No, he's supposed to be a geeky white English boy who appropriates black/muslim/west indian culture in an attempt to be cool.
And "Ali G" is short for Alistair Graham.
Tough question given that he is a man of many characters...sometimes he's Bruno, sometimes Borat, but funny nonetheless...a couple links to some of his work...here:
http://www.thoughttheater.com/2006/06/ali_g_bruno_interviews_pastor.php
http://www.thoughttheater.com/2006/07/ali_g_borat_with_a_real_estate.php
I mean the Ali G character. I've read the Alistair Graham thing. Is that for sure? The NY Times calls him "vaguely Muslim," and a friend last week was telling me that he was supposed to be a British Muslim appropriating black culture....
Ali G the character is a middle-class white guy playing at being poor and black (see for instance his apparent belief that Staines is a ghetto). I've always taken the "vague Muslimness" to be more of the character's pretense than part of Cohen's portrayal of the character.
I'm not from across the pond, but I do remember this - I arrived (for a stay of a year) in England during Ali G's first season, and there was a debate going on about whether or not the character was racist.
The consensus seemed to be no, if only because it was unclear precisely which race was being mocked.
Ogged's nuclear program must be stopped!
unf - if you ever want to be the prodigal blogger, we have an ID set up for you and everything. Email me for info. But then...how would I know it was you? (dun dun DUN!)
Send me some incriminating story about Ogged that only you would know.
Aw crap, sorry unf, getting on it right now....
I think you should just send me incriminating stories anyway.
No worries. Just wasn't sure you were still checking email at the address I used. Someone else we know sent you an email there and didn't get a response. Since I know you're online, I thought maybe you had switched up your email or something.
And having gotten what I wanted, I can now fade back into the mist. Or have I?
Maybe it's Alistair Graham's online portrayal of unf.
Unf! It was nice seeing you, however briefly.
Only the real unf would arrive to complain at me utterly without preamble or ceremony.
You guys have seen the Borat trailer right?
Not so much?
The only time I've seen Da Ali G Show was on DVD with a bunch of anthropology grad students, one of them from Kazakhstan. It was, um, interesting.
I love that stuff, but it's so squirm-inducing that I can't watch it by myself; for some reason, it's easier to take when there's someone around also laughing at it.
Something I've occasionally wondered -- what would things have been like if Unf had chosen to be Ogged and Ogged had chosen to be Unf? Were their fates chosen along with their names?
ogged's being ogged has made more doggerel possible than if he were unf. I don't know which side of the ledger that goes on.
Do ledgers have sides? This is like dreaming that you're naked at the mall, except it's accounting, and it's not a dream.
I've wondered that too. Unf got to pick, and picked Unf, and I wanted Ogged, so it seems that it all worked out.
for some reason, it's easier to take when there's someone around also laughing at it.
Shared guilt is less heavy.
By the way, ogged, I don't want to start a discussion of it, but Mars isn't playing in the same league as Buffy. I think you're crazy.
This isn't IRC, people. Please be less ... shit, my vocabulary is completely shot.
Dear god, the Borat film. I can't wait. Ooh, and I'll be able to afford to go, and it'll be playing in the local theater, and everything! Ooh, my life is going to be so swank!
I have serious packing issues, people. I just went to put four of my special chapsticks into my carry-on (the minimum required for a flight this long -- my primary, my backup, the backup for my backup, etc. because GOD FORBID I misplace them all, which I could) and something was rattling around in the bottom so I put my hand in to see what it was and pulled out at least 10 chapsticks that must have been put in there on previous trips.
You guys remember the one where Borat had never heard of Family Circus? I guess it was plausible, since the character hadn't been in America for too long.
I guess it was plausible, since the character hadn't been in America for too long.
I bet it's possible to come to America after reaching an age at which you don't turn to the comics section of the paper and basically never find out about Family Circus.
Except that it would isolate you so terribly from a full understanding of American culture.
Insofar as I have a vagenda, revealing it would be counterproductive. Insofar as I don't have one, revealing it would be lying.
46: Bitter, bitter. Isn't full understanding always a pleasure, in and of itself, regardless of the merits of the thing understood?
Hey, far be it from me to deny anyone the pleasures of Family Circus or the insight it offers into the American mind. Look, little Billy used a word incorrectly! And he apparently leaves tracks behind him like a tank! Truly, this is America red in tooth and claw.
Family Circus is the opposite of pleasure. But I don't think it contains insight into America; I think, rather, that the collective experience of understanding its true awfulness and the sense of shared wry hysterics is part of our particular little subset of Americana. A subset I kind of enjoy, to tell the truth.
You'd think I was drunk.
I'm just being silly. But I don't think hating on Family Circus is a sufficiently important part of American life to make it unfortunate for someone to live in America without encountering it.
Now, Marmaduke, on the other hand...
Maybe not important, but enjoyable.
And then there's Cathy.
Okay, now I'm actually going to go to bed. Good night, everyone.
Fuck, here I finally am with my bread and cheese and fruit and a nice glass of wine and you lot have all gone to bed already.
I haven't read the whole thread but there was a big debate in the UK media about whether Ali G was a white guy trying to be black or an Asian guy (that is, Pakistani or Bangladeshi) guy trying to be black.
There were quite a few Moslem guys writing into the papers absolutely convinced that Ali G was Asian. Not writing to cry racism, but writing to claim Ali G for their own.
Baron-Cohen, it seems to me, is purposefully ambiguous about it. The movie, iirc, is pretty clear that he (Ali G) is white, but my initial impression of the TV series was that he was at least partly alluding to a certain style among Asian kids.
Apache Indian, for example, looked pretty much exactly like Ali G at one time. And his first big records in the UK predated Ali G by quite a bit. He also spoke in that mock 'patois' style.*
http://images.rossoalice.alice.it/musicbox/images/A/3072143/3072146-100033-l.jpg
http://www.themessage.at/images/pics/apache3.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Indian
* that mock 'patois' style is now pretty ubiquitious here among some of the 'younger generation'. I overheard a kid on the bus last night who was so far into it it was almost self-parody. 'So I is at college, yeah? An' I is studyin' psychology and maffs, awiiight Is wicked man, innit'. And I'm really not exaggerating.
And they're always getting their toys in your yard.
58 puts me in mind of Gautam Malkani's Londonstani. Any Brits here who've read it?
Hey, Family Circus has its moments.
re: 59
Heh. They don't get their ball back, either.
I always assumed he was white aping ghetto, but then Ireland's Muslim population is fairly small and mostly first generation. On the other hand having recently seen a shirtless photo of (iirc) the Borat incarnation that's now my mental image of ogged, I suppose because of the incision / torso pictures.
I mean just on the appearance, not all the "in my country" stuff.
I dreamt I found ogged playing either basketball or tennis. I crept past him so as not to be noticed, and thought, "His head's not so pointy."
re: 64
He definitely resembles a much exaggerated version of some second generation Moslem guys I know.
One in particular, who used to run a bhangra/hip-hop club in Glasgow that he wanted to call 'khunj'r' (spelling?). Anyway, that's a *really* offensive Punjabi word that's roughly cognate with 'Pimp' in English, only worse.
unf! sorry, a bit late in the game, but I had to say it. hi, unf.
Unf! Now all we need is to find Bob and we can get the band back together.
And here I just made a Borat post.
51 & 52 recapitulate the Mayor in Buffy, Season 3.
In an interview of Sacha Baron Cohen I read offline a few years back, maybe in Vanity Fair, he said (I'm paraphrasing here) he named the character "Ali" because the Arab/Muslim-ness of the name made the character more scary, in a gangsta sort of way, to the people he would be interviewing.
