7 ms·

Kazakhstan, Reversing Itself, Embraces ‘Borat’ as Nice

51 points by prostoalex 6y ago

baybal2 6y ago
Alternative explanation: locals widely believed that Barat was an allegory on their ex-President, and his family following uncanny parallels. Some nifty political acrobatics has happened over last few years, and the clan of ex-President is now dead, and buried without a single shot fired, hence the easing, if not an encouragement. Some times, the reality beats fiction... even if one don't want it to.
- DetroitThrow 6y ago
  I thought the ending of Borat 2 in which Kazakhstan transforms itself (if only superficially) was a nod to some of the original responses I had read back in the day from Kazakhstani politicians and makes the satire of Americans much clearer than the first movie.
Grakel 6y ago
All press is good press, I'm sure the number of people who simply know Kazakhstan exists has gone up exponentially. That's a chance of tourism or investment greater than 0.
- DetroitThrow 6y ago
  Several years back, a tourism minister claimed it increased tourism by 10x. I still don't think the parody sits well with me, but knowing it helped others become more prosperous eases my disappointment.
- ALittleLight 6y ago
  Maybe it's good press in the sense that it will increase tourism, but it's weird morally to say that it's okay to make baseless insults of a place and people because it may enhance their tourism industry.
Mediterraneo10 6y ago
I visited Kazakhstan for the first time in 2007 when Borat jokes were very much in the air. On one hand, Borat has nothing to do with the real Kazakhstan. On the other hand, without the film maybe I wouldn’t have decided to go through Kazakhstan while traveling overland between Europe and Asia, and then I wouldn’t have discovered the real Kazakhstan with its authentic culture that has made me visit the country again several times since. Several other backpackers I have met in Central Asia told me the same. Borat maybe has done more good than harm.
abhinav22 6y ago
Borat made some very racist and inaccurate remarks about country (Kazakhstan) who did nothing to deserve such humiliation. As a foreigner I did not appreciate the crass of the movie at the time, but I understand completely why there is so much backlash against it. Calling something “satire” doesn’t give you a free license to be rude, especially towards other cultures who don’t share your form of self degrading humor that sometimes us in the West laugh and enjoy. Source: My partner is Kazakh.
- StavrosK 6y ago
  Yeah, while the movie made me laugh, the old "people from abroad are stupid because they don't speak English well" stereotype is really tired. The one redeeming quality the movie had was that it usually got its laughs from people's reactions to Borat, not from Borat actually being a dumb foreigner.
  - willis936 6y ago
    The stereotype is tired because xenophobia is tiring. By taking on that stereotype to a ridiculous extreme it shows the difference between people who are willing and able to discern a prank when it fits their xenophobic worldviews and those who are not (or do not have xenophobic worldviews). It’s a direct attack against prejudiced people by making an example of them in a Hollywood movie.
    - StavrosK 6y ago
      Most of it was, but some of it was just "aren't foreigners weird", like the scene where they ran naked through the hotel.
    - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
      No, Borat wasn’t always unmasking xenophobia, but often just playing for pure laughs. Think of the old Borat sketches where Borat asks if he can squeeze an Americans man’s testicles to see how large they are compared to his own. Are we to assume that anyone who would go along with that, who wouldn’t identify the prank, is xenophobic? Not at all. I think that many people who were actually appreciative of the diversity of the cultures of the world (and who maybe grew up reading National Geographic with its discussions of things like Papuan New Guinea penis sheaths) might think, well, maybe that is considered normal in Kazakhstan.
ALittleLight 6y ago
It's odd to me that in a time of increased political correctness it's also seen as perfectly okay by the mainstream media to mock a group of people as dumb and evil just because they're foreign and unknown. Cohen writes: "I chose Kazakhstan because it was a place that almost nobody in the U.S. knew anything about, which allowed us to create a wild, comedic, fake world." Why not just make up a fake country then? Why disparage real people for no reason. The article seems terrible to me. They're talking about one American immigrant and his friend who have decided to make an ad campaign out of the film. I can't imagine how they think that's representative of the thoughts of the nation.
- cvhashim 6y ago
  You have to think that Political correctness only seems reserved for specific groups. France doesn’t seem to care about being PC to Muslims for example. Actually they choose to demonize groups like this instead.
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  > Why not just make up a fake country then? Because there will always be some geography buffs who will be able to name the countries of the world, even if they don't actually know anything about the cultures therein. Make up a fake country in a fake place in the world, and someone is more likely to unmask you than if you said you were from a country whose name and vague location is known, like Kazakhstan.
  - ALittleLight 6y ago
    Surely even more common than Geography buffs are people who would Google "Borat Kazakhstan" prior to the interview and learn the whole secret. If he tells his subjects a different name so they can't Google him, then he could tell the subjects the name of a real country, but present the movie with the fake country the same as he might do for his name.
    - pwinnski 6y ago
      His approach in the past has been that nobody ever knows his character's name before the interview starts. During Da Ali G Show, people would be told it was a BBC production, or given the name of a production company, and everything would be set up and the interview subject ready to go before Cohen would enter the room. The point was to make it difficult for the subject to just get up and walk away.
