CINEMA AS BRANDING - Tourism in Central Asia: Cultural Potential and Challenges - page 195

Ceren and in place of his old domain he sees new contours: “The Land of
Kazakhs.” This cinematic phrase completes the transformation of Kazakhs
from victims to winners. On a historical plane, however, the opposite was
the case. The end of Jungars was the beginning of colonization of the
Kazakh society and it was China and Russia that began the aggressive
redrawing of their imperial borders. This fabricated twist denies this his-
tory erasing over two centuries of Kazakhs' resistance and accommoda-
tion to shifting political realities that radically transformed their society
and shaped the nation of Kazakhstan as it is today.
CONCLUSION
In this chapter, I have critically examined Nomad by juxtaposing its story-
line with the interpretation of oral tradition and historical evidence. I have
argued that the streamlined narrative in the cinematic version is at great
odds with both. This film, rather than being a timely effort to reflect on
the world through the lens of the old story to stimulate public debate and
history research, poses as the reiteration of Ablai's 'curse' that, as Valikha-
nov said, made the future generations regard him as a saint. To be fair,
Nomad is not the only film that misconstrued historical reality. Alexander
the Great and Troy are no closer to the events as documented in history
literature than Nomad . Yet, the former were made from a distance and not
with the intention of introducing modern Greece or Italy to the world or
shaping the national understandings of the past. In this sense, Nomad has
more in common with Borat because neither film is about Kazakhs or
Kazakhstan. Why then does one film fail while the other is a total success?
As a character, Borat has been described as an “incarnation” of a trick-
ster, a “clever fool” from tales and myths around the world. But not a true
one: as the authors of Borat the Trickster have argued, “though he borrows
… from his mythical counterparts, [Borat] lacks rootedness and tradition-
ality” (Kononenko and Kukharenko 2008: 8, 17). I would make a reverse
comparison. Borat as a trickster is what Ablai is as a heroic warrior ( batyr )
- neither character is “rooted in a particular culture” (ibid: 17). The shared
fault has not compromised the success of Borat , which is the genuine at-
tempt of an artist to expose the problems of his world (although we may
disagree about his strategies and taste). The lack of cultural authenticity
of Ablai's character, on the other hand, is caused by the approach taken to