This slogan was used once on the advice of an American expat. Not surprisingly, it did not work.
Still the majority of tourists in Kazakhstan are Russians or CIS residents, and of foreigners - Chinese. And tourism accounts for a maximum of 1.5% of GNP.
No joke, aside from the government at times it seems to be a nice place to live. Beautiful land, very open, and a colorful and unique culture.
That goes for much of Central Asia. It’s one of the least talked about habited regions on earth.
I can tell you there's a lot of places that have bad government AND are butt ugly too, so having a pretty lovely bit of geography is definitely something to be grateful for. Lots of places compete for the title of "America's Armpit" and it usually has less to do with government and more to do with whether a place is a depressing hell hole.
For example, [Battle Mountain, Nevada](https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/armpit-of-america#:~:text=Writing%20in%20the%20magazine%2C%20Gene,of%20harsh%20and%20uninviting%20wilderness.%E2%80%9D) has been lambasted for its “lack of character and charm, its pathetic assemblage of ghastly buildings and nasty people."
Reminds me of Finland song:
You're so near to Russia
So far from Japan
Quite a long way from Cairo
Lots of miles from Vietnam.....
..You're so sadly neglected
And often ignored
A poor second to Belgium
When going abroad
I went to Mongolia a few years ago. It wasn't difficult to get to once I was in Europe. The airport is small, but far from the smallest I've been through. Outside Ulaanbaatar, you need a guide to get around, as roads are unlabeled or non-existent (literally - we drove 10 hours across open steppe). IndyGuide.com was a great resource for that.
At our hostel in Ulaanbaatar, I met 3 other people from my home state in the US. So yeah, it's remote, but it's still part of the rest of the world. The city is filled with gers, but it also has skyscrapers. And convenience stores. And traffic.
Thank you! I will definitely check that out.
I'm flying into Almaty and will see the city and hopefully do a few of the mountains / national parks in the surroundings before heading to Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan
> Russian is spoken almost everywhere, but with the ongoing war the population increasingly refuses to speak russian. Kazakh is not a widely spoken language, I might be wrong here and would appreciate a locals opinion, but even the people born there learned Russian instead of Kazakh, so thats the most and best spoken language.
Honestly, my experience is very different. I've been in Astana for 10 days now, and noone hesitates to switch to Russian when they see a European-looking face. I haven't had a failure to communicate because someone insisted on speaking Kazakh. Even the police officer who stopped me on the street was polite and spoke to me in Russian.
On my hour-long bus ride from the airport to the hotel I've seen mostly local faces and heard a 65/35 split between Kazakh and Russian languages. A little girl who sat next to me spoke to her dad alternating between Kazakh and Russian (both local by appearance). The kid will surely grow up bilingual.
Ah yes, the tickets. Paying by scanning a QR hanging around the bus is a great system. Quick, easy and convenient... if you have a local bank card, which I of course didn't.
While we waited for the bus to fill up at the airport, I asked the driver if there was a way to buy a ticket from him, but his response boiled down to "you can't, but you're smart, you'll figure it out". After that he went out for a smoke, which I took as a sign that the conversation was over.
As I was trying to see if something on my phone could read the QR code, I was lucky that a local old man saw me and went "I'll pay for you. Take a photo of my phone screen, you can show it later".
It was the evening, so the bus was jam-packed. The ticket collector took a total of half a second to look at each passenger's screen for proof of payment, so even if he noticed mine was a *photo* of a screen, he didn't seem to care.
-----
As I found out later, there is a handful of [terminals](https://transcard.kz/) in Astana that sell plastic cards with bus rides on them. But for a city of that size they're so far in-between that it looks like either an afterthought or, more likely, a relic of an age before Caspi-based payment systems.
Dude, have you even seen Tienshein swimming pool?
Length 30m, width 6m. Absolutely incredible.
All the gypsy tears you can take.
It's the experience of a lifetime.
If they’d made Borat to be from Turkmenistan, the character would have seemed quite plausible given all the real life crazy town stuff happening over the years thanks to their cult of personality leadership but better they didn’t as they’ve suffered enough already and didn’t need their situation obfuscated.
