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Animal Copyright, "Ashes and Snow"

Gregory Colbert delivered an outstanding presentation and excerpts from his incredible nature film "Ashes and Snow"at TED.  I just watched it on YouTube, and this is a must see-- watch it here. 

The idea that he introduces of an animal copyright makes eminent sense-- corporate advertisers who use nature and animals to promote their produts should pay 1% of their media buy into an “Animal Copyright Foundation”  and dedicate these funds to animal and nature conservation projects around the world.  Based on the annual dollars spent on such advertising, funding from the Animal Copyright could become the largest environmental fund in the world in just three years. Colbert's suggestion should not be controversial-- his simple logic, we pay for the use of musical scores and for the human talent in commercials, why shouldn't we have an obligation to pay to protect the animals and the natural vistas that aren't able to be represented by talent agents?  This makes a lot of sense to me.

I hope that others will support this idea.  It's time for a lot more people to think creatively about immediate solutions to the environmental crisis we are facing.

Borat and American Anti-Semitism-- Missing the Forest for the Trees?

Charles Krauthammer's Washington Post opinion piece on Borat is important and insightful.  Krauthammer reacts with disbelief to Sacha Baron Cohen's recent, rare, out-of-character interview since the release of the film.  In The Rolling Stone, Cohen defends the anti-Semitic expose' that runs through Borat, claiming that Borat's Jew-baiting is a sub-rosa attempt to expose a core of anti-Semitism that lives comfortably in the United States.:

"Borat essentially works as a tool," Baron Cohen says. "By himself being anti-Semitic, he lets people lower their guard and expose their own prejudice, whether it's anti-Semitism or an acceptance of anti-Semitism. 'Throw the Jew Down the Well' [a song performed at a country & western bar during Da Ali G Show] was a very controversial sketch, and some members of the Jewish community thought that it was actually going to encourage anti-Semitism. But to me it revealed something about that bar in Tucson. And the question is: Did it reveal that they were anti-Semitic? Perhaps. But maybe it just revealed that they were indifferent to anti-Semitism.

Krauthammer concludes otherwise:

America is the most welcoming, religiously tolerant, philo-Semitic country in the world. No nation since Cyrus the Great's Persia has done more for the Jews. And its reward is to be exposed as latently anti-Semitic by an itinerant Jew looking for laughs and, he solemnly assures us, for the path to the Holocaust?

Look. Harry Truman used to tell derisive Jewish jokes. Richard Nixon said nasty things about Jews in government and elsewhere. Who cares? Truman and Nixon were the two greatest friends of the Jews in the entire postwar period: Truman secured them a refuge in the state of Israel, and Nixon saved it from extinction during the Yom Kippur War.

It is very hard to be a Jew today, particularly in Baron Cohen's Europe, where Jew-baiting is once again becoming acceptable. But it is a sign of the disorientation of a distressed and confused people that we should find it so difficult to distinguish our friends from our enemies.

I think Krauthammer's concluding statement is very profound--  with barely 13 million Jews in the entire world, the fact that a majority of Jews are unaffiliated with Jewish congregations or otherwise disconnected with their Judaism-- even in the State of Israel-- speaks volumes to the alienation and "disorientation" that defines more Jews than not when it comes to being in touch with their ethnicity and their religious heritage.

The Rolling Stone interview asserts that Cohen, whose Jewish ethnicity from his mother's side originates in Persia, aka Iran, is a "devout Jew" because he keeps Kosher and observes Shabbat. I would be very interested to have a serious conversation about Judaism with Baron Cohen, not with Borat.

Borat Frenzy Continues to Build

Thanks to Brad Feld  for posting this link to Salon.com's excellent investigative report into how many of Borat's scenes were staged setups versus Reality TV.

http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/2006/11/10/guide_to_borat/

The report reveals that the vast majority of Borat's content is a full-on comedy scam that was brilliantly (and sometimes daringly) executed on various groups and individuals across the U.S.  And most of Borat's "victims" are taking it very well, with the notable exception of the University of South Carolina Chi Psi frat boys who are initiating legal action against 20th Century Fox and One America Productions.  Perhaps they feel compelled to sue because they can't handle the fact that their morality-in-the-gutter virtuoso performances are an embarrassment to the youth of this country.

Borat: Comedy, Investigative Reporting, or Both?

I don't think I've ever posted three times in one day, but I just saw "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan", and had to blog about it.

First, run, do not walk, to see it.  It is a terrific film.  Second, consider its implications. Film critic Emanuel Levy has written a review of the film and a comment on "The Making of a Mockumentary" that are both worth reading.

Borat is Reality TV on steroids-- while some scenes were staged, at least half were not.  From Levy's commentary  you can get a sense of the "guerrilla" filmmaking tactics that the crew of 8 used.  Apparently they experienced several narrow escapes from angry mobs plus questioning by the Secret Service, FBI, State Troopers and other law enforcement officials who chased after, and at times incarcerated, members of the production team during the making of the film.

It is easy to dismiss the film as a self-deprecating comedy that targets every ethnic group and gets away with being anti-Semitic because it was conceived and executed by Jews.  In my view, Sacha Baron Cohen is a brilliant comedian and social satirist, and the film "Borat", beneath its gross vulgarity, delivers a very depressing message about the intolerance and bigotry that runs deep through American culture toward Jews, gays, racial minorities, and women.

When you are done laughing, Borat's disturbing message about how some Americans really feel toward "the other" remains with you-- and that message is not funny. 

Educating American Children About Islam

My son's sixth grade class recently completed a video project on Islam.  His school, the Town School, has posted streaming videos from the project on their website.  I particularly enjoyed the segment titled Fundamentalism, Jihad, and 9/11. 

These videos are short-- ranging from two to four minutes long-- and informative.  Most imporantly, they show that our children are learning basic facts about Islam while dispelling stereotypes about religious fundamentalism.  I applaud this project and hope that many more schools throughout the U.S. are doing things like this.