Top 10 Reasons NOT to See the Borat Movie

Top 10 Reasons NOT to See the Borat Movie

Guest Blog Written By Anar Umurzak

As fighting racism has become a major discussion in the US and abroad, many viewers are reacting very differently to the new Borat movie in 2020 than they may have reacted 14 years ago when the first Borat movie came out. Anar Umurzak, a Kazakh scholar and entrepreneur, has agreed to share lesser-known facts about her homeland and why Borat’s portrayal of Kazakhstan is not only not funny, but it is offensive and painful.

1. Kazakhstan is the 9th largest country in the world, Kazakhs are an ancient nation with our own culture, language and tradition, who were standing on their feet many centuries BCE. Historical facts and artifacts have been taken away, changed and hidden from us. Millions of Kazakhs were killed, forced to migrate, kept in labor camps by Russia and the communist regime yet we fought in World War II against Nazis and managed to get our own independence only in 1991. Then we established a new flag, national emblem and anthem. “We have raised from the dead for the 1001st time” like the famous Kazakh poet Tumanbay Moldagaliyev wrote. We started building Kazakh schools again to teach children their native tongue. We finally were able to travel the world and represent our beautiful yet complicated country. Let’s Talk About It • A podcast on Anchor

2. Borat has inspired acts of violence, bullying and harassment towards Kazakh children and women, including towards children adopted from Kazakhstan, who do not know as much about their heritage and have already suffered personal trauma.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMwGe2oUGSk 

3. Borat hijacked our cultural identity and whitewashed an Asian ethnic minority of 50,000 Kazakhs in the USA. We have already suffered so much repression that we almost lost our native tongue. Many of us are still taking Kazakh as a foreign language in order to get fluent at it. Suppressing one’s identity might lead to backlash and is not good for further healthy integration of new immigrants.

4. Borat’s creators stand for #StopHateforProfit, but they have ironically profited from the ignorant and untrue portrayal of Kazakhs. 

5. Even though there are claims that the film is not mocking Kazakhstan, but rather hypocrisy and prejudice, it only accomplishes its goal of showing those societal flaws by crude mockery of Kazakh people, an inherent hypocrisy itself. 

6. Borat hijacked our name, flag, our national dance, and our native tongue. Mockery, cyber attacks and even pressure for our movement to stop the ignorance are still going on.

7. Comedy does not have to be racist. Portraying an ethnic minority as garbage eating, urine drinking, incest loving villagers is not comedy, it is racial abuse. (https://twitter.com/lolaaskar/status/1321057994403155969) Cultural appropriation & crude perversion of rich Kazakh cultural traditions (e.g. horse milk drinking vs horse urine in “Borat”). Racial hate for profit & monetizing racism. Using a broad platform of white privilege establishment (Amazon Prime Video) to further reinforce ethnic oppression. https://twitter.com/lolaaskar/status/1320275357929537536 

8. Yes, our government embraced him this time(2020), leaving us, Kazakh people alone in their struggles, because last time(2006) they sent a note of protest to the international community and no action was taken. Moreover, a new movie came out, despite the fact Borat’s creators knew how we all felt about it.

9. By organizing flash-mobs and creating fake twitter accounts like Kazakhstan government, Borat is hijacking the tools that are used by our opposition and political activists back in Kazakhstan. There are serious political repressions happening in Kazakhstan and people who need help won’t be able to get it. Our flag, name, language, culture, history, struggles, the very identity of all of us Kazakhs, as people, is being erased in front of our eyes. We are drowning in harassment, mockery, bullying, repression, racial abuse, prejudice, discrimination, injustice, hypocrisy 

10. Borat is not only creating content for bullies, but also it is creating false portrayal of Kazakh-Uzbek relations. Uzbeks are our brothers, we were one nation until the 15th century and their struggle is our struggle.