Oh, where are you, Borat?

A mustachioed man in an old-fashioned suit stood outside the Kazakh embassy in Washington, surrounded by reporters, and read from a piece of paper: “My name is Borat Sagdiev ... I declare that an advertising campaign in the American media, which claims that women's rights and all religions are respected in my native Kazakhstan are equal, these are propaganda tricks of hostile Uzbekistan.” Then, already at the White House, he tried through the security guard to convey an invitation to the premiere of his film to "the great military leader George Walter Bush", with a guarantee that "a secure place would be provided for his cars and wives."

Perhaps the security guard of the residence of the President of the United States did not even realize that he had refused the new superstar. Borat Sagdiev is now more popular than James Bond in the States. Borat: Exploring America's Culture for the Benefit of the Glorious People of Kazakhstan grossed $26 million in its first weekend of release in the United States, despite being limited to 800 copies by Fox. Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 was the previous champion in box office (up to 1000 screens) with $23 million. Both of them are ultimately a provocation on the theme of American arrogance, the inadequacy of Washington neo-conservatives and the conflict between the "developed" and "developing" countries. Moore did not come out funny and not too believable - few people believed that Bush was to blame for everything. But "Borat" has achieved its only goal - the Americans laugh until colic. And only Russia is offended.

The Kazakh journalist Borat is easily recognizable by his huge black mustache, Eastern European accent and the eternal first phrase: “Hello, ai like yu!” He is 34 years old, he - in the past "gypsy catcher" - is proud that he has "the tightest anus in the village" and that he can hit any gypsy with a stone from 15 meters - of course, if the victim is tightly tied. In the US, a Kazakh reporter is filming a documentary about American culture on the instructions of his native Ministry of Information: if the film is not commercially successful, Borat will be executed in his homeland. The journalist is trying very hard, but on the way he has a new goal - to marry the actress Pamela Anderson, famous for her gorgeous bust.

All this disgrace is the fruit of the imagination of the famous English comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, producer and screenwriter of the film. Borat became one of his masks. In addition to him, Cohen created a whole galaxy of bright characters - the black rapper Ali G, the Austrian homosexual Bruno and the Albanian journalist Christo - the prototype of Sagdiev.

Now the most authoritative film portal imdb.com has included Cohen's comedy in the list of the best films of all time - in 136th place, behind the classic "Platoon" by Oliver Stone. Borat's birthplace, Kazakhstan, also received a share of fame: the description of the country took the second most popular place after the United States in Wikipedia, the main reference resource on the Internet. The portal administration was forced to close this certificate for editing: users constantly entered into it that Borat Sagdiev became the new president of the republic.

Cohen has been portraying a Kazakh journalist on British television for several years, but for some reason the authorities of Kazakhstan noticed this only recently. Last year, at the MTV video awards ceremony, Borat Sagdiev kissed the feet of a plump man, calling him the president of his country, and shouted goodbye to the audience: “Peace! I love you! Except Uzbekistan, they are freaks!” Official Astana behaved exactly as Borat Sagdiev described his dictators. A representative of the Kazakh Foreign Ministry declared Borat's speech "a political order to form a negative image of the country", the republic's ambassador to the UK, Yerlan Idrisov, in an article in the Times, called Cohen's character a pig, and Borat's website borat.kz was immediately closed.

Then it finally dawned on the official Astana that the country itself, and not the fictional homeland of Borat, was becoming a laughing stock. And officials changed tactics: in September, the Foreign Ministry officially invited the comedian to visit, and the most influential daughter of the president in the country, Dariga Nazarbayeva, noticed that Borat's website did much less harm to the state than its closure.

But then Moscow picked up the baton of stupidity. Last week, the Agency for Culture and Cinematography sent an official letter to 20th Century Fox CIS strongly recommending that the film not be shown on the screens: they say, it "may offend representatives of certain religions and nationalities." However, officials later said that the news about the ban was a publicity stunt for the distributors, and the deputy head of the agency, Alexander Golutva, only expressed his negative opinion to them after watching the comedy.

Nevertheless, the Russian premiere, scheduled for November 30, is still in doubt. 20th Century Fox CIS reported that the final decision on the release of "Borat ..." will be made this week. In other CIS countries, distributors have not yet encountered any difficulties. And as one of the Fox employees admitted, they did not even think about the rental in Kazakhstan.

"Do not give up your own" is the Kremlin's true policy towards "friends in the CIS," believes Alexei Mitrofanov, a member of the Liberal Democratic Party. He was the producer of a scandalous erotic film about the relationship between Yulia Timoshenko and Mikhail Saakashvili - and a year ago he received a rental license from Roskino without any problems. The screening took place in several metropolitan cinemas at once. “Of course, if Yulia and Misha were friends with Vladimir Vladimirovich [like Nazarbayev], then problems would arise,” the State Duma deputy believes.

