becomes morally weird but not quite weird enough for them to leave.
That makes it useful for discussing social norms, prejudice, conformity, politeness, embarrassment, audience complicity, satire, impression management and the ethics of humiliation. It is also a good pick because the room will probably disagree, which is not a problem. It is the point.
Some viewers see the film as a brilliant exposure of prejudice. Others see it as exploitative, cruel or too willing to use offensive material for laughs. The best discussion does not need to choose one of those readings and nail it to the wall. It can ask how both may be true at once.
The film exposes things. It also manipulates situations. It challenges prejudice. It also gets laughs from discomfort. It uses satire as a weapon, but satire is still a weapon, and occasionally it swings close enough to make everyone check where their hands are.
That tension makes it a strong but risky event pick. It is not ideal for a low-stakes social where people want pizza, soft chairs and a quiz round about Freud being odd. It works better as a satire night, social psychology night, media ethics event, or discussion about prejudice and performance.
Psychology at play
Social norms
The film repeatedly breaks expected rules of conversation, politeness, public behaviour, gender, religion, sexuality and national identity. The tension comes from watching people decide whether to enforce the norm or quietly let it collapse.
Going along with it
Many scenes depend on people continuing to participate even after they seem uncomfortable. They smile, explain, tolerate, laugh, correct gently or wait for someone else to stop the interaction first. That is the painful little engine of the film.
Prejudice and permission
The film suggests that prejudice does not always need deep persuasion. Sometimes it needs a social cue. If the room feels permissive enough, people may say, accept or laugh at things they would otherwise keep hidden.
Impression management
People often try to appear polite, open-minded, generous, masculine, civil, professional or in control while Borat makes that performance increasingly difficult. The comedy often comes from watching the mask strain.
Pluralistic ignorance
In some scenes, people may privately feel that something is wrong but behave as if the situation is acceptable because no one else has clearly objected. Everyone waits for the social rule to reappear. Sometimes it does not.
Audience complicity
The film does not only test the people on screen. It tests the viewer too. Are we laughing at Borat, at the people he exposes, at the awkwardness of the room, or at something nastier we would rather not inspect too closely?
Ethics of humiliation
The film uses embarrassment as entertainment. That does not automatically make it worthless, but it does mean the ethics are part of the text. Who is being exposed? Who is being tricked? Who has power? Who gets to profit from the discomfort?
The interesting angle
The most revealing thing about Borat is not that people sometimes say terrible things. That discovery will not exactly send social psychology rushing for a chair.
The more revealing thing is how often people seem to need only a small invitation before something ugly becomes sayable.
Borat changes the room. He arrives as an outsider, but not just any outsider. He performs confusion, admiration, ignorance, enthusiasm and social incompetence in ways that encourage other people to show him how things “really” work. That is where the trap is. People think they are explaining America to him, managing him, humouring him, correcting him, or showing themselves to be tolerant. In doing so, they reveal the social rules they think are normal.
The film lives in the awkward zone between discomfort and refusal. Borat creates situations where objection is possible, but socially costly. Do you challenge him and become the difficult person in the room? Do you laugh and move on? Do you politely redirect? Do you join in because everyone else seems to be treating this as a joke?
That is why the film is more than a parade of offensive scenes. It is a study of social permission. Borat does not simply expose prejudice by finding people who already hold it. He often creates a setting in which prejudice, politeness, embarrassment and performance start negotiating with each other in real time.
The result is funny in the way a fire alarm can be funny if it goes off during a wedding speech. Technically comic. Socially awful. Very revealing.
The fake outsider problem
Borat is presented as an outsider trying to understand America. But the film is not really about Kazakhstan, and treating it as though it is would be a mistake with a small hat and a large confidence problem.
The fictional Kazakhstan in Borat is a grotesque comic construction. It functions as a fake cultural mirror, not as a meaningful portrait of a real place. That matters for the discussion because the film uses a made-up foreignness to expose real social behaviour elsewhere.
This gives the film part of its satirical power. Borat’s fake outsider status lets him ask questions, break rules and enter situations that an ordinary interviewer could not. He makes American behaviour look strange by pretending to misunderstand it.
But it also creates an ethical problem. The film uses stereotypes, invented backwardness and fake ethnography as comic tools. Even when the joke is aimed at America, celebrity, prejudice or social hypocrisy, the route to that joke still travels through a caricatured national identity.
That is worth discussing. The film’s method is effective, but effectiveness is not innocence. A hammer can build a shed or ruin a thumb. Sometimes both, if the committee is involved.
Prejudice, politeness and the room
One of the strongest ways to discuss Borat is to focus on the room rather than the individual.
The film is not always asking, “Is this person prejudiced?” That question is sometimes too blunt. A better one is: “What does this setting allow?”
Some scenes show direct prejudice. Others show politeness failing to become resistance. Others show people trying to stay friendly because they do not know what else to do. This is where the film becomes psychologically useful, because prejudice does not only exist as a private belief. It also exists in social conditions: who is present, who feels safe, who feels watched, who feels entitled to speak, and who thinks objection will make them the problem.
Borat’s outrageousness creates uncertainty. People are not always sure whether they are witnessing ignorance, comedy, cultural difference, social awkwardness or something openly harmful. That uncertainty gives them a reason to delay action.
Delay is important. Much of the film happens in the delay.
The pause before someone objects.
The laugh before someone thinks.
The smile that tries to keep the room intact.
The polite nod from someone whose internal monologue has probably started packing.
That is where going along with it becomes visible.
The antisemitism issue
The film uses antisemitism as satire, and that cannot be treated as a tiny side note placed politely in the corner with the spare napkins.