sk2020 6y ago
It thoroughly amuses me that the pinnacle of Sacha Baron Cohen’s career is “pretending” to be an idiot. What a dubious honor.
- cvhashim 6y ago
  A bit fitting you have to say
dblock 6y ago
I remember drinking horse milk, кумыс, as a kid, in Ufa, Bashkiria. Highly recommended. Is it sold in the US at all?
erulabs 6y ago
It’s kind of funny to see a lot of posts saying Borat is a racist caricature - well of course he is! The whole point of the character is to see what it takes for some Americans to stop and say “are you kidding me?” Our own political correctness keeps people from asking if he’s a joke - instead “kindly” following along into the madness. The racism comes from the average persons ability to believe the he is a real person - a crazy foreigner - rather than a parody. Taking him seriously requires that you believe people like him exists. People who absolutely would have never looked Kazakhstan up to see if it actually existed or not. Borat is a projection of racism in order to mock the worldview of Americans - and it works fantastically. The fact that he mostly focuses on otherwise kind/quiet people “going along with it” is the entire message.
- cmrdporcupine 6y ago
  The problem with this is that he is using a real country with a real culture and real existing issues as his foil for this purpose. And so it ends up being seen as profoundly insensitive and disrespectful by many, even if the intent is satire.
- jquery 6y ago
  I think this is a very uncharitable interpretation of the people who get “duped” by Borat. They’re racist because they don’t immediately suspect this strange person is actually an actor? Even when they do, that gets edited out. What exactly about American behavior would you have change that would make a Borat-like film impossible? IIRC Ali G was originally filmed in Britain and the same sorts of antics were pulled off easily... I don’t think “going along to get along” is unique to Americans, although as a multicultural country I am sure we have a bit more than average.
  - erulabs 6y ago
    For sure the reasonable responses are edited out - It would take one hell of a world to make a Borat-like film _impossible_ - but that doesn't mean the current one isn't effective. I'm not sure I'd _change_ anything, but Borat is a tour-de-force in speaking up when you see something questionable or ridiculous. Ali G is the same way - you'd have to think street kids are absolutely insane if you can look at Ali G and try to keep a straight face. To take Ali G seriously is the same as admitting you have no idea whatsoever what the youth culture looks like.
pgt 6y ago
Nassim Taleb has been railing against SBC and described Borat as "nearly the most racist movie in history, overtly degrading the people of Kazakhstan" on Twitter: https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1319976057693503490 https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1319976057693503490
- gsk22 6y ago
  I ignore anyone who puts "left" in scare quotes. It's an ad hominem distraction from the substance of the argument. As for the claim that Borat is "nearly the most racist movie in history," that shows the author's ignorance of film history and the thousands of very racist films that have been made worldwide. One could argue that Borat is racist, and there would be plenty of points to debate, but there are many many more racist movies in American film history (Birth of a Nation, Song of the South, the entire blaxploitation genre) - not to mention plenty of racist non-American films.
fareesh 6y ago
Some clown from my country made a huge deal about it and even made some kind of grievance documentary about the Apu character from the Simpsons until they eventually phased him out. I was quite annoyed. All this stuff about offending people with jokes just boils down to how much drama and trouble you can create by bullying the creators and whether or not the ideologues in the media will amplify your message. In the west, particularly in the USA, there's a weird assumption that "protected classes" extend to jokes too. Jerry Seinfeld highlighted this absurdity with the "anti-dentite" episode. Since profession is not a "protected class" joking about it is ok. This makes no sense because it's entirely possible a dentist or programmer would not feel good about being stereotyped, and so it has nothing to do with being sensitive or anything like that, it's just an illusion that these specific groupings are not allowed but all other groupings are allowed. I think the world would be a much better place if we all learned to laugh at each other, and ourselves. This selective cancellation and different rules for Borat and Apu are just exposing the absurdity of this type of thinking.
- jkinudsjknds 6y ago
  > I think the world would be a much better place if we all learned to laugh at each other, and ourselves You may feel differently if it's not everyone laughing at each other, but in fact, everyone laughing at you and treating you poorly for reasons you don't deserve. Say, for example, the caste system.
- httpsterio 6y ago
  The main issue with Borat wasn't the negative stereotypes of Kazakhstanians, it was the treatment of the villagers of God, how they were paid and lied to about how they'd be depicted in the movie that I at least personally didn't appreciate. It's a great film and Sascha Baron Cohen is a brilliant actor making actually meaningful content like Who Is America.
  - bleeding 6y ago
    Agreed, I think that everything else in the movie is rather pointedly aimed at revealing and satirizing the reaction of average Americans to a "foreigner", but the scenes involving the villagers lose that focus and reflect poorly on those involved with the movie. I don't think that discounts what the movie is successful at doing, though.
jdkee 6y ago
Zeynep Tufekci has a good thread on the controversy. https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1320380607294263296 https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1320380607294263296

