Page 58 - bneMag bne_December 2020_20201201

58 I Eurasia bne December 2020
"Very nice!" Kazakhstan adopts Borat's
catchphrase in tourism advertising
Kanat Shaku in Almaty
Kazakhstan has, for the first time ever, embraced the character of Borat. In the wake of the release of the Borat 2 film ("Borat Subsequent Moviefilm", the sequel to "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan"), it has started using one of the most popular Borat catchphrases, "Very nice!" in official tourism advertising, AV Club reported.
Kazakhstan’s officials have untill now not been the biggest fans of Sacha Baron Cohen's Borat character, who is depicted in an extremely satirical and deliberately provocative way, depicting his fictional homeland as misogynistic, homophobic and anti-Semitic.
"In COVID times, when tourism spending is on hold, it was good to see the country mentioned in the media," Kazakhstan Tourism board deputy
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chairman, Kairat Sadvakassov, told the New York Times. "Not in the nicest way, but it's good to be out there."
Sadvakassov added in a statement to the Huffington Post that adopting Borat’s catchphrase in the campaign
“offers the perfect description of Kazakhstan’s vast tourism potential in a short, memorable way.”
“Kazakhstan’s nature is very nice; its food is very nice; and its people, despite Borat’s jokes to the contrary, are some