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It’s not often that a former Soviet state other than Russia becomes a matter of national attention in the UK. It takes a revolution in Kyrgyzstan or the possibility of war in Georgia to propel news from these countries towards the front pages of the British press for a day or two, before everyone forgets about it.
But for the last two weeks, Britain has been talking about little else but Kazakhstan. The whole country has been going Kazakh crazy, with talk shows, newspaper articles and millions of email forwards all containing a Kazakh flavor. Unfortunately for the Central Asian state, however, this gossip was not about Nomad, the $40 million recently-released Kazakh epic film, or about competition for access to the Tengiz oil field, the sixth largest in the world, nor was it about architect Norman Foster’s new pyramid structure in Kazakhstan’s newborn capital Astana.
Instead, the hype was around Borat Sagdiyev, the fictional creation of British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen. Over the course of the last two years, his “Kazakh” journalist has gone from a cult creation known by a few British fans to a worldwide phenomenon. In 2005, Borat was popular enough to present the MTV Europe Music Awards – an event to which he arrived with a drunken pilot in a propeller plane marked “Air Kazakh.” With the release of his film this week, Borat mania has reached its peak. The film, entitled “Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan,” features Borat being sent to the United States by the Kazakh Ministry of Information to find solutions to Kazakhstan’s problems, which are – he says – “economic, social, and Jew.”
While Borat’s buffoonery, casual anti-Semitism, and outrageous statements about life in Kazakhstan have brought him fame in the West, they are a source of concern and offense in Kazakhstan itself. “Borat really took the Kazakhs by surprise,” said one foreign journalist based in Almaty. “It was a totally unexpected offensive – who could have thought that out of all the developing countries, he [Baron Cohen] would have picked Kazakhstan.”
In the beginning, Kazakh government officials wondered if Baron Cohen’s character was not a political plot to discredit Kazakhstan, and threatened him with legal action. But for Baron Cohen, all publicity was good publicity, and the Kazakhs’ perplexed anger only served to increase attention on his character and make Kazakhstan look even more ridiculous. “It took them a long time to realize that they were making the situation much, much worse,” said the Almaty-based journalist.
In the run-up to the film’s release, newspapers and television programs around the world have featured interviews with Borat, discussing the outrageous statements he makes about Kazakhstan. “In recent months, loads of Western journalists have turned up in Kazakhstan on a serious quest to find people drinking horse urine and Central Asia’s cleanest prostitutes,” said the Almaty journalist. “They may not drink horse urine or punch goats,” ran a typical piece in Britain’s The Observer, but the reality was “more strange and perplexing than any comedy spoof.”
Borat has frequently claimed that he is the fourth most famous person in Kazakhstan – the first, he says, is “animal actor Johnny the Monkey,” the second is President Nursultan Nazarbayev, and third is “ex-Olympic gymnast Lily Utmarkan, who now perform in Kazakh State Circus, where she famous for be able to put one foot in ear while other in her vagine,” he told the Sunday Times in his trademark stilted English.
The one thing in this list that is correct is that Nazarbayev is indeed the second most famous Kazakh. But the most famous “Kazakh” of all on the world stage these days is undoubtedly Borat himself. A Google search for “Borat” yields over 16 million results, the same search for “Nazarbayev” returns less than 500,000. In Britain, no mention of Kazakhstan is possible without people immediately referencing the bumbling comic reporter. A country that few people in the West know about is now indelibly linked with the offensive and incompetent Baron Cohen character.
But Borat’s claim that he was sent to the United States to get information on how to solve Kazakhstan’s problems is actually not so far from the truth. This spring, the Kazakh government really did send a team of its officials to the United States for “cultural learnings.” A delegation of around 30 top-level civil servants and vice regional governors attended lectures at Yale University’s School of Management, and toured New York and Washington D.C.
Constantine Rusanov, who worked as a translator for the delegates, recalled that some of their behavior was worthy of Borat himself. “They were fascinated by malls, and wanted to go there every day,” he said. “A few of them asked where they could find prostitutes, and some of the regional officials drank all the time, despite professing to be Muslims.”
During his film, Borat quaffs a bottle of vodka while taking a driving lesson, and frequently assumes that any woman is a prostitute, asking women passing by him on the street in New York “How much?”– much to their bewilderment.
According to Rusanov, many members of the delegation had heard of Borat, and despite the passing similarities in their behavior, voiced extreme displeasure at his madcap antics and anti-Kazakh jokes. Indeed, Kazakhs are now faced with Borat wherever they turn. “When I first came here three years ago, I got blank looks when I said I was from Kazakhstan,” said one young Kazakh woman who works as a cleaner in London. “But now, I’ve started just saying I’m Russian because I’m sick of all the Borat jokes,” she said.
In one of Borat’s songs, which a bar of Americans joins him in singing, he intones that “In my country there is problem/ And that problem is the Jew.” The Kazakhs themselves, however, might be more inclined to think that their biggest problem right now is Borat Sagdiyev himself.
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