No Glory for ‘Borat’ in Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan’s largest movie chain has done the expected — banned the upcoming movie Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. The movie stars Sacha Baron Cohen as a Kazakh journalist who tours America depicting Kazakhs as a nation of misogynists, racists and anti-Semites. (Cohen is Jewish.) The theater chain, Otau Cinema, called the film “offensive, a complete lie and nonsense,” and worried that “Americans will probably believe what they see there.” Ironically, the same point was made by the Jewish Anti-Defamation League, which expressed concern “that the audience may not always be sophisticated enough to get the joke and that some may even find it reinforcing their bigotry. While Mr. Cohen’s brand of humor may be tasteless and even offensive to some, we understand that the intent is to dash stereotypes.”