A U.S. District judge threw out a defamation case against the makers of Borat yesterday, on the grounds that Sacha Baron Cohen’s fake journalist schtick is protected under the same laws as real journalism. A New York businessman had sued for unspecified, claiming he was humiliated against his will when footage of Cohen chasing him down the street appeared in the film, and complaining that 20th Century Fox had no right to make a profit off of said humiliation. But the judge disagreed, citing a section of a NY State civil rights law that says “nonconsensual use of a person’s image to depict newsworthy events or matters of public interest is exempt from the law.” If you’re scratching your head trying to puzzle out just how performance art built around the harassment of strangers qualifies as a “newsworthy event,” here’s Judge Loretta Preska’s explanation of her ruling:
[Borat] employs as its chief medium a brand of humor that appeals to the most childish and vulgar in its viewers..[But] the movie challenges its viewers to confront, not only the bizarre and offensive Borat character himself, but the equally bizarre and offensive reactions he elicits from `average’ Americans.
I’m alternately admiring of and infuriated by Cohen’s ability to exploit the right loopholes that allow him to get away with using real people as raw material for his act, which never seems to be as sharp as either comedy or social commentary as he thinks it is. But childish, vulgar, bizarre and offensive *does* sounds like a pretty accurate description of most televised news.
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