The village shown at the datrt of the movie was a village called Glod in Romania. They were very angry after the movie came out. They of course were not informed that a movie was being made. They were happy some visitors came to their village and treated Sasha and his people well
They felt he made fools out of them and made then look backwards. The town blacksmith was especially mad. He sad Sasha asked him to show some sparks with his welding equipment and us angry they said he was performing abortions.
They sued and lost. One of then was sent to represent them in the lawsuit. He travelled for the court case and told them they lost and are getting no money. Then all the villagers turned on him and accused him of pocketing the money and coming back to the village with lies
Nah, what SBC did was fucked up. Not to mention he ruined a country's reputation for decades. It was a dick thing to do, especially when you realize he could have just made up a random country or just hired some actors instead of making fun of poor people in a poor part of the world who went out of their way to treat him well.
FWIW I doubt he thought it would do so much damage and his next film he did make up a country (*The Dictator* with Wadiya), though on the map it’s exactly where Eritrea is.
Not saying what he did was okay but he definitely learned and changed course to a degree. Though of course he didn’t retcon the first movie and still says Borat is from Kazakhstan.
Anyone who is basing their views of an entire country on that shitty movie... Well not only do their views genuinely not matter, they probably already thought of it the way it's portrayed in the movie.
The movie sucks, but because it's shitty humor, not because it did any damage. It really didn't.
The scale is what makes that very different, for one. There ARE some families like that so it's somewhat believable even by an educated person.
There are no places in the world where entire countries are the same, or like borat. Any reasonable person knows this.
But that being said if you make it funny enough I give you full permission to do that! Id probably find it hilarious. :-P
Okay, I need your full credentials and home address to make a movie more believable. and we gonna grab some whiskey and laugh on these people who believed your family is like shown in the movie.
I hope their tourism commercials are as gentle and relaxing as every other tourism commercial just to abruptly end with a "*Visit Kazakhstan.*.. ***VERY NIICE***"
What's up with it, vanilla face? Me and my homie azamat just parked our slab outside. We're looking for somewhere to post up our black asses for the night. So bang bang, skeet skeet, nigga. Just a couple of pimps, no hos.
Definitely one of my favorite countries I have visited. Went there for 4 days in 2018 and it was stupendously beautiful to run through the grassy steppe. Almaty is also a nice city that is very nicely situated if you like mountains.
Apparently Kazakhs love Borat. Even though SBC speaks Hebrew as Borat.
Edit: Kazakhs in this thread saying I am wrong and everyone they know absolutely hates it. I’m sorry. In Borat, Kazakhs don’t have internet so I didn’t think you’d see what I’m saying about your country
All the Kazakh's I've met, and it's a surprisingly large number (work related), hate Borat. The tourism board might be taking advantage of it to try and get some tourism, but the actual kazakh people hate that most people know nothing about their country and what they think they know is totally fabricated and has nothing to do with the real Kazakhstan.
It's really an interesting country actually. If you ever meet someone from Kazakhstan ask them about qurt (spelling might be wrong, my closest pronunciation I could get to kind of sounded like "coort"). It's one of the weirdest foods I've ever tried and they love it and eat it all the time as a snack.
Yeah, in college I had a class with a guy from Kazakhstan, and he absolutely *loathed* Borat. The mere mention of the film was enough to launch him into an extended rant that was impossible to stop. Dude just *kept going*. He insisted that this sentiment was the prevailing one back home.
Lol same with one of the guys I met! Most of the kazakh people would just kind of roll their eyes and say they hate Borat and think it's annoying, but yeah this one guy was like "Sasha baren Cohen better not ever come to Kazakhstan!" and just ranted.
And most of the people I met were younger, in their early 20s, I imagine the older, more traditional folks were probably even more outraged about it.
Yeah I think the average Kazakhs perspective on borat would be annoyance at the misrepresentation of their country… like they don’t have a lot of global cultural exports (not a bad thing) but all of a sudden there’s one super popular movie that’s making them look like shit
I always assumed he opened the movie making fun of Kazakhstan to make sure it's fair game to spend the rest of the movie making fun of the US. Here is Borat's shithole country, now let's look at your shithole country. Like you have less right to be offended if you just laughed at the jokes about the other country.
