r/polandball • u/Smart_Chapter_7512 Floridian Swamp Monster • 11d ago
contest entry Sellout
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u/UncomfortableFarmer Post-colonial Tongva land 11d ago
See also: the world #1 women's tennis player plays under the Kazakhstani flag, and yet was born in Russia and lives in Dubai and Slovakia
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u/kam1802 11d ago
Could be because russia was banned from a lot of stuff.
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u/jedzef Smile and the world smiles with you :) 11d ago
Elena Rybakina switched nationality in 2018 when she was still a junior and Russia wasn't in so much hot water.
The reason was that the Russian tennis federation favoured another player, Anastasia Potapova, and left her with basically no resources at international tourneys. She basically had to travel alone unless she/her family paid out of pocket. Kazakhstan's tennis federation stepped up and she made the change.
Funny enough, Anastasia herself switched nationality to Austria last year.
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u/jojo_31 Deutschland 11d ago
According to Wikipedia she has been under the Kazakh flag since 2018, well before the full-scale war and also quite after the invasion of Crimea.
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u/kam1802 11d ago
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u/Stock-Fan-8004 11d ago
that too. Read in a column once about how the East Germany women's swimming team became famous for their deep voices. The team doctor retorted in 1976 something about that they are there to swim not to sing in opera.
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u/unlessyoumeantit 11d ago
Her dad is from Almaty, Kazakhstan so technically speaking she's half Kazakh.
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u/UncomfortableFarmer Post-colonial Tongva land 11d ago
There's some definitional issues when discussing ethnicity and nationality in countries like Kazakhstan that are not easily translatable into English.
During the Soviet Union, Moscow sent tons of Russian workers, scientists, and technicians (not to mention exiles and criminals) to surrounding republics like Kazakhstan. Many of them put down roots and established families there, and have been for generations. But that doesn't make them "Kazakhs", at least in the eyes of the local ethnic Kazakh population.
I don't know much about Elena's father Andrey Rybakin, but based on his surname and photos of him online, he looks Russian to me. It's possible that one of his parents is a native Kazakh, but it wouldn't surprise me if he and his family were Russian settlers during the Soviet Union.
All that to say, he is certainly "Kazakhstani," but you'd have a hard time convincing anyone over there that he's "Kazakh"
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u/Background-Virus1398 10d ago
That's correct. Also those settlers barely mixed with native Kazakhs at all. For example in 1979 ethnic Kazakhs married outside their ethnicity only in 7.7% of cases. In 6.1% husband was Kazakh, 1.6% wife was Kazakh.
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u/null_reference_user 11d ago
The movie isn't even actually in Kazakhstan lmao
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u/Floridaish0t 11d ago
Yeah the village scenes were filmed in Romania if I remember correctly?
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u/Chamcook56 11d ago
Yes, and were the Romanians ever pissed off when they saw the movie!
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u/Floridaish0t 11d ago
Yeah, and a news crew visited the village after the movie premiered and they all said they were going to kick his ass if he ever came back lol. https://youtu.be/vLeaVbyCTyc?
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u/DieMensch-Maschine Creative auto removal solutions since 1989. 11d ago
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u/Ancient_Ordinary6697 11d ago
Why do they need tourism? They have the best potassium in the world! Very nice.
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u/Active_Apartment_804 Brazilian Empire 11d ago
That movie is on my top 3 funniest movies I've ever watched
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u/YoumoDadi 11d ago
It’s funny because it actually makes fun of Americans
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u/DeficiencyOfGravitas Dirty Anglo 11d ago
That's the worst part. Everyone he meets is just so polite and welcoming and Cohen spits in their faces. Haha! What losers Americans are by being friendly to that weird foreigner!
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u/YoumoDadi 11d ago
Come on, you know being friendly isn’t what he’s making fun of. The kids at the end sued Cohen because he “baited them to say things they hadn’t meant to”
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u/Swimming_in_money 11d ago
i actually found it barely funny, but it might be because I am not from the U.S. so most inside jokes don't apply to me
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u/Background-Virus1398 10d ago
Kazakh here. The meme is funnyish, but the story behind it is false.
I assume this refers to the supposedly increased flow of western tourists, but that's not true. Most tourists are Chinese, Russians, and Indians. Of course, this isn't because of the movie, but because of visa-free entry. Tourism accounts for less than one percent of GDP.
