Borat takes heat for Pam Anderson's break-up

Borat Sagdiyev is learning a lesson many celebrities have learned before him: with superstardom comes trouble. The fake Kazakh documentarian, the brainchild of British comic Sacha Baron Cohen, has faced a litany of accusations since "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan" hit theatres earlier this month to become one of the top-grossing films of the year.

And now he's been cited as the reason behind Hollywood's latest high-profile split: the New York Post reported Tuesday that Canada's own Pamela Anderson is divorcing Kid Rock because of his angry reaction to her scripted part in the film.

The long-haired singer's outburst at a private Hollywood screening of "Borat" - he is reported to have publicly called his new bride a "slut" and a "whore" for appearing in the film - is an odd one.

Anderson - or "Pa-MEL-a!" as the love struck Borat calls her - simply signs a book for him in the film, and then flees in terror as he attempts to trap her in a traditional Kazakh "wedding sack." This was no repeat of the Tommy Lee sex tape, although that infamous video does make a split-second appearance in the "Borat'' film.

"It seems quite silly and it puts him into the same category as the people who are being made fun of in the film," Garrett Epp, chairman of English and film studies at the University of Alberta, said Tuesday of Rock's alleged response. "It certainly suggests that he really didn't get the joke." The year has been almost as eventful for Anderson, 39, as it has been for her friend Cohen. After marrying Kid Rock in several ceremonies this summer - including one in St. Tropez while she wore a tiny white bikini - Anderson reportedly tired of his "rage issues'' and filed for divorce after just four months of marriage.

The split comes just weeks after the B.C.-born Anderson, who hosted the Juno Awards earlier this year, announced she'd suffered a miscarriage. She's also starring in a Farrelly brothers movie being shot in Vancouver entitled "Blonde and Blonder'' with Denise Richards, who was in the news herself recently after hurling a pair of laptops belonging to a photographer out a window and injuring an elderly woman walking by.

The troubles keep mounting as well for the "Borat" movie, which documents Borat's adventures as he treks across the U.S. to meet the woman of his dreams, the golden-haired and implant-enhanced Anderson. Along the way Borat makes a series of stops, including a visit to a rodeo attended by hordes of apparently bloodthirsty warmongers and a frightening Christian revivalist meeting.

There have been a handful of lawsuits launched at the makers of "Borat,'' like two sexist frat boys who appear in the film, and an etiquette coach.

Some commentators have even blamed Cohen's politically incorrect and now wildly popular brand of shock humour for Michael Richards' recent racist outburst at a Los Angeles comedy club. Educators in the U.S. have also complained that some schoolboys are using a "Borat'' catchphrase - "Very nice! How much?" - when their female classmates walk by.

Epp says it's a serious misinterpretation of "Borat" if anyone - comedians and kids in the schoolyard alike - is assuming that it's now acceptable to hurl racial and sexist epithets as a form of humour.

"The people who use that kind of humour and make those kinds of comments are the butt of the jokes in the film, and it would be particularly sad, and actually truly pathetic, if anyone came out of that film not understanding that,'' he said.

"They'd be valorizing the frat boys, they'd be putting themselves in the audience at the rodeo, so it goes beyond even not getting the joke. They actually get the joke, but they think the wrong thing is funny."

- BBC