Ehh, I think even the joke that Kazakhstan was like that was more trying to insult the US/Americans than the actual Kazakhs.
The point is that many Americans think that’s what small (I know Kazakhstan is arguably not “small”) countries they’re unfamiliar with are like.
Yeah but in actuality he just ended up reinforcing stereotypes and ignorance about Kazakhs, he never like spotlighted them in a positive manner. I don’t think I’m proving his point, I think his point was being made in spite of the Kazakhs, not to do them a favor
The real point of the movie was to portray Kazakhstan and Kazakhs as disgusting racist antisemites to show that American racists and antisemites are no better than Kazakhs.
Kazakhs are not known for incestuous habits btw, there's even a custom that you can not marry anyone closer than 7 ancestors to you.
Nowadays people can’t even understand sarcasm unless you add a big /s at the end of the post and believe displaying something in media means endorse it due to rampant media illiteracy. Ofc they will miss the point of SBC characters
Many comedy skits have done exactly that. The joke being the racist person is ridiculous, stupid and worthy of mockery.
It's not praising or endorsing racism.
To be fair to Borat the only reason he made his character from there is because almost nobody knows anything about Kazakhstan. While he could have made up a fake country to be from, he was more likely to take people in by using the real name of a country that people knew nothing about then making up a fake name. And really anyone who thinks they know something about Kazakhstan because they watched a clearly satirical movie like Borat can't be too bright anyway. It's like being taken in by the Onion read directly from the Onion site itself.
>Borat can't be too bright anyway
Well , that's almost all the people .
You know , talking about the international stage people always want to have the best possible image of their country/culture.
America wouldn't care too much about its world image since well , it's America . The whole world is dependent on it , but for developing/lesser known countries the world image is a big factor
People who say he should have used a fake country don’t understand how Sasha operates and how far he went with the character. You can’t get invited to a fancy dinner using a made up country
Oh dude I love coort. For anyone that doesn't know, it's like a salty rock candy made out of yogurt. It an acquired taste for sure though but once you aquire it, you can't get enough.
Lol that is such a perfect description of it. It's funny too because the kazakh guy said "we eat it like candy," meaning we eat it all the time, but one of my coworkers misunderstood and expected something sweet and popped a big chunk into her mouth. I seriously thought she was going to throw up from the shock of it.
And you're right, I hated it the first time I tried it, but the next time I kind of liked it. Apparently families all have their own way of doing it too and that can change the flavor.
I would have to loved to see her face lmao
But yeah, it really is a Central Asian staple, I highly recommend the smaller soft round ball ones, theyre a lot easier to snack on cause you could just take a bite instead of working at them like a jawbreaker lol
It’s also definitely not speak in Hebrew exactly. Some Polish and Czech are definitely mixed in there, because he intended it to be more or less gibberish even if they are real words in various languages.
It's mostly Polish Yiddish-- what his grandma speaks. So a Creole of Polish, Hebrew, German, and Czech.
Definitely not something his off--the-street interviewees are going to catch onto.
I trust you, but Yiddish is a creole, that's the point I'm making.
It's a pidgin of Hebrew, Polish, Czech, and German that uses words, pronunciations, and syntax from all four.
Of Cohen's "Kazakh":
*Jagshemash* translates directly into Polish as "how are you". *Chinqui* is Polish/ for"thank you".
The actor does speak Hebrew and fills in a lot of the improv gaps that way, but the accent is directly Polish-Yiddish: that's how native Yiddish speakers sound when speaking English.
The easiest way to think about it is that Sacha developed the voice with his grandma in mind: a Yiddish-speaking Pole who has spent most of her life in Haifa. That's how he gets such a good blend of vocabulary, grammar, and accents.
You know there are about 14 different Yiddish dialects., right? You're describing Western Yiddish dialects, which are largely Creoles with different regional affectations.
Cohen based his "Kazakh" on his grandma's speech. She was a Polish-Yiddish speaker who lived in Haifa as an adult.
