Tuesday, October 31, 2006

More Humor Impaired

I have to say this is a bit of an overreaction.
Borat beware: Accept an invitation by a top Kazakh official to find out what the country is really like and you could be in for a nasty surprise.

"I'd kill this impostor on the spot," said Eltai Muptekeyev, who makes his living in Almaty by posing for photos with a blindfolded falcon clinging to a thick leather glove on his hand.

Lighten up, Francis. Look for the funny. People are just too God-damn sensitive these days. Perhaps people in the US are thick-skinned, or we are more willing to laugh at our foibles. I do know, that if a movie came out lampooning the US, we'd be the first in line. And probably laugh the hardest. Regardless who made the movie.

These people seem to get it.
Aigul Abysheva, a third-year linguistics student at Almaty State University, said she at first was "disgusted" by Borat's jokes, especially by his "chain of importance" — where dogs and horses are higher than women.

"But then I realized he was making fun of ignorant people, no matter where they come from," she said. "The real target of Borat's movie is a couch potato who believes that Kazakhs drink horse urine."

Kazakhstan's deputy foreign minister, Rakhat Aliyev, recently extended an invitation to Borat to find out the truth about Kazakhstan.

"He can discover a lot of things. Women drive cars, wine is made of grapes and Jews are free to go to synagogues."

He also said his compatriots were overreacting.

"We must have a sense of humor and respect other people's freedom of creativity," Aliyev said in a recent interview with Kazakhstan Today.

Every thing I've seen or read about this movie (going this weekend to see it) fails to describe it as mean-spirited. Thoroughly enjoying his Ali G character, I like to think that Sascha Baron Cohen is slyly poking fun and teasing our Kazakh neighbors.

You know, kind of how friends do with each other.