Intercultural Communication

Write 5 pages with APA style on Intercultural communication / borat. It would be presumptuous to expect that the people in that country will automatically understand the tourist and his culture especially when he manifests practices which are strange to the natives of the visited country. The film “Borat” illustrates how people from different cultures may clash due to their differences. Intercultural communication can lead to much misunderstanding and misjudgement of people from very different cultures. In the beginning of the film, Borat introduces the audience to his culture in his country Kazakhstan, which may be normal for him and his town mates, but hilariously strange to the viewers of the movie. He depicted people there to be tolerant of aggression and sexual promiscuity with no shame of being prostitutes, rapists, abortionists, etc. They also showed much fear of Jews and had a totally flawed concept of reality. The movie obviously exaggerated such characterization of the culture Borat originated from to illustrate how vastly different it is from modern America. Coming to America to document its culture, Borat and his friend, Azamat had their taste of culture shock as well as shocking Americans with their strange ways. Borat’s usual greeting new people with kisses totally infuriated most people since they may have thought it was harassment. Because Borat stood out like a sore thumb, obviously a clueless tourist, many tried to help him be oriented with American culture and its seemingly more civilized ways. It was funny how the intercultural communication between Borat and his interviewees can go. It was apparent to the viewers that in most topics, Borat’s understanding and interpretation could be so different. What others may take for granted as so easy to understand may be totally difficult to understand for someone coming from a dissimilar background. For example, Borat’s sense of humor could be regarded as very offensive to Americans even if it was innocently funny to him. At the same time, since he does not understand American humor, he could be unresponsive to someone who is telling jokes and expecting him to laugh. In one scene, he was asking the etiquette expert if it was alright to show people pictures of his family. The lady said it was totally fine until she saw that the pictures were of Borat and his son documenting the growth of the boy’s penis. She advised him that it was not recommendable to show those pictures around in America because people would have a very bad interpretation of it even if it was something Borat was so innocently proud of. Borat’s pursuit of a television star, Pamela Anderson, was fraught with misguided expectations. For him, taking Pamela as his bride would be so easy because in his country, women were regarded as objects that are easily acquired. Women were seen as incapable of doing things as men such as being educated, or holding reputable careers. He saw Pamela as a virgin bride who would be waiting for him to whisk her off to be his wife. Watching a pornographic film of Pamela, he was devastated, thinking it was a real thing that Pamela did to hurt him. However, upon getting over the pain and regaining his motivation to pursue her, he made plans of marrying her on the day that he will meet her. He proudly announced that he will do it the Kazakhstan way which was to “sack” the woman in a beautifully crafted sack to take home. Of course when he did that, Pamela resisted and struggled to get out of the sack.