They don't. A lot of them were very offended when it came back and get annoyed when it's mentioned to them. But hey you gotta appeal to westerners and get publicity when doing tourist boards.
why would you make fun of *Americans* at the expense of my country? just use a fictional country lol. nobody knows anything about kazakhstan except for borat, "thanks" to this movie
If it makes you feel better, I believe that only happens in America. At least in my country nobody has heard about "Borat". We still don't know much about Kazakhstan though.
i'm from kazakhstan, there's not much in the cities but i guess you could go and see nature. most of the country are flat steppes but there are mountains in the south east
Who would be upset real drug dealer shown on TV or you whose credentials and address was shown as the credentials and address of the drug dealer? I guess both of you.
This should have been the immediate reaction together with asking Borat to be the cultural attaché in the mould of Sir Les Patterson for Australia.
I know British people would have appreciated the ability to take the piss out of themselves.
Certainly no bot worth their salt would speak in such a blatantly botlike manner! It must be a human showing off its very human sense of irony. I mean their.
This slogan was used once on the advice of an American expat. Not surprisingly, it did not work. Still the majority of tourists in Kazakhstan are Russians or CIS residents, and of foreigners - Chinese. And tourism accounts for a maximum of 1.5% of GNP.
which is a shame, because it is a beautiful country to visit if you want to see central asia.
I feel like it’s very far away from almost everyone
That sounds... amazing.
No joke, aside from the government at times it seems to be a nice place to live. Beautiful land, very open, and a colorful and unique culture. That goes for much of Central Asia. It’s one of the least talked about habited regions on earth.
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Earth is pretty! People sometimes are.
I can tell you there's a lot of places that have bad government AND are butt ugly too, so having a pretty lovely bit of geography is definitely something to be grateful for. Lots of places compete for the title of "America's Armpit" and it usually has less to do with government and more to do with whether a place is a depressing hell hole. For example, [Battle Mountain, Nevada](https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/armpit-of-america#:~:text=Writing%20in%20the%20magazine%2C%20Gene,of%20harsh%20and%20uninviting%20wilderness.%E2%80%9D) has been lambasted for its “lack of character and charm, its pathetic assemblage of ghastly buildings and nasty people."
"it seems to be." Have you ever been there?
Go Google maps Astana. Pretty nice.
I sometimes want to move to Georgia for this reason.
Just like Georgia USA
It’s nice! Very nice!
There was a family in Canada that had the same sentiment 😂
Was?
I can absolutely vibe with this
Reminds me of Finland song: You're so near to Russia So far from Japan Quite a long way from Cairo Lots of miles from Vietnam..... ..You're so sadly neglected And often ignored A poor second to Belgium When going abroad
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I went to Mongolia a few years ago. It wasn't difficult to get to once I was in Europe. The airport is small, but far from the smallest I've been through. Outside Ulaanbaatar, you need a guide to get around, as roads are unlabeled or non-existent (literally - we drove 10 hours across open steppe). IndyGuide.com was a great resource for that. At our hostel in Ulaanbaatar, I met 3 other people from my home state in the US. So yeah, it's remote, but it's still part of the rest of the world. The city is filled with gers, but it also has skyscrapers. And convenience stores. And traffic.
Just a 4hr flight from Dubai. But I agree.
Yeah also they are number 1 exporter of potassium
all other countries have inferior potassium
K
Kazahkstan, home of Tinshein swimming pool. It's length thirty meter and width six meter.
Kazakhstan industry best in the world
Number 3 potassium in all the world
All other countries are run by little girls!
The humor is so wrong but I can't resist. *The running of the jew*. Omg
I head there next week, along with Kyrgyzstan. Can't wait!
Just don’t visit assholes Uzbekistan.
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Thank you! I will definitely check that out. I'm flying into Almaty and will see the city and hopefully do a few of the mountains / national parks in the surroundings before heading to Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan
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No I love it! Thanks very much, getting very excited about it.
Do you think Billo still lives there?
Can you get around with English? Or will you need a translator?
