The Relationship between Comedy and Non-Identity in the Context of the Borat Movie

Abstract

The answer to the question 'What is comedy?' is a subject that philosophers have been thinking about since Aristotle but could not be explained with a simple formula. The comedy, which is defined by the general structure and ending of different genres, is aimed at the act of laughter and is the opposite of tragedy in that it deals with the humorous aspects of life. Contrary to the identification relationship that the tragedy establishes with the hero, the fact that the comedy figure does not identify with neither the outside world nor its features can provide the critical distance necessary for laughing. The critical and oppositional structure brought about by the relation of non-identity between the absolute and subjectivity has also been popularly used in comedy cinema, and the purpose of this study is to examine the representation of comedy based on the principle of non-identity in cinema. In the study in which the literature research was conducted, the 2006 movie “BORAT: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan", which was determined by using the non-random sampling technique, is discussed within the framework of the relationship between comedy and non-identity. In this framework, while the film is analyzed with the sociological analysis method, the narrative structure of the film, the humorous discourses used and the state of the comic figure not being identical with anything are revealed. By analyzing the film in this way, it is shown how comedy based on non-identity influences society by providing critical ground and encouraging argumentative thinking.