51 points by prostoalex 6y ago

Alternative explanation: locals widely believed that Barat was an allegory on their ex-President, and his family following uncanny parallels. Some nifty political acrobatics has happened over last few years, and the clan of ex-President is now dead, and buried without a single shot fired, hence the easing, if not an encouragement. Some times, the reality beats fiction... even if one don't want it to.

DetroitThrow 6y ago
I thought the ending of Borat 2 in which Kazakhstan transforms itself (if only superficially) was a nod to some of the original responses I had read back in the day from Kazakhstani politicians and makes the satire of Americans much clearer than the first movie.

Grakel 6y ago

All press is good press, I'm sure the number of people who simply know Kazakhstan exists has gone up exponentially. That's a chance of tourism or investment greater than 0.

DetroitThrow 6y ago
Several years back, a tourism minister claimed it increased tourism by 10x. I still don't think the parody sits well with me, but knowing it helped others become more prosperous eases my disappointment.
ALittleLight 6y ago
Maybe it's good press in the sense that it will increase tourism, but it's weird morally to say that it's okay to make baseless insults of a place and people because it may enhance their tourism industry.

Mediterraneo10 6y ago

I visited Kazakhstan for the first time in 2007 when Borat jokes were very much in the air. On one hand, Borat has nothing to do with the real Kazakhstan. On the other hand, without the film maybe I wouldn’t have decided to go through Kazakhstan while traveling overland between Europe and Asia, and then I wouldn’t have discovered the real Kazakhstan with its authentic culture that has made me visit the country again several times since. Several other backpackers I have met in Central Asia told me the same. Borat maybe has done more good than harm.

abhinav22 6y ago

Borat made some very racist and inaccurate remarks about country (Kazakhstan) who did nothing to deserve such humiliation. As a foreigner I did not appreciate the crass of the movie at the time, but I understand completely why there is so much backlash against it. Calling something “satire” doesn’t give you a free license to be rude, especially towards other cultures who don’t share your form of self degrading humor that sometimes us in the West laugh and enjoy. Source: My partner is Kazakh.