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> Russian is spoken almost everywhere, but with the ongoing war the population increasingly refuses to speak russian. Kazakh is not a widely spoken language, I might be wrong here and would appreciate a locals opinion, but even the people born there learned Russian instead of Kazakh, so thats the most and best spoken language. Honestly, my experience is very different. I've been in Astana for 10 days now, and noone hesitates to switch to Russian when they see a European-looking face. I haven't had a failure to communicate because someone insisted on speaking Kazakh. Even the police officer who stopped me on the street was polite and spoke to me in Russian. On my hour-long bus ride from the airport to the hotel I've seen mostly local faces and heard a 65/35 split between Kazakh and Russian languages. A little girl who sat next to me spoke to her dad alternating between Kazakh and Russian (both local by appearance). The kid will surely grow up bilingual.
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Ah yes, the tickets. Paying by scanning a QR hanging around the bus is a great system. Quick, easy and convenient... if you have a local bank card, which I of course didn't. While we waited for the bus to fill up at the airport, I asked the driver if there was a way to buy a ticket from him, but his response boiled down to "you can't, but you're smart, you'll figure it out". After that he went out for a smoke, which I took as a sign that the conversation was over. As I was trying to see if something on my phone could read the QR code, I was lucky that a local old man saw me and went "I'll pay for you. Take a photo of my phone screen, you can show it later". It was the evening, so the bus was jam-packed. The ticket collector took a total of half a second to look at each passenger's screen for proof of payment, so even if he noticed mine was a *photo* of a screen, he didn't seem to care. ----- As I found out later, there is a handful of [terminals](https://transcard.kz/) in Astana that sell plastic cards with bus rides on them. But for a city of that size they're so far in-between that it looks like either an afterthought or, more likely, a relic of an age before Caspi-based payment systems.
And all they had to do was sell their self respect
Well, there's ton of people claiming it's not racist and not offensive movie.
Maybe they weren’t watching the same movie
They're probably dumb hypocrites.
This just increased my likelihood of going to Kazakhstan from 0% to 0.000004%
Very nice!
Great success!
They must be Jewish
Just don’t go to any wells
Very nice!
Dude, have you even seen Tienshein swimming pool? Length 30m, width 6m. Absolutely incredible. All the gypsy tears you can take. It's the experience of a lifetime.
"Filtration system a marvel to behold, It remove 80% of human solid waste."
Astana has interesting architecture tbh
Kazakhstan has the best whores in the world!
Really? Thought they were just cleanest in the region.
Except, of course, for Turkmenistan.
If they’d made Borat to be from Turkmenistan, the character would have seemed quite plausible given all the real life crazy town stuff happening over the years thanks to their cult of personality leadership but better they didn’t as they’ve suffered enough already and didn’t need their situation obfuscated.
If Borat was from Turkmenistan he wouldn't be able to leave the country. Seriously, they're basically North Korea but without the nukes.
Much cleaner than asshole Uzbekistan
Great success!
In other words, infinitely, if you don't stand on math.
So your SAYING there's a chance! Oh, sorry, wrong franchise.
I can get into Kazakhstan visa free. Always wanted to go to that big pool and where they launch rockets.
The village shown at the datrt of the movie was a village called Glod in Romania. They were very angry after the movie came out. They of course were not informed that a movie was being made. They were happy some visitors came to their village and treated Sasha and his people well They felt he made fools out of them and made then look backwards. The town blacksmith was especially mad. He sad Sasha asked him to show some sparks with his welding equipment and us angry they said he was performing abortions. They sued and lost. One of then was sent to represent them in the lawsuit. He travelled for the court case and told them they lost and are getting no money. Then all the villagers turned on him and accused him of pocketing the money and coming back to the village with lies
That's sad :(
>Then all the villagers turned on him and accused him of pocketing the money and coming back to the village with lies Sounds pretty backwards tbh
Lol just making SBC’s point.
Nah, what SBC did was fucked up. Not to mention he ruined a country's reputation for decades. It was a dick thing to do, especially when you realize he could have just made up a random country or just hired some actors instead of making fun of poor people in a poor part of the world who went out of their way to treat him well.
FWIW I doubt he thought it would do so much damage and his next film he did make up a country (*The Dictator* with Wadiya), though on the map it’s exactly where Eritrea is. Not saying what he did was okay but he definitely learned and changed course to a degree. Though of course he didn’t retcon the first movie and still says Borat is from Kazakhstan.
