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Since I received my robust dose of Borat jokes over the last 14 years, let me write here my two cents regarding this beautiful artistic creation. Baron Cohen& #39;s Borat franchise is based on cynicism. 1/11
Sacha has it both ways: political satire about the US for the non-bigots and good old reinforcement of ignorant prejudice against poorer countries for the bigots. Bingo: tickets sold to both bigots and non-bigots. 2/11
The choice of Kazakhstan was not random at all, and it is instead a cynical marketing calculation. The country is (1) not strong enough to fight back (I am looking forward to seeing Sacha& #39;s fake press conferences in front of the Chinese embassy in Washington DC); 3/11
(2) not an important market for his movies; (3) not a former "Western" colony, and not even clearly framed in "race" terms in the US or the UK (incidentally, he can thus go around pretending to be a Qazaq with an American audience, when he clearly does not look like one); 4/11
(4) an existing one. The last point is important: many people from Kazakhstan keep asking why on Earth he could not just make up a country, instead of using theirs. 5/11
But provoking a weak country is a great marketing stunt: you get a lot of indirect advertising by its government furious but toothless reaction (this time, the Kazakhstani government learned the lesson and stayed quiet). 6/11
With the first movie he clearly offended millions of people from Kazakhstan. A reason for maybe *not* doing a second movie? Not at all, obviously. Contacted by the New York Times (link below), he replied: 7/11
“This is a comedy, and the Kazakhstan in 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,… 8/11
…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.” 9/11
I am not sure what a "proud society" is, but most importantly, this kind of statement is not too different from the behaviour of tabloids& #39; editors who make money by preying on people& #39;s privacy, and then apologise at the bottom of an internal page months later. 10/11
In any case, I am looking forward to watching the next Baron Cohen& #39;s character, a slimy guy from an African country, in blackface maybe - obviously conceived to expose white racism in the US. Unlikely? I agree. 11/11
