Mahir To Borat, I Sue You!

An anonymous reader writes "The mockumentary Borat bears more than a passing resemblance to late '90s net celeb Mahir Cagri of ikissyou.org, and he's not amused. Steven Leckart of Wired magazine gives him the third degree."

Wrong, wrong, wrong!

This Wired article has already been debunked [electronic...etwork.com], with more sources then you can shake a stick at. The bottom line is that The earliest date we can determine for Mahir Cagri's website is 1998 and the earliest known mention of Sacha Cohen's Borat character is 1994.

So. Thanks Wired for reminding us of Mahir, gotta love him, and for stirring up more press about Borat. But please don't blemish Sacha Baron Cohen like this. On the DVD commentary for the first season Sacha Baron Cohen said his character was based off of a doctor he met in Russia- it's based on someone else, not Mahir. If anything that Russian has a chance to sue Cohen I suppose :P

In any case, any publicity is good publicity, rite?

Also, first post bitches!

Frivolous

You know... I think I'll sue someone for something when I'm washed up and can't find an avenue to make money off of. When my 15 minutes of fame is up someone is getting subpoenaed I can tell you that much

Borat is just another person like you or me

And when you do something that someone somewhere has done sometime before, it should come as no surprise. There are billions of people in this world and everything has been done before. Including suing Borat.

SUPER GREG

I noticed the resemblance to Mahir also...but let's not forget Ali-G and his resemblance to Super Greg: http://www.geocities.com/goodgawd2001/ [geocities.com]

wtf?

Borat has been on the Ali G show since the 90s and while he was not super popular he was clearly there. Sounds like this guy is just looking at getting some free money from a guy with a similar act.

I do not understand Americans

In Turkey,

We got tons of Mahir and Borat.

Does any one say What is so interesting about these guys ? Those guys are Turkish equvalent of American redneck.

Re:I do not understand Americans

I think you may have missed the point of Borat, and the real source of the guy's humour.

He isn't making fun of Turkey, Kazakhstan or anywhere else. He's using this stereotype - which many westerners are too self-centred to realise is a stylised stereotype - to highlight just how ridiculously self-centred and unaware we are. Although the film is set in the US, Borat originally gave this treatment to the UK in the Ali G show. I clearly recall a scene he did interviewing english fox-hunters and protesters, in which he lambasted their opinions - and the hunters' total inability to admit why they were doing what they were doing - and it simply wouldn't have worked as a serious news piece. He mentioned to a protester that in his home-country, people hunted [some animal - bears, was it?] all the time. When she asked, slightly incredulously, why on Earth they committed such barbaric acts, he just looked slightly confused and replied: "Er, for fun. Yes."

A stroke of genius. It was the first time I can recall anyone actually stating it so plainly, and it completely threw everyone! Nobody else could have held up such a stark mirror to the practice of fox-hunting and cut through all the bullshit posturing about country-ways, animal rights and so on. It wasn't funny because he was being backwards. It was funny because he was throwing a fresh, embarrassingly clear light on an issue that nobody from the UK had the balls to admit to.

The fact that there are people shallow and dense enough out there to laugh at his zany throw-back pube-bartering ways instead of everyone's reactions to him tells you more about us than about Kazakhstan. Sadly.

Foreign stupid guy...

Has been a comic staple for a long time.

You've got Bronson Pinchot's character Valky.

Even earlier, you've got Andy Kaufmann's character from Taxi.

I'm sure if you look you can find countless other examples.

So both these guys have moustaches. Big deal.

In Soviet Russia, comedian sue you!

No, the title is NOT off topic. I'm referring to Yakov Smirnoff. If anyone should sue "Borat", it might be Yakov. Sasha Cohen stole the basic Soviet-area fish-out-of-water-in-the-US idea from Smirnoff. However, it must be pointed out, that Cohen did not steal from Yakov the idea that it should be funny.

Mahir vs Borat

It's very simple:

Borat = funny
Mahir, not so much.

I remeber seeing this Mahir guy - never thought he was funny - just a moron.

Borat is hilarious totally americanized but he pulls off the foreign characters with such brilliance. A lot of material that Mahir guy never had, and way more exposure. I do not think Borat/(the AliG guy) used this Mahir guy for a model at all.

Just my two bits. I don't watch a lot of TV anymore so I could be missing something. I guess it's safe to say stuff like this upsets me a little. People suing people with little to go on just to get a buck 'cause they couldn't make a few bucks on their own. I noticed ikissyou.org is unavailable - maybe I should check out archive.org - From what I recall ikissyou.org sucks.

Those wacky Turks

I can play many instruments, but best I play accordion-flute-mandolin-violin-drum-and-saz (Turkish instrument).

Where can I get one of these Turkish accordian-flute-mandolin-violin-drum-and-saz things? And how the hell are you supposed to play it?

If there is anything that I could care less about

it's Mahir vs Borat. I will not see the movie, not that it's likely to come to my area (we have only five screens, we miss LOTS of films). There are limits to how much stupid humor that I can handle, and that's saying a lot from someone who amongst his favorite films counts Wayne's World I & II and Robin Hood: Men In Tights.

News for Nerds?

Anything to do with a web site is news for nerds now?

 

Looks like he might not be the only one

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15175836/site/newsweek / [msn.com] BTW, hilarious film, never laughed so much in my whole life!!!

Way overrated

Cohen is way overrated as a comic, if you could even call him that. I feel bad for the Kazakhs who now have to deal with this crap from Westerners who know nothing about them.

My internet there is a problem

On my internet there is problem,
And that problem is Borat.
He take Mahir's jokes,
He never give it back.