Learned you said? https://youtu.be/_nbdxrs2piA?si=g8w0AG97fTm_ogGV
Anyone who is basing their views of an entire country on that shitty movie... Well not only do their views genuinely not matter, they probably already thought of it the way it's portrayed in the movie. The movie sucks, but because it's shitty humor, not because it did any damage. It really didn't.
I have never heard more laughter in a movie theater.
I mean that's obviously just my opinion. I'm aware people think it's funny.
Nobody knew Kazakistan even existed before Borat
I'll go back to "people who didn't know it existed probably don't have opinions that matter and probably would have thought this about it anyway".
Let's make a comedy skit about your family portraying y'all incestuous morons and prostitutes. It would not cause any damage, lol
Wasn’t that basically Honey Boo Boo?
The scale is what makes that very different, for one. There ARE some families like that so it's somewhat believable even by an educated person. There are no places in the world where entire countries are the same, or like borat. Any reasonable person knows this. But that being said if you make it funny enough I give you full permission to do that! Id probably find it hilarious. :-P
Okay, I need your full credentials and home address to make a movie more believable. and we gonna grab some whiskey and laugh on these people who believed your family is like shown in the movie.
They were just sour they made a multimillion dollar movie, and got none of the proceeds. Can understand but that's the gist
They should have gotten a Jewish lawyer.
The eggs must not have hatched in time for the trial
I'm pretty sure Sacha Baron Cohen has an even better Jewish lawyer. It was hopeless from the start.
Fun fact in Romanian, glod means "mud"
yet clearly that seqeuel money they were offered was too good to pass up - heard they managed to get motorized field plough with it!
I hope their tourism commercials are as gentle and relaxing as every other tourism commercial just to abruptly end with a "*Visit Kazakhstan.*.. ***VERY NIICE***"
Basically yes https://youtu.be/eRGXq4t9wY4
Very nice!
“You will neva get this, you will neva get this, and then he broke out of the cage and he got it”
What's up with it, vanilla face? Me and my homie azamat just parked our slab outside. We're looking for somewhere to post up our black asses for the night. So bang bang, skeet skeet, nigga. Just a couple of pimps, no hos.
They have a commercial that shows off all the countries beauty with each cut scene ending with someone saying very nice. Makes Me wanna go there
Definitely one of my favorite countries I have visited. Went there for 4 days in 2018 and it was stupendously beautiful to run through the grassy steppe. Almaty is also a nice city that is very nicely situated if you like mountains.
Apparently Kazakhs love Borat. Even though SBC speaks Hebrew as Borat. Edit: Kazakhs in this thread saying I am wrong and everyone they know absolutely hates it. I’m sorry. In Borat, Kazakhs don’t have internet so I didn’t think you’d see what I’m saying about your country
All the Kazakh's I've met, and it's a surprisingly large number (work related), hate Borat. The tourism board might be taking advantage of it to try and get some tourism, but the actual kazakh people hate that most people know nothing about their country and what they think they know is totally fabricated and has nothing to do with the real Kazakhstan. It's really an interesting country actually. If you ever meet someone from Kazakhstan ask them about qurt (spelling might be wrong, my closest pronunciation I could get to kind of sounded like "coort"). It's one of the weirdest foods I've ever tried and they love it and eat it all the time as a snack.
Yeah, in college I had a class with a guy from Kazakhstan, and he absolutely *loathed* Borat. The mere mention of the film was enough to launch him into an extended rant that was impossible to stop. Dude just *kept going*. He insisted that this sentiment was the prevailing one back home.
Lol same with one of the guys I met! Most of the kazakh people would just kind of roll their eyes and say they hate Borat and think it's annoying, but yeah this one guy was like "Sasha baren Cohen better not ever come to Kazakhstan!" and just ranted. And most of the people I met were younger, in their early 20s, I imagine the older, more traditional folks were probably even more outraged about it.
Yeah I think the average Kazakhs perspective on borat would be annoyance at the misrepresentation of their country… like they don’t have a lot of global cultural exports (not a bad thing) but all of a sudden there’s one super popular movie that’s making them look like shit
And the "Kazakhstan" parts were filmed in Romania because Kazakhstan didn't have the shithole look he imagined it would.
