UPC on Borat?

When I first heard about the now-playing in-theaters-near-you movie, Borat, I was like, okay, there's one I can put on my Do Not See list. It made a small sensation in Alabama because he had duped a local etiquette expert in a ruse which culminated with a most disgusting antic.

Anyway, when I read on Collideoscope in this post that Borat had fakingly recieved the Holy Ghost at a United Pentecostal Church (UPC) campmeeting, I was floored. What? UPC on Borat?! The whole premise had an amusing oxymoronic tang. Screen caps shown on this post were proof, and I was further enlightened by an interview with Borat on the Today Show linked on the same post.

The truth is I don't really know what to make of it, but I'm deciding to throw my $0.02 in due to a little tap from ninetyandnine.com's almighty editor. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought about a satirical response that birthed itself out of the innerworkings of my sometimes cynical mind.

Picture a quintessential hicktown preacher who incessantly harps on "goin' to the pit." This is an excerpt from his Sunday night sermon after finding out about the UPC bit in the movie:

Now, I done heard about some devilish thing they're showing in the moviehouses of the world called BO-rat. And I know you probably know he's done cut the monkey and blasphemed the Holy Ghost by his pretendin' and carryin' on at a campmeetin' of our'n. And now this is being broadcast all over the world! At first, I was mad as a hornet. How dare this sinner boy mock the Most High, I thought! But then I thought, naw, Lord, I see, I see why You done this. The Lord works in mysterious ways. Ya see, some of our very own wanted to be able to be seen on hellivision, and this is the Lord's way of punishin'! God said, 'Oh, you want to be on the one-eyed devil, do you? Well, I'm gonna do that an' more—I'll plaster you all over the world bein' made to look like fools! Not on ol' devilvision, but through the very mother of all things evil herself—Hollywood!'

The idea was hilarious to me. That someone would laud Borat's poking fun at A/Ps as punishment from God. Anyway . . .

How I really feel about it, I dunno. I guess I sort of second the feelings of Scott Phillps in his exclusive mid-week article. Speaking in tongues and Pentecostal-esque worship being made fun of is nothing new. It happened on the Day of Pentecost, the mother of all Pentecostal experience, for crying out loud.

But it's kind of weird . . . I also felt some kinship with Stu Kent of House Calls in his post about the Blues Brothers. I when I was a child, got my first knowledge of Pentecostal-y stuff from TV. For whatever reason (during our B.C. days) I was watching Cape Fear with my folks. Not the 1960s, Robert Mitchum, black and white one, but the early 1990s Robert DeNiro remake. Though it was a minor part, all I remember is Robert DeNiro speaking in tongues while he was drowning in the end. Not the most savory of images, I know, lol, but . . . perhaps this is the point of all of this: Even though the image of a really sinister guy speaking in tongues while drowning is less than ideal, it introduced my nine year old mind to the idea of speaking in tongues, it made me curious about it, I asked questions about it, and in the end, it wasn't something alien when the Pentecostal experience became more important in my family's life.

Maybe the whole Borat deal, as crude, offensive, and unrelentingly satirical as it seems to be (from reviews that I've read), might be someone else's Cape Fear. Though "getting the Holy Ghost" (among many other things) is being made light of in this film, perhaps to someone out there, Borat will spark a light of curiosity that may lead to a life-changing experience. Who knows? God has a crazy way of turning things around in His favor.