Borat’s antisemitism is performed as part of the character’s grotesque worldview, and the film often uses it to expose the absurdity, ugliness and social persistence of antisemitic ideas. It is not asking the audience to admire him. It is asking the audience to watch what happens when those beliefs are spoken too openly, too foolishly, or in front of people who may not respond as firmly as we would hope.
But satire does not become weightless because the target is clear. The film still uses antisemitic imagery and language as comic material. That means a good discussion has to ask not only what the film intends, but how the joke works and who has to sit inside it.
The useful question is not simply “is this satire?” It is: what does the satire reveal, what does it risk reproducing, and how does the audience know the difference?
If that question makes the room uncomfortable, good. The film was never going to be a gentle wellness exercise unless wellness has taken a very strange turn.
Audience complicity
Borat is especially useful because it implicates the viewer.
Hidden-camera comedy often gives the audience a comfortable position: we know the joke, the people on screen do not, and that makes us feel safely above the embarrassment. Borat complicates that because the jokes often involve real prejudice, real discomfort and real social failure.
The audience is not simply watching people be exposed. We are also consuming their exposure as entertainment.
That does not mean the film is automatically unethical, but it does mean the viewer has a job to do. Laughter is data. What are we laughing at? The target? The awkwardness? The reveal? The humiliation? The fact that someone else failed a social test we like to imagine we would have passed beautifully, probably while wearing better shoes?
The film’s brilliance and discomfort both sit there. It lets us feel superior to people who go along with things, while we go along with the film.
That is not a flaw to dismiss. It is one of the best things to discuss.
Discussion questions
Is Borat mainly mocking Borat, the people he meets, America, the audience, or the rules of social interaction itself?
Why do so many people keep participating even when the situation becomes uncomfortable?
What does the film suggest about politeness as a form of social pressure?
Does Borat expose prejudice, or does he sometimes create the conditions for people to perform it?
How does the film use an outsider character to make ordinary behaviour look strange?
Where is the line between exposing people and exploiting them?
Are we laughing because prejudice is being revealed, because people are embarrassed, or because the whole situation is socially unbearable?
How does the film use antisemitism satirically, and what responsibilities come with that?
Does the fictional version of Kazakhstan help the satire, or does it create its own representational problem?
Would a Borat-style film work in the same way now, given how much more aware people are of hidden-camera formats and viral humiliation?
Interesting angle
The real subject of Borat is not ignorance. It is social permission.
Borat gives people permission to reveal, tolerate or perform things they might otherwise suppress. Sometimes he does it by acting naive. Sometimes by seeming admiring. Sometimes by breaking a norm so dramatically that the other person starts negotiating with the situation rather than rejecting it outright.
That is what makes the film psychologically sharp. It does not merely show that prejudice exists. It shows that prejudice has social mechanics. It needs cues, audiences, permissions, silences, excuses and sometimes a room full of people waiting for someone else to be the first to say no.
The film is grotesque because Borat is grotesque. But it is disturbing because the social world around him so often bends before it breaks.
Quick facts
Released in 2006
Directed by Larry Charles
Stars Sacha Baron Cohen as Borat Sagdiyev
Combines scripted comedy, hidden-camera encounters and mock-documentary form
Satirises prejudice, nationalism, masculinity, antisemitism, American social norms and media spectacle
Often discussed in relation to offensive comedy, documentary ethics, humiliation, satire and audience complicity
Talking points
| Concept | Application in the film |
|---|---|
| Social norms | Borat repeatedly breaks expected rules of politeness, conversation and public behaviour. |
| Norm violation | The comedy depends on people deciding whether to enforce, ignore or adapt to the broken rule. |
| Social permission | Borat creates situations where people may feel allowed to say or tolerate things they otherwise would not. |
| Pluralistic ignorance | People may privately feel uncomfortable while acting as if the situation is acceptable because no one else has objected. |
| Impression management | Many people try to remain polite, competent or socially acceptable while the interaction deteriorates. |
| Prejudice | The film exposes racism, sexism, antisemitism, nationalism and other forms of social contempt. |
| Audience complicity | Viewers are invited to laugh at exposure, embarrassment and discomfort, which makes their own position part of the discussion. |
| Satire | The film uses offensive performance to expose offensive beliefs, while creating ethical questions about the material it uses. |
| Humiliation | Embarrassment becomes both a satirical method and a form of entertainment. |
| Mock ethnography | The fake outsider perspective makes familiar social behaviour look strange, unstable and absurd. |
Themes
Social norms, prejudice, social permission, politeness, embarrassment, satire, humiliation, audience complicity, antisemitism, nationalism, masculinity, fake ethnography, hidden-camera comedy, conformity, pluralistic ignorance, impression management, documentary ethics, and the psychology of going along with it.
Best for
Borat works best as a satire night, media psychology discussion, social psychology session, or event about prejudice and public behaviour.
It is not a soft social pick. It needs framing, because the film uses offensive material and real people’s discomfort as part of its method. That does not mean it should be avoided. It means the discussion should be more thoughtful than “it was funny” versus “it was bad,” which is less a conversation than two fridge magnets arguing.
Event framing
A useful introduction might be:
“Tonight’s film is not just about offensive comedy. It is about social permission: what people will say, tolerate, laugh at or go along with when the situation makes it feel possible. As you watch, pay attention not only to what Borat says, but to what the people around him do with the discomfort. Do they challenge it, indulge it, laugh with it, manage it, or wait for someone else to stop it first?”
That gives the room a better route in. It turns the film from a simple controversy object into a social psychology case study with terrible manners.
Borat is crude, uncomfortable, manipulative, revealing and frequently very funny. Its real value for Movie Notes is not that it shows people behaving badly. It is that it shows how much bad behaviour depends on the room allowing it to continue.