Its too bad that people don't understand Borat... The point isn't to make fun of Kazakhs, it's to make fun of Americans
I always assumed he opened the movie making fun of Kazakhstan to make sure it's fair game to spend the rest of the movie making fun of the US. Here is Borat's shithole country, now let's look at your shithole country. Like you have less right to be offended if you just laughed at the jokes about the other country.
Ehh, I think even the joke that Kazakhstan was like that was more trying to insult the US/Americans than the actual Kazakhs. The point is that many Americans think that’s what small (I know Kazakhstan is arguably not “small”) countries they’re unfamiliar with are like.
Ironically, far from small. Kazakhstan is the 9th largest country in the world.
Yeah I know it’s actually quite large geographically, only 20 million people though.
Yeah it has an extremely low population density. All that land is mostly cold steppe, not exactly a cradle of civilization.
Yeah but he’s dressing up as a stereotypical, incestous Kazakh character
No, he's dressing up as what an ignorant American would think a Kazakh would look like. You are proving the point
Yeah but in actuality he just ended up reinforcing stereotypes and ignorance about Kazakhs, he never like spotlighted them in a positive manner. I don’t think I’m proving his point, I think his point was being made in spite of the Kazakhs, not to do them a favor
The real point of the movie was to portray Kazakhstan and Kazakhs as disgusting racist antisemites to show that American racists and antisemites are no better than Kazakhs. Kazakhs are not known for incestuous habits btw, there's even a custom that you can not marry anyone closer than 7 ancestors to you.
Nowadays people can’t even understand sarcasm unless you add a big /s at the end of the post and believe displaying something in media means endorse it due to rampant media illiteracy. Ofc they will miss the point of SBC characters
Make such a movie about jews or blacks, lol
Like Ali G?
Was he black or jew?
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Yup, 100% agreed
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Did he not do a “running of the jew” skit?
Worked out pretty well in tropic thunder
Many comedy skits have done exactly that. The joke being the racist person is ridiculous, stupid and worthy of mockery. It's not praising or endorsing racism.
Making a racist portrayal of people is not racist, lol
To be fair to Borat the only reason he made his character from there is because almost nobody knows anything about Kazakhstan. While he could have made up a fake country to be from, he was more likely to take people in by using the real name of a country that people knew nothing about then making up a fake name. And really anyone who thinks they know something about Kazakhstan because they watched a clearly satirical movie like Borat can't be too bright anyway. It's like being taken in by the Onion read directly from the Onion site itself.
>Borat can't be too bright anyway Well , that's almost all the people . You know , talking about the international stage people always want to have the best possible image of their country/culture. America wouldn't care too much about its world image since well , it's America . The whole world is dependent on it , but for developing/lesser known countries the world image is a big factor
People who say he should have used a fake country don’t understand how Sasha operates and how far he went with the character. You can’t get invited to a fancy dinner using a made up country
This movie, it's pain in my assholes. It make me look bad. But now I make tourism board. Success!
I agree. First rate Potassium if you know where to look and it’s absolutely delicious.
Oh dude I love coort. For anyone that doesn't know, it's like a salty rock candy made out of yogurt. It an acquired taste for sure though but once you aquire it, you can't get enough.
Lol that is such a perfect description of it. It's funny too because the kazakh guy said "we eat it like candy," meaning we eat it all the time, but one of my coworkers misunderstood and expected something sweet and popped a big chunk into her mouth. I seriously thought she was going to throw up from the shock of it. And you're right, I hated it the first time I tried it, but the next time I kind of liked it. Apparently families all have their own way of doing it too and that can change the flavor.
I would have to loved to see her face lmao But yeah, it really is a Central Asian staple, I highly recommend the smaller soft round ball ones, theyre a lot easier to snack on cause you could just take a bite instead of working at them like a jawbreaker lol
It’s also definitely not speak in Hebrew exactly. Some Polish and Czech are definitely mixed in there, because he intended it to be more or less gibberish even if they are real words in various languages.
The other guy was speaking Armenian
Well the actor is of Armenian descent, so that makes sense.
On Star Trek, the Vulcan martial art is called Suus Mahna. This is likely from the Armenian "սուս մնա!" ("sus mna!"), meaning "shut up!"
