I’m with Justin. Kazakhstan needs to lighten up.
Baron Cohen appears to have drawn official Kazakh ire after he hosted the annual MTV Europe Music Awards show in Lisbon earlier this month as Borat, who arrived in an Air Kazakh propeller plane controlled by a one-eyed pilot clutching a vodka bottle.
“We do not rule out that Mr. Cohen is serving someone’s political order designed to present Kazakhstan and its people in a derogatory way,” Kazakh Foreign Ministry spokesman Yerzhan Ashykbayev told a news briefing.
“We reserve the right to any legal action to prevent new pranks of the kind.” He declined to elaborate.
Update: See this post for more links on the story.
Update II: The brand spanking new KZ Blog has a post on Borat too.
I do understand the outrage, though calls to bring Borat to the international court are a bit extreme—can you imagine dragging to court everyone who ever forwarded an email with funny pictures of Bush or the guys who make the Bushism books? And Kazakhs themselves have no problems making fun of Bush—pointing out his resemblance to a monkey, criticizing harshly his politics, and always favorably comparing their own President. There is a whiff of “you can give it out, but you can’t take it” in the air.
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Kazakh pride is immeasurable (and rightly so for everyone should have some pride for their identity and nation) and these sorts of misrepresentations seem almost custom-made to pierce that pride at its most vulnerable points. However it is sad that the most reasonable answers seem to have come from kids on a blog somewhere : Ignore him or write an angry letter.
This post was written by...
Nathan Hamm – author of 2040 posts on Registan.net.
Nathan founded Registan.net in 2003. He was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Uzbekistan 2000-2001 and received his MA in Central Asian Studies from the University of Washington in 2007. Since 2007, he has worked full-time as an analyst, consulting with clients on Central Asian affairs, specializing in how socio-cultural factors shape risks and opportunities. Follow him on Twitter or drop him a line.
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Hmmm… so the question is not why Ali G is dissing Kazakhstan, but which nation is behind it?
Who hates Kazakhstan enough to enlist Borat to taint their image? It wouldn’t be the opposition, because Borat mocks the entire nation, not just goverment. The CIA? The Chinese? Shining Path guerillas from Peru? No, I bet it’s Uzbekistan. Karimov wants to scare foreign investors away from a Kazakhstan, hoping that they’ll then say “Eh, Uzbekistan’s close enough”.
“International Man of Mystery” is not what comes to mind when I think of Sacha Baron Cohen. But given his name, isn’t it obvious who’s behind this? I mean, Israel and Uzbekistan are pretty tight.
But seriously, I think they should keep in mind how this becomes fodder for the act. Maybe some Kazakh traditions regarding treatment of comedians need to make it into Borat’s act.
Wow I forgot he was jewish, I didn’t even think of that. Do you think there was the hint of that in the Kazakh statement, or do you think it was just silliness?
I doubt they had that in mind. I think that the statement is more just the kind of baseless positing of vast conspiracies that is sadly an all-too-common rhetorical device in official discourse in that neck of the woods. After all, if you don’t say who is behind the plot, how can it be refuted? And it just makes so much damned sense! I mean, why would someone poke fun at the Kazakhs (which I don’t think is the point insofar as the concept of Borat has a point) except as part of a plot to bring them low?
Misogynistic/Rape- and horse piss jokes don’t bother me much. What bugged me was the time when he almost incited a riot at a small-town rodeo. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6821600/
“After telling the crowd he supported America’s war on terrorism, he said, “I hope you kill every man, woman and child in Iraq, down to the lizards … And may George W. Bush drink the blood of every man, woman and child in Iraq.” He then sang a garbled version of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The Roanoke Times reported that the crowd turned “downright nasty.” One observer said “If he had been out there a minute longer, I think somebody would have shot him.” (…) It is not the first time Cohen has wooed controversy with his show, which airs on HBO. In one episode last year, Borat sang an anti-Semitic song called “Throw the Jew Down the Well” at a country music bar, prompting protests from the Anti-Defamation League.”
Aaah. Just what the world needs right now — more rednecks who after being subjected to such jokes will get all warm and fuzzy about a “Middle Eastern stan country”.
Lawsuit idea is silly — though it is perfectly in line with the “let’s behave in a Western way” mentality. If you get insulted, don’t hit the guy in the face, you sue him instead. Hey, that’s progress
Now, sending him a gift basket with several bottles of horse piss – that would be funnier.