Attacked at Borat

Want to hear something serious? My friend and I were the targets of an anti-Semitic act today.

Want to hear something funny? It was at a screening for the movie Borat.

My friend Meyer and I were busting our guts laughing as Kazakhstan’s funniest fictional reporter poked fun at American life, small-town Eastern Europe, and prejudice. As the film was reaching its conclusion and jokingly ‘anti-Semitic’ scenes washed across the screen, mixed with perverse nudity and wild animals, I felt something whiz past my head and land on the plastic bag resting on my lap.

I didn’t pay much attention to the object, since the movie was so funny, and the impact was so ridiculously light. I didn’t even stop to think about it. Then the lights came on.

Sitting on my lap was a penny. There were a few more on the ground in front of me, as well as one in the cup holder as well. Someone had targeted us with pennies.

Now for those of you that are blissfully unaware, a classic act of Jew-baiting is to throw pennies at a Jewish individual. It plays off the classic ‘Jews are cheap’ stereotype/myth, and asserts the racial/ethnic/religious superiority of the penny thrower. If you have a hard-on for Hitler, you’ve probably tried it.

Throughout the film, our kippot (skull caps) were exposed, marking us as ‘members of the tribe’. After having experienced my first penny toss, I could not be prouder to wear a kippah (skull cap) in public, that is when I’m not wearing one of my favourite grungy ball caps.

But I digress.

After discovering the pennies, I turned to see if I could locate the culprit. There were two guys in the rows behind us. One was an ‘Eminem’ wannabe chatting up his date. Borat on a first date? That’s classy.

The other guy was a 40-something Iranian dude, slouched low in his chair, staring at me unblinkingly with a look of poorly disguised satisfaction on his face. There was no way to confirm that he was the culprit, so Meyer and I made our way out of the theatre and headed to the subway station.

Do I think this incident would have happened if the movie shown was Bond rather than Borat? No. Do I think Borat caused an individual to transform into an anti-Semite? No. Rather, I believe that the movie provided an idiot with the encouragement he needed to commit this cowardly act, but I don’t believe it sowed any fresh seeds of hatred – it just reminded him of the ones that were already there.

Borat is a riotously funny movie, filled with great laughs and social satire. If the penny-thrower realized he was watching a film featuring a Jewish guy run around shouting Hebrew while making fun of anti-Semites, I think he would have wanted his money back.

I would have been happy to give it to him. Every penny.