StavrosK 6y ago
Yeah, while the movie made me laugh, the old "people from abroad are stupid because they don't speak English well" stereotype is really tired. The one redeeming quality the movie had was that it usually got its laughs from people's reactions to Borat, not from Borat actually being a dumb foreigner.
- willis936 6y ago
  The stereotype is tired because xenophobia is tiring. By taking on that stereotype to a ridiculous extreme it shows the difference between people who are willing and able to discern a prank when it fits their xenophobic worldviews and those who are not (or do not have xenophobic worldviews). It’s a direct attack against prejudiced people by making an example of them in a Hollywood movie.
  - StavrosK 6y ago
    Most of it was, but some of it was just "aren't foreigners weird", like the scene where they ran naked through the hotel.
  - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
    No, Borat wasn’t always unmasking xenophobia, but often just playing for pure laughs. Think of the old Borat sketches where Borat asks if he can squeeze an Americans man’s testicles to see how large they are compared to his own. Are we to assume that anyone who would go along with that, who wouldn’t identify the prank, is xenophobic? Not at all. I think that many people who were actually appreciative of the diversity of the cultures of the world (and who maybe grew up reading National Geographic with its discussions of things like Papuan New Guinea penis sheaths) might think, well, maybe that is considered normal in Kazakhstan.

ALittleLight 6y ago

It's odd to me that in a time of increased political correctness it's also seen as perfectly okay by the mainstream media to mock a group of people as dumb and evil just because they're foreign and unknown. Cohen writes: "I chose Kazakhstan because it was a place that almost nobody in the U.S. knew anything about, which allowed us to create a wild, comedic, fake world." Why not just make up a fake country then? Why disparage real people for no reason. The article seems terrible to me. They're talking about one American immigrant and his friend who have decided to make an ad campaign out of the film. I can't imagine how they think that's representative of the thoughts of the nation.

cvhashim 6y ago
You have to think that Political correctness only seems reserved for specific groups. France doesn’t seem to care about being PC to Muslims for example. Actually they choose to demonize groups like this instead.
Mediterraneo10 6y ago
> Why not just make up a fake country then? Because there will always be some geography buffs who will be able to name the countries of the world, even if they don't actually know anything about the cultures therein. Make up a fake country in a fake place in the world, and someone is more likely to unmask you than if you said you were from a country whose name and vague location is known, like Kazakhstan.
- ALittleLight 6y ago
  Surely even more common than Geography buffs are people who would Google "Borat Kazakhstan" prior to the interview and learn the whole secret. If he tells his subjects a different name so they can't Google him, then he could tell the subjects the name of a real country, but present the movie with the fake country the same as he might do for his name.
  - pwinnski 6y ago
    His approach in the past has been that nobody ever knows his character's name before the interview starts. During Da Ali G Show, people would be told it was a BBC production, or given the name of a production company, and everything would be set up and the interview subject ready to go before Cohen would enter the room. The point was to make it difficult for the subject to just get up and walk away.

sk2020 6y ago

It thoroughly amuses me that the pinnacle of Sacha Baron Cohen’s career is “pretending” to be an idiot. What a dubious honor.

cvhashim 6y ago
A bit fitting you have to say

dblock 6y ago

I remember drinking horse milk, кумыс, as a kid, in Ufa, Bashkiria. Highly recommended. Is it sold in the US at all?

erulabs 6y ago

It’s kind of funny to see a lot of posts saying Borat is a racist caricature - well of course he is! The whole point of the character is to see what it takes for some Americans to stop and say “are you kidding me?” Our own political correctness keeps people from asking if he’s a joke - instead “kindly” following along into the madness. The racism comes from the average persons ability to believe the he is a real person - a crazy foreigner - rather than a parody. Taking him seriously requires that you believe people like him exists. People who absolutely would have never looked Kazakhstan up to see if it actually existed or not. Borat is a projection of racism in order to mock the worldview of Americans - and it works fantastically. The fact that he mostly focuses on otherwise kind/quiet people “going along with it” is the entire message.

