‘Very nice!’ Kazakhstan laughing with ‘Borat’
Tourism sector adopts character’s catchphrase
Kazakhstan is “very nice!” according to a tourism marketing campaign launched Monday by the country’s tourism sector in a nod to Sacha Baron Cohen’s “Borat” movies.
The Kazakhstan tourism board has embraced the catchphrase from the “Borat” movies for the first time to promote the country to visitors after rejecting the first “Borat” film for its derogatory portrayal of the nation situated between Russia and China. The sequel, “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan,” out on Amazon Prime this month, has made waves in the U.S. and beyond.
“The first Borat film came out in 2006, and Kazakhstan’s government responded with outrage, banning the film and threatening lawsuits,” Dennis Keen, the creator of the tourism concept and an American living in Kazakhstan, told USA TODAY. “When the sequel came out this year, Kazakh Tourism decided to flip the script and have fun with Borat’s catchphrase, ‘Very Nice!’, adapting it for the country’s tourism campaign.”
Kairat Sadvakassov, deputy chairman of Kazakh Tourism, said in a release that the slogan is the “perfect description” for the tourism potential.
“Kazakhstan’s nature is very nice; its food is very nice; and its people, despite Borat’s jokes to the contrary, are some of the nicest in the world,” Sadvakassov said.
Since 2017, the country has been offering travel visa-free to citizens of dozens of countries, including the United States – though that program has been suspended until Sunday. The suspension began in April as the coronavirus pandemic swept the globe.
The tourism campaign video’s description on YouTube touts the country as a place viewers may have heard of, but one that is nicer than “ever imagined.”
“There was a recognition that the last approach was a missed opportunity,” Keen said, noting much has changed since the first movie was released. “Kazakhstan is a stronger, wealthier, more confident nation that is ready to have fun with Borat’s words and turn them to their advantage.”
While some are embracing the second movie, others in Kazakhstan are protesting the release of the sequel as a result of how the country is portrayed: In Borat’s fake version of Kazakhstan, women, who are not allowed to drive, are kept in “wife cages,” and one of the biggest celebrities is a monkey porn star who is also a government official.
But the frustration goes beyond the movie’s jokes at the country’s expense. Ahead of its premiere, the movie’s public relations team created fake Instagram and Twitter accounts for government officials of the nation, according to Al Jazeera.
Upon learning the slogan had been adopted, Cohen told The New York Times that the film has “nothing to do with the real country.”
“I chose Kazakhstan because it was a place that almost nobody in the U.S. knew anything about, which allowed us to create a wild, comedic, fake world. The real Kazakhstan is a beautiful country with a modern, proud society – the opposite of Borat’s version.”