‘Borat’ Screening in L.A. Canceled Amid “Zionist” and “Racist” Complaints Against Sacha Baron Cohen

Vidiots is a nonprofit film organization and cinema in Los Angeles that celebrates movies and independent filmmaking with special screenings — it’s their bread and butter.

This past Saturday, Vidiots was supposed to host a screening of “Borat,” with producer Monica Levinson and the man behind Borat’s iconic speedo, Costume Designer Jason Alper, in attendance.

There was supposed to be a packed house for the screening, and then it was just canceled. No announcement. The event was quietly deleted from the website — not even a postponement. It just seems to have been canceled.

Now, before the screening was supposed to take place, I’m told there was some uproar over the film being shown. The complaints ranged from Cohen being a “zionist” to the character of Borat a being “racist” caricature. It seems like it was just the perfect storm for Vidiots to get cold feet over the whole thing. One person close to the matter tells me “the activists won.”

Borat was created as a fictional journalist from Kazakhstan who blindly adopts stereotypes, customs, and mannerisms that he associates with Kazakh culture. The joke has always been about his ignorance, outrageous behavior, and ridiculous misunderstandings. The character is deliberately offensive and politically incorrect. That is rather the point.

In case you didn’t know, there is currently growing backlash against Sacha Baron Cohen and the characters he created, especially Borat and Ali G — god forbid he even attempts to bring Bruno back. In the UK, activists are demanding that theaters not screen Cohen’s upcoming “Ali G” movie, set to hit theaters on October 23 via Amazon. One theater chain, Picturehouse Cinemas, actually decided not to screen the film, joining the boycott.

The campaign to cancel the upcoming “Ali G” movie is being led by media-monitoring organization NewsCord, which is urging major UK cinema chains, including Odeon, Cineworld, Vue, Everyman, and Showcase, to refuse to screen the movie. The group claims Cohen uses satire as a “cover for enforcing racist stereotypes” and has accused the revival of Ali G of bringing back a “racist caricature.” More than 27,000 emails (!) have reportedly been sent to cinema chains.

Cohen is quickly learning that this isn’t 2004 anymore. The cultural landscape has changed considerably since the height of Ali G and Borat’s popularity, and the kind of deliberately provocative humor that once made Cohen’s characters so popular is now more likely to face criticism and scrutiny. What worked as satire in the mid-2000s is now being viewed through a more sensitive lens, particularly when it comes to the line between comedy and offense.