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The release of Amazon Prime Video’s Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, a sequel to the 2006 comedy Borat, has rolled into election season like a mustachioed Kazakh journalist wrestling his naked producer in a hotel room.
On Wednesday, early reports on the film detailed a scene in which Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor and current attorney to President Donald Trump, is seen reaching into his pants while in presence of “Borat’s 15-year-old daughter,” played by 24-year-old Maria Bakalova. Many perceived the gesture as sexual, and the encounter as compromising to Giuliani’s reputation. The “spoilers,” as some Twitter talking heads dubbed the incident, sparked a news cycle, prompting the former mayor to respond. “The Borat video is a complete fabrication,” he said on Wednesday evening.
In the aftermath of the news, a number of journalists vetted the film and concluded that Giuliani was probably correct in his assertion that, what scanned as lewd contact to some was him stuffing a microphone down his pants. Or maybe not? Without the raw footage, what really happened during the filming of Borat Subsequent Moviefilm remains unclear (and it may not matter, based on everything else Giuliani reportedly does in the film).
It’s hard to imagine ever having clarity on the issue. After all, this all started with a Borat sequel. Still, provocateur Sacha Baron Cohen being provocateur Sacha Baron Cohen, could not help but get the final word on the controversy. As Borat, he posted the following defense of Giuliani on Thursday night during the final presidential debate.
OFFICIAL STATEMENT FROM BORAT SAGDIYEV pic.twitter.com/vM92Lam5vV
— Borat (@BoratSagdiyev) October 23, 2020
“What was an innocent, sexytime encounter between a consenting man and my 15-year-old daughter have been turned into something disgusting by fake news media,” the alter-ego said, before making an anti-Semitic hand gesture and vowing that the ex-mayor would “reach into his legal briefs and whip out his subpoenas” if anyone else tried to probe the incident. Borat gonna Borat.
Borat Subsequent Moviefilm is now out on Amazon Prime Video.