True, the Russians don't give a damn about the high interstate friendship: the film was very much expected here. Last Wednesday, the query "Borat" in Russian search engines confidently occupied the second position. Sellers of pirated DVDs in Gorbushka promise to "drive the Kazakh" by the middle of this week - they don't doubt for a second that the demand is stable. “Our public will be ecstatic to watch stupid Americans shy away from stupid chumps. Everyone will be sure that we, the Russians, are, of course, the smartest, ”explains the reasons for the expected success of the famous translator“ Goblin ”, also known as Dmitry Puchkov.

But in fact, you have to laugh at yourself: Borat Sagdiev is, in fact, the embodiment of a stereotypical idea of ​​all the wild, but harmless inhabitants of Eastern Europe and the countries of the former USSR, taken together. He greets him in Czech, his sister's name is Natalya, Borat's assistant speaks Armenian, and he speaks Hebrew, half of the plots are accompanied by Russian folk music, and at the end of the film there is a photograph of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.

Borat angered many, almost like a caricature of the prophet Mohammed. A resident of Almaty, 21-year-old journalism student Petr Karandashov perceives Cohen's jokes as an insult. “If I come to the States or to the same Russia, I don’t want anyone to ask if it’s true that we [residents of Kazakhstan] drink [horse] urine and chase gypsies. This is already slander and an insult is obtained, ”the student chuckles. He did not watch the film in its entirety, but he saw videos of Borat on the Web.

In Russia, they clearly saw themselves in the mirror. Even a connoisseur of obscene anecdotes Roman Trakhtenberg refused to voice Borat for the Russian version of the film. “I don’t see anything funny in the fact that everyone and everything is humiliated. Although it is impossible to remove the film from the rental, because there should be no censorship, ”the famous comedian believes. And the president of the Club of cheerful and resourceful Alexander Maslyakov believes that Cohen's jokes have no place on Russian air: “In KVN, the Kazakh team teases both Russians and their own customs - but they never humiliate anyone. And I would not let the episodes from “Borat ...” into KVN.

A comment

RUSSIAN BORATH DAY

It is now possible to fix the rental ban only by declaring a holiday on the day it starts

MARK AMES  

Thanks to some half-wit from the Federal Agency for Culture and Cinematography, a whole generation of Europeans and North Americans has an extra reason to despise the Russians. The fact is that the average European or American does not give a damn about the problems of democracy or human rights in Russia. But they care about Borat. And now Russia in Western minds will be on a par with countries on the duty list of cheap comedians, such as Burkina Faso, North Korea and Papua New Guinea, none of which, by the way, began to ban Borat. To understand why Russia risks incurring the wrath of the West, you need to understand why Borat is loved there. In fact, this character is a brilliantly executed comedic device, which in English is called prank, which can be roughly translated as "prank". The best examples of prank usually show fools and bastards as pigs for what they really are. Playing on such prejudices as racism, sexism and anti-Semitism, he exposes all the scoundrels and idiots in America, who have been treated too softly in our official culture so far, and exposes them to ridicule and humiliation. This is a very cruel prank, but public punishment, in fact, a public execution, is one of the secrets of Borat's charm. Most young Americans, oppressed by sugary, politically correct official culture, see Borat not just as a handsome Kazakh (or Soviet) savage, but as their hero.

Such pranks are sometimes dangerous. Once we wanted to take revenge for the fact that a young intern of our newspaper The eXile, a botany student, could not pass face control in any pretentious club in Moscow. On Sunday night, we called the elite clubs and said that the most famous club figure in New York, Bunce McGillicuddy (Bance - in English "buttocks", McGillicuddy - a typical surname of a farmer from the outback) was coming to Moscow, and asked to clean the VIP area and reserve it for Bunce. We asked the club directors if they had heard of Bunce and they said, “Of course, what a question! Tea, not a province. We dressed our nerd in a fashionable outfit, found two sexy girls and an African American to play the role of a security guard. And they filmed how the directors kiss his hands and escort him to the VIP zone. After we published the article, we received a couple of threats against us.

By banning Borat, Russia falls into a classic comedic trap. She makes herself the perfect $145 million target for the British comedian. If I were President Putin, I would be well aware that there are only two ways to smooth the situation: either answer the joke with a surprise and massive nuclear strike on the West, thereby destroying both the comedian and his audience ... or if Putin prefers to continue to spend his holidays in Sardinia , he could take less drastic measures and declare November 30 as Borat Day - the day when all Russians will be required to watch the film under pain of exile in Siberia. Such a gesture, no doubt, will inspire the actor, Sacha Baron Cohen, to visit Moscow... Then it will be possible to capture him, torture him and force him to make a sequel in which Russia will look like the most cultured and joke-tolerant country in the world.

The author is the editor-in-chief of the Moscow newspaper The eXile