Kazakhstan now finds ‘Borat’ is ‘very nice’
In 2005, Dennis Keen, a high school junior in Los Angeles, was applying for a summer exchange program. After not much deliberation, he decided it would be punky and funny to forgo France and Spain and go to Kazakhstan.
“People didn’t know where it was,” Keen said. “In Kazakhstan, there’s pre-Borat and post-Borat.”
He was referring, of course, to “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan,” the Sacha Baron Cohen comedy that hit theaters in 2006. In the movie, Cohen pretends to be a television reporter visiting America from the former Soviet republic, whose people supposedly drink horse urine, consider women property and celebrate an anti-Semitic version of the running of the bulls. (The bulls are replaced by Jews.) The Kazakh government banned the film, threatened to sue Cohen and took out ads defending the country’s honor.
And so when Cohen released a trailer Sept. 29 for a “Borat” sequel, which he developed in secret and which debuted Friday on Amazon Prime, the satirist was prepared for another fight with the Kazakh government. It never came.
“It was like, ‘Oh, again?’ ” said Kairat Sadvakassov, of Kazakhstan’s tourism board, who has a master’s degree in tourism management from New York University. The board was determined to avoid overreacting and letting Cohen make it look foolish once again.
“The decision was made to let it die its natural death and not respond,” Sadvakassov said.
When Keen learned about the sequel, he thought that rather than ignore Cohen, Kazakhstan should embrace the Borat character’s catchphrase and turn it into the tourism slogan: “Kazakhstan. Very nice!”
It’s the kind of idea you get when you own a tourism company and a pandemic has annihilated tourism.
“I’ve had a lot of free time,” Keen said. “Also, I just had a baby. When he grows up, I don’t want him to be ashamed of Borat.”
Two weeks ago, Keen and a friend, Yermek Utemissov, who helps foreign film companies arrange shoots in Kazakhstan, pitched the board of tourism. They got an immediate yes. The two produced internet-friendly 12-second spots featuring people walking around Kazakhstan and observing that it’s “very nice.”