Borat first came to my attention when a Kazakh friend of mine was asked, very apologetically, if she had heard of him. She hadn’t and the guy sent her an article from the New Yorker from the Kazakh Embassy in Washington. My reaction then was probably typical of most Americans: What’s the big deal? This guy is yet another in a long line of shock-comics. I’ve never found this sort of thing funny but it was obvious he had no connection to Kazakhstan and it wasn’t clear where the harm was. I was slightly amused by the fact that Vassilenko, the Embassy spokesperson was reluctant to admit that one of the traditional sports of Kazakhstan, kokpar, involves using a headless goat or sheep carcass as a ball. It has been noted that Kazakhstan as a nation wants desperately to be taken seriously, however trying to disown genuine traditions is not necessarily the best path to that. There is no shame in Janybek never having closed negotiations for a joint venture with Adidas in the 16th century.

Borat returned to my attention after I had spent a year in Kazakhstan, and was at a housewarming party. Two guys started asking me if I had heard of Borat and if what he said was true. I told them it wasn’t in any way based on truth but they insisted that he wouldn’t have named Kazakhstan and just made everything up. I explained that the joke apparently was on ignorant Westerners willing to believe that other nations are primitive. One of them pointed out that the USSR was known to be anti-Semitic (this was after this Borat stunt) and Kazakhstan probably was too. I pointed out that half the world had a history of anti-Semitism. They pressed—granted we were at a party and drinking and all that. I began to get annoyed, especially when they pressed on the question of women and how Borat’s “traditional” costumes were very revealing and how could it then be that traditional Kazakh dress is very modest? Surely, Kazakh women were sluts. (more…)