Borat and the Kazakhstan National Anthem: Is this the Armenian lobby at work?
For those who have not been able to catch the Borat film yet, make sure that you stay for the credits if you do go. At the very end, the film has its own satirical version of the Kazakhstan national anthem. Interestingly, the very final frame of the montage that accompanies the anthem shows the face of a president superimposed on the waving flag of Kazakhstan....only, it is not Nursultan Nazabayev's face, but a colleague of his. After seeing that, I am surprised people haven't started conspiracy theories that the film was funded by the Armenian lobby.
If you can't wait for the suprise, here is the segment from youtube:
UPDATED INFORMATION: If one needs additional reason to fuel this conspiracy theory (in which, I myself do not believe) about the Armenian connection to Borat, neweurasia.net's Armenia blog has provided some interesting tidbits. It turns out that the fictional producer of the film, Azamat Bagatov, is actually played by an Armenian by the name of Ken Davitian, and he speaks Armenian throughout the film when he talks with Borat. Hmmmm...the more I think of it, perhaps the whole film is a conspiracy to undermine the BTC pipeline...................NOT
If you can't wait for the suprise, here is the segment from youtube:
UPDATED INFORMATION: If one needs additional reason to fuel this conspiracy theory (in which, I myself do not believe) about the Armenian connection to Borat, neweurasia.net's Armenia blog has provided some interesting tidbits. It turns out that the fictional producer of the film, Azamat Bagatov, is actually played by an Armenian by the name of Ken Davitian, and he speaks Armenian throughout the film when he talks with Borat. Hmmmm...the more I think of it, perhaps the whole film is a conspiracy to undermine the BTC pipeline...................NOT
posted by Sean R. Roberts, PhD at 11:52 PM
5 Comments:
Aliyev clearly looks a whole lot more like Borat than Nazarbayev ever would...
Dear Sean,
it's neweurasia, not Eurasianet...
Bests,
Leila.
Leila,
Thank you for the correction--the plethora of "eurasia"-based names out there can always be confusing. I have corrected in the post.
You are quite the conspiracy theorist.
Actually, I made posted this mainly as a joke because most people in the former USSR actually do believe that the entire "Borat project" was "zakaznoi" (i.e. conspiracy-based and politically motivated). This is a certain aspect of post-Soviet culture. Despite the fact that the Borat film has already made over $100 million US dollars in profit, the first instinct of people in the former U.S.S.R. is to believe that it was made with political intentions. I, for example, have heard numerous conspiracies about Borat - it was ordered by wealthy exiled Kazakh opposition figures, it was ordered by Jewish Kazakh oligarchs, it is intended to discredit Kazakhstan's bid for the chairmanship of the OSCE, it is intended to discredit and defame Muslims, etc., etc. My actual opinion is that the film's major goal has always been to make money, and it is doing that very well!
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