Borat... not much to say

So I assume that most of you have heard of the movie Borat (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0443453/), which is now out in theatres around the nation. In general, it is the classic storyline of a person from a foreign culture coming to our culture and getting himself into a number of humorous situations due to his ignorance of our culture. This movie is meant to be as humorous as possible, for our own entertaining purposes, at the cost of a culture that is far older than ours. In fact, it is a culture from which we have actually gained a lot from, intellectually. How ironic.

Why am I refusing to see this movie? Why am I so upset by this movie? For one, my father’s family is from Lebanon and is therefore Arabic. If I am not mistaken, Borat is supposed to be Arabic. But my distress goes beyond my personal ancestry. My distress lies in our yearning for peace and an end to dying, mostly at the hands of terrorism. Yet, we take these stereotypes of other cultures (that usually are formed by us) and we have fun with them in the form of cartoons, pictures, and movies. But what good does this do for obtaining peace? Rather, it ignites more fury against us. We have seen this before and should know it will happen. If you find something that pisses off a tiger, would you do it to the tiger anyway?

Why can’t we, as America, just respect other cultures and learn about them? Many may be surprised at how much of our culture comes from others. For example, as Christians a good bit of our beliefs come from the works of St Thomas Aquinas, which include a lot of Aristotle’s philosophy. But if Aristotle’s philosophy had not first been discovered by the Arabic world, Aquinas would not have had Aristotle to work with, possibly preventing his masterful works.

John Paul II said in Theology of the Body that we need to build a culture that fosters the use of proper morality. Is that the culture we are building and showing to the world?