Trickster and Tricked

An Aeon magazine piece on the guru phenomenon today.

“Whatever you think about the motivations of the seekers in the film, it is painful to see these earnest and largely appealing people fall for such a cartoonish ruse. In addition to adopting a heavy Indian accent and over-dressing the part (the Om trident is an absurd giveaway), Gandhi also steals a page out of Baron Cohen’s film Borat (2006) by regularly pretending to be ignorant of American ways: at one point, he asks a woman if her Mickey Mouse pendant is a religious icon.”