Throw Borat down the well,
So Mahir can be free.
You must grab him by his mustache,
Then we have big party.

If you see Borat coming,
You must be careful of his teeth.
You must grab him where it is funny,
And I tell you what to do...

Throw Borat down the well
So Mahir can be free
You must grab him by his mustache
Then we have big party

What about poor Arnold?

Cagri? Never heard of him. It's Arnold Schwarzenegger who has the beef against Borat for my two cents.

21st Century blackface

Seriously, does any of this matter? Borat is somewhat redeemed by shining a harsh light on American culture rather than simply making fun of mideast/asian stereotypes - but at essence it is basically 21st century blackface minstrel stuff.

What Would He Sue Under?

At least in the U.S...

Copying substantive plot elements? Someone's life isn't a series of plot elements they had to think up. There's no notion of carefully structuring it to have maximum value as entertainment. Whilst, "Guy with an ego is in the TopGun problem, guy's buddy dies, guy questions ego, guy comes out stronger." is a plot someone went to trouble to think up and is protected, simply having lived a certain way, even if you're a media whore and many actions were deliberate, isn't protected in the same way.

Defamation? Parody is protected speach. Plus, once you've received free trips and made money off the fact everyone regards you as a joke, you can hardly claim damages for subsequently being made to look like a joke.

Bush can't sue the makers of Wag The Dog 2: Iraqi Bugaloo, Nixon can't sue the makers of Dick, Clinton can't sue over Primary Colors. If none of those people can sue over direct satirization - and they have a hell of a lot more money to hire lawyers to do so - then a failing wannabe celebutard is unlikely to get a competent lawyer to take the case simply for a percentage of what might be won.

Bigot

I've seen quite a few Ali G episodes and most of the pre-release hype for Borat, and it sort of strikes me that Cohen's comedy is pure anti-muslim bigotry. He seems to go out of his to consistently portray muslims in the worst possible light.

Re:Bigot

I've seen quite a few Ali G episodes and most of the pre-release hype for Borat, and it sort of strikes me that Cohen's comedy is pure anti-muslim bigotry.

In other news today, Swift advocated cannibalism as a solution to poverty in Ireland. What a monster.

Seriously, you're missing the point here entirely. The way Ali G and Borat work is by simultaneously making fun of the ignorant bigotry of the characters themselves, and also taking advantage of liberal tolerance of them. Thus Ali G is in the first place a straightforward parody of middle-class white English kids who ape American gangsta culture, but is also a vehicle by which Cohen can entrap public figures into making fools of themselves: they try to seem tolerant and accepting of what they take for a representative of Contemporary Youth Culture, and end up walking straight into it.

Unfortunately, Ali G ended up being adopted as an icon by middle-class white English kids who ape American gangsta culture and who didn't quite realise that half the joke was on them. Thus, after selling out spectacularly and milking the character for all he was worth, it was time to bring Borat to the fore.

Borat is a more sophisticated caricature than Ali G. He's a mish-mash of Slavic and Eastern European stereotypes, and bear in mind that what with the Iron Curtain and all, stereotypes about Eastern Europe are decades out of date, going back to before the Holocaust made anti-Semitism unspeakable. Stereotypes rooted in a nasty past of peasants and pogroms. Borat is a fossil out of this past. In the name of tolerance to a different culture, the people Borat meets will bend over backwards not to give offence, and then the fun lies in finding out just how far the faux-Kazakh guy can go and get away with it, and how hypocritical we're prepared to be in tolerating Borat's intolerance. And, for that matter, in finding out just how different to our ignorant peasant forebears we Western urban sophisticates really are, beneath the surface.

The only concern I really have is about how it all reflects on Kazakhstan itself. From what I've heard, though, they've caught on that the joke's not on them at all, that it's rather a good joke, and that there's no such thing as bad publicity. At least now we've heard of Kazakhstan...

I haven't seen Borat's film - I'll be seeing it on Friday, and I'm very much looking forward to it. I was never inclined to see the Ali G film, but Borat I think has a lot more potential.

ive been looking for that for ages

i've been reminiscing about this quite a bit. that was one of the first memes that i remember from the net way back. it's great to see some of this old stuff again.

neither is new

I would also mention that playing a character from a foreign country to mock the US was done in the 70's by Andy Kaufman, which makes both of these guys (no matter how funny or relevant) "style biters".

Mahir? Who the...

This is the first time I heard about the guy. I don't get it. He is like Tarzan on the Internet.

From Picture4:"I never sex anygirl. Woman I must like first and she must be trust clean too..."
What the...

Pee Wee?

Not to stir the pot more, but he (borat) reminds me more of
a retarded pee wee herman if nothing else..

Evolution of Borat

The Borat of 1994 may not be the same one that we know and love today. Cohen may have pulled a few tricks from Mahir over the years. At the very beginning of the new movie, which is available on YouTube, Borat clearly says "I like sex." and plays pingpong. These are two distinctly Mahir activities. Just because a car company was around for years does not mean it did not rip off some design features from another company. Part of Borat, the new part, may have developed in response to the Mahir craze.

Silly question

Did he ever get a girl?

I am looking forward to it

I remember the trailer of the first Ali G movie (never watched the movie itself though). There is a scene where he is arguing with some pimp and there are these three ladies standing near them. So the pimp says something like

{pimp}: " ..these hoes belong to me"
{Ali G}: "Belong?! That's a very sexist way to talk about these bitches!"

Cracked me up :)

Re:Mahir's Home Page

but does he also shoot dof from horse ?

Table Tennis

The table tennis at the start of Borat is a big giveaway.
An obvious sign of a copied idea.

If SCO had evidence like that, Linux would be in big trouble.