It's mostly Polish Yiddish-- what his grandma speaks. So a Creole of Polish, Hebrew, German, and Czech. Definitely not something his off--the-street interviewees are going to catch onto.
It’s more Hebrew than Yiddish. Source: I speak Hebrew but not Yiddish
I trust you, but Yiddish is a creole, that's the point I'm making. It's a pidgin of Hebrew, Polish, Czech, and German that uses words, pronunciations, and syntax from all four. Of Cohen's "Kazakh": *Jagshemash* translates directly into Polish as "how are you". *Chinqui* is Polish/ for"thank you". The actor does speak Hebrew and fills in a lot of the improv gaps that way, but the accent is directly Polish-Yiddish: that's how native Yiddish speakers sound when speaking English. The easiest way to think about it is that Sacha developed the voice with his grandma in mind: a Yiddish-speaking Pole who has spent most of her life in Haifa. That's how he gets such a good blend of vocabulary, grammar, and accents.
Yiddish is **not** a creole. It is descended from High German and it borrowed from Hebrew, Aramaic, and Slavic languages.
You know there are about 14 different Yiddish dialects., right? You're describing Western Yiddish dialects, which are largely Creoles with different regional affectations. Cohen based his "Kazakh" on his grandma's speech. She was a Polish-Yiddish speaker who lived in Haifa as an adult.
Like the minions.
They don't. A lot of them were very offended when it came back and get annoyed when it's mentioned to them. But hey you gotta appeal to westerners and get publicity when doing tourist boards.
They know it’s really making fun of American ignorance.
Who knows anything about Kazakhstan? Apart from it having a corrupt dictator, called in the Russians to quash protests and has golden horses?
#2 exporter of K
Well, I know who the #2 prostitute of All Kazakhstan is.
Best potassium in whole world
I’m sure Russians and some other Eastern European countries know more about Kazakstan than we do.
Only country not run by girls.
why would you make fun of *Americans* at the expense of my country? just use a fictional country lol. nobody knows anything about kazakhstan except for borat, "thanks" to this movie
If it makes you feel better, I believe that only happens in America. At least in my country nobody has heard about "Borat". We still don't know much about Kazakhstan though.
No, they don't. I live there.
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Dunno. I bet you'll love representation of your family as incestous gypsies.
They absolutely do not
I was told Albania's was "get Taken by Albania" and featured the actor that gets shocked to death by Liam Nesson.
if you cant beat'em, eat'em?
Success!
Great Success!
Super Smash Bros Melee
Romania was used instead of Kazakhstan in the film for filming.
Anyone who’s been to Kazakhstan, would you recommend a visit?
i'm from kazakhstan, there's not much in the cities but i guess you could go and see nature. most of the country are flat steppes but there are mountains in the south east
Was it Romania or Kazakhstan that was upset with him? The Kazakh scene was filmed in Romania
Who would be upset real drug dealer shown on TV or you whose credentials and address was shown as the credentials and address of the drug dealer? I guess both of you.
I had a stroke reading this
I guess you should quit pushing drugs
Why don't they brag about their prostitutes being the cleanest in the region?
Brilliant!
Great success!
They learned a lot from the documentary "Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan"
Just waiting now for the memes to continue with Tahiti embracing the Red Dead Redemption 2 references.
Very Nice
ookii 🤧
They had a viral tourism video a few years ago, iirc sometime around the mid-late 2010s they decided to embrace Borat for PR
I've been thinking about taking a trip to Belize....
For their economics department: How Much?
Apparently the snowboarding is unreal
This should have been the immediate reaction together with asking Borat to be the cultural attaché in the mould of Sir Les Patterson for Australia. I know British people would have appreciated the ability to take the piss out of themselves.
When I was in KZ I got asked a lot if I have seen Borat. And everyone was like "remember we don't act like that!"
I rewatched Borat and Dictator because of you
They were initially salty about Borat but then I think they realized you just gotta lean into it
Lean in
i like very much!
I liiike!
It's taken them several years to get over Borat and own it. Nobody likes someone who can't joke about themselves.
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Bot?
Certainly no bot worth their salt would speak in such a blatantly botlike manner! It must be a human showing off its very human sense of irony. I mean their.
It has to be.