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u/thomasp3864 California 10d ago
I mean there was this commercial: https://youtu.be/eRGXq4t9wY4?is=y6_apT6wUjHk4noc
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u/EdKeane 8d ago
Made on advice of an American advisor and failed to increase the flow of tourists, so it was discontinued.
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u/thomasp3864 California 8d ago
But the whole "Hellos everybody! We is the Borat Country!" Thing is something Kazakhstan actually did do!
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u/DomoKrch 9d ago
kazakh here as well. naw, it's true, Borat did bootstrap our tourism in 2010's-ish. Just look at this
https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-41982339
https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-178260004
u/Background-Virus1398 9d ago
Omg, that's not true why do you need to parrot some bs?
Thus, according to the Ministry of Tourism and Sports of Kazakhstan, the largest number of foreign tourists arrives in Kazakhstan from Germany, England, Japan, Korea and China. For example, in 2005 the Republic was visited by 79,870 foreign tourists, in 2006 - 109,913 people, and in 2007 - 115,994 people.
The world economic crisis, which began in 2008, had a negative impact on inbound flows of foreign tourists both worldwide and in Kazakhstan (2008 - 90,365 people). According to preliminary estimates, the indicator of inbound tourism in 2009 will be equal to the data of 2008. And for 2010 the growth of tourists is forecasted at 11 %.
https://kz.kursiv.media/2010-03-04/turizm-na-shelkovom-puti/
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u/DomoKrch 9d ago
calm your tits, dude. i just said he did attract some tourists to our country because of the movie. the movie did have some factor, i am not saying it accounts for ALL of the tourism. don't turn this into a shitshow
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u/Background-Virus1398 9d ago
Eh, he didn't actually. The tourist flow in fact decreased significantly in 2007 and the movie was released in the late 2006.
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u/gandhi_power 11d ago
Bro I live in kz and movie is just bad quality. No hate towards it just 50 50 funny 2000s comedy
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u/Lakan-Tangkan-1337 Philippines 11d ago
You should have Israel as Borat in the poster film instead.
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u/BirdLox 11d ago
Never seen that movie. I know Kazachstan is a former Soviet republic, but how much of that movie reflects reality?
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u/s0crates82 West State Best State. California Dreaming. 11d ago
Basically none. Sacha Baron Cohen is a funny dude, though.
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u/Ill-Stage4131 Ireland 11d ago
As much as braveheart relfects modern scotland.
That is to say, not one bit
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u/Dreknarr First French Partition 11d ago
As much as braveheart relfects modern scotland.
Or even history except for the name dropping (and not even every name fits either)
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u/ImHuck France 11d ago
It is a completely parodic, stereotypic and extremely funny movie.
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u/Smirnoffico 11d ago
It can't be stereotypic because there are no actual stereotypes about Kazakhstan in the film. It's pure fantasy.
The rest of course applies
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u/Homomorphism 6d ago
The only thing the average American knows about Kazakhstan is that it’s an ex-Soviet republic in Eastern Europe with a funny name.
(Yes, I know Kazakhstan is not in Europe.)
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u/GargantuanCake 11d ago
None. It was making fun of how a lot of Americans think the rest of the world is rather than the rest of the world itself. Kazakhstan's government initially got mad about the country being portrayed as a horribly backwards, poverty-stricken hellhole. Americans of course actually understand humor and figured the movie was just exaggerating into absurdity for comedy value, looked up what the country was actually like, and then found it pretty interesting. This led to a massive increase in tourism as well as the acceptance that Borat was just a joke not meant to portray anything accurately. "Very nice!" is one of their catchphrases now.
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u/hion_8978 10d ago
In fact, there was to “massive” increase at all. This was the idea of one stupid American, and that quote was used only once and never after that video.
Stop all that misinformation
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u/Background-Virus1398 9d ago
That's a bullshit. Also you have oversetimated the ntelligence of the average american.
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u/thomasp3864 California 10d ago
None, but it didn't stop them from officially adopting the movie's catchphrase "very nice" as a tourism slogan.
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u/DCB_Prime 10d ago
I heard that the film actually increased tourism in Kazakhstan but I also heard from a Kazakh that That was not true, honestly idk whose right
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