"Borat" was the impetus for 84 minutes of laughter for thousands of people across the country.
The audiences roared as the mustached Kazakh attended a gay-pride parade or invited a black prostitute to a white Southern home.
Meanwhile, the comedy has mobilized an army of people who accuse it of drawing laughs by simply exploiting stereotypes.
But most of the movie's fans and critics completely miss the bigger point of the comedy. Both those who see the movie as simple laughs and those who condemn it think the film is grounded in jokes about the "other."
They could not be more wrong. The film is a masterpiece in satire.
Sitting in the theater Saturday night, it became clear to me that most people didn't comprehend this satire when Borat visits a Pentecostal church in Texas and pretends to find Christ.
The audience sat in stunned silence. There was none of the roaring laughter like when the jokes were anti-Semitic, homophobic and misogynistic. The film was hilarious when it affirmed these viewers' preconceived notions of others but was appalling when the jokes landed close to home.
Just as the fans didn't enjoy the film's jokes when they were applied to white Christians, the critics found that any jokes involving stereotypes of others were offensive. Those critics asserted that "Borat" was just another in the line of dumb adolescent movies.
They couldn't be further from the truth. "Borat" is an overwhelmingly intelligent film. Driving across the country in an ice-cream truck, Borat interviews and interacts with genuine American folks. In doing so, he demonstrates our own prejudice.
For example, Borat shows up at a gun shop and asks for a gun that will kill Jews, to which the salesman says that some particular model will do the trick. Borat goes to a car dealership and asks for a car that will help him score women. Without missing a beat, the dealer says he needs a Corvette.
The most depressing thing? These people aren't fictional, they weren't prompted by producers and were expressing their unabridged opinions.
Thus, Borat shows that many Americans are not willing to stand up to the discrimination right under their noses.
These people are not limited to the rural United States or to Southern universities. They are a ubiquitous presence across this country, including Arizona and Tempe.
All the bigots who are represented by people in "Borat" create a racist environment in the Phoenix area, where whites are set up in opposition to Hispanics and other minorities.
Many of us ignore this racism because it is not out in the open. So we don't concern ourselves with the fact that the majority of the poor in our city are minorities.
We turn a blind eye to minorities who are incarcerated at a higher rate than whites, and we choose to be content with the substandard education and health-care services we offer minorities.
We make no effort to see our neighbors because they are superficially different. Their difference inspires fear in us and encourages us to make ballot propositions that call for English to be an official language.
And our discrimination does not end with race. Women continue to be oppressed in our town. Tempe has had about 80 reported forcible sexual assaults per year over the past three years. That doesn't include all the violated women who feel that they will not be respected in reporting sexual assaults.
I won't even begin to chart all the subtle and not-so-subtle discrimination experienced by homosexuals.
What "Borat" does is reveal these prejudices to ourselves and proves that even in the 21st century, things are not perfect. We'd be well-served to see that Borat's joke is on us and our own ignorance.
Alex Ginsburg is a religious studies senior focusing all his mental energy on getting the fearmongers out of office on Tuesday. You can vote at 13th and Mill or reach the columnist at: alexander.ginsburg@asu.edu.
