Tickets from Absurdistan, please! All change!
The train is picking up speed. This is hardly surprising, as that is its job. Its only job. Yet this train shows distinct signs of pointlessness. These are, most likely, symptoms of absurdity.
“That’s absurd!” Who can conjure a clear and concrete image that actually captures the word absurd? Nonsensical or meaningless are the attributes assigned to absurdism. So is the absurd simply the missing sense of life itself? That, at least, was the view of