Borat: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan is released next month, which is good news for us but bad news for anyone from Kazakhstan.
Thanks to Borat, Borat's TV show, Borat's movie and Borat's repeated use of that harrowing yellow swimsuit, Kazakhstan is fast turning into a global joke. So far any attempts that the Kazakhstan government has made to stop Borat has only made Borat stronger, like the spooky painting in Ghostbusters II. Now the Kazakhstan government has struck upon a crazy new plan: they want to invite Borat's creator Sacha Baron Cohen to Kazakhstan to load up on ideas to the sequel see what a forward-thinking nation it is.
You can have as many publicity stunts for your movie as you want – jumping on some furniture, burning a stuntman's penis off, pretending to break up – but when an entire country is screaming for your blood, that's when you know you've hit the bigtime. Just look at Sacha Baron Cohen – not so long ago he was schlepping about with Iain Lee on The 11 O'Clock Show and now he's signing up for Johnny Depp movies and it's all thanks to how much Kazakhstan hates him and his creation Borat.
Thanks to an appearance at the MTV Europe Awards – where he was flown in by Air Kazakh: a one eyed man drinking vodka and flying a propeller plane – Kazakhstan threatened to sue Borat, before deciding that he couldn't use his Kazakhstan-registered website anymore. And all was peaceful again – until stories about the release of the Borat: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan movie got back to Kazakhstan, where the government went into overdrive, trying to disparage Borat at every turn and even asked George Bush to do something about Borat, a plan which backfired when Borat himself beat the Kazakhstan government to the White House. Now though, Kazakhstan is learning to play softly-softly with Borat, and has invited him to see Kazakhstan for himself, as The Times reports:
"His trip could yield a lot of discoveries – that women not only travel inside buses but also drive their own cars, that we make wine from grapes, that Jews can freely attend synagogues and so on," said Rakhat Aliyev, the Deputy Foreign Minister, who issued the invitation… "I understand that the feelings of many people are hurt by Cohen’s show," said Mr Aliyev, who is son-in-law of the President, Nursultan Nazarbayev. "But we must have a sense of humour and respect other people’s freedom of creativity. "It’s useless to offend an artist and threaten to sue him. It will only further damage the country’s reputation and make Borat even more popular."
Good to see that Kazakhstan is finally catching on. Oh, and you remember that we were happy that there wasn't going to be a horrible Ali G-style single to promote Borat: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan? We were right – sort of. There's going to be a whole album of it, called Borat: Stereophonic Musical Listenings That Have Been Origin In Moving Film "Borat: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan." That hasn't got much to do with anything, but the name made us laugh.
Read more:
Kazakhs Ask Borat To Come Home – Times
[story by Stuart Heritage]
ChrisM says
Re. the Borat film (Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan), BBC World have just broadcast a news report on the film’s premiere in London. Check out http://www.chrismerriman.com/index.php/archives/209 for a video clip of it…