cmrdporcupine 6y ago
The problem with this is that he is using a real country with a real culture and real existing issues as his foil for this purpose. And so it ends up being seen as profoundly insensitive and disrespectful by many, even if the intent is satire.
jquery 6y ago
I think this is a very uncharitable interpretation of the people who get “duped” by Borat. They’re racist because they don’t immediately suspect this strange person is actually an actor? Even when they do, that gets edited out. What exactly about American behavior would you have change that would make a Borat-like film impossible? IIRC Ali G was originally filmed in Britain and the same sorts of antics were pulled off easily... I don’t think “going along to get along” is unique to Americans, although as a multicultural country I am sure we have a bit more than average.
- erulabs 6y ago
  For sure the reasonable responses are edited out - It would take one hell of a world to make a Borat-like film _impossible_ - but that doesn't mean the current one isn't effective. I'm not sure I'd _change_ anything, but Borat is a tour-de-force in speaking up when you see something questionable or ridiculous. Ali G is the same way - you'd have to think street kids are absolutely insane if you can look at Ali G and try to keep a straight face. To take Ali G seriously is the same as admitting you have no idea whatsoever what the youth culture looks like.

pgt 6y ago

Nassim Taleb has been railing against SBC and described Borat as "nearly the most racist movie in history, overtly degrading the people of Kazakhstan" on Twitter: https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1319976057693503490 https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1319976057693503490

gsk22 6y ago
I ignore anyone who puts "left" in scare quotes. It's an ad hominem distraction from the substance of the argument. As for the claim that Borat is "nearly the most racist movie in history," that shows the author's ignorance of film history and the thousands of very racist films that have been made worldwide. One could argue that Borat is racist, and there would be plenty of points to debate, but there are many many more racist movies in American film history (Birth of a Nation, Song of the South, the entire blaxploitation genre) - not to mention plenty of racist non-American films.

fareesh 6y ago

Some clown from my country made a huge deal about it and even made some kind of grievance documentary about the Apu character from the Simpsons until they eventually phased him out. I was quite annoyed. All this stuff about offending people with jokes just boils down to how much drama and trouble you can create by bullying the creators and whether or not the ideologues in the media will amplify your message. In the west, particularly in the USA, there's a weird assumption that "protected classes" extend to jokes too. Jerry Seinfeld highlighted this absurdity with the "anti-dentite" episode. Since profession is not a "protected class" joking about it is ok. This makes no sense because it's entirely possible a dentist or programmer would not feel good about being stereotyped, and so it has nothing to do with being sensitive or anything like that, it's just an illusion that these specific groupings are not allowed but all other groupings are allowed. I think the world would be a much better place if we all learned to laugh at each other, and ourselves. This selective cancellation and different rules for Borat and Apu are just exposing the absurdity of this type of thinking.

jkinudsjknds 6y ago
> I think the world would be a much better place if we all learned to laugh at each other, and ourselves You may feel differently if it's not everyone laughing at each other, but in fact, everyone laughing at you and treating you poorly for reasons you don't deserve. Say, for example, the caste system.
httpsterio 6y ago
The main issue with Borat wasn't the negative stereotypes of Kazakhstanians, it was the treatment of the villagers of God, how they were paid and lied to about how they'd be depicted in the movie that I at least personally didn't appreciate. It's a great film and Sascha Baron Cohen is a brilliant actor making actually meaningful content like Who Is America.
- bleeding 6y ago
  Agreed, I think that everything else in the movie is rather pointedly aimed at revealing and satirizing the reaction of average Americans to a "foreigner", but the scenes involving the villagers lose that focus and reflect poorly on those involved with the movie. I don't think that discounts what the movie is successful at doing, though.

jdkee 6y ago

Zeynep Tufekci has a good thread on the controversy. https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1320380607294263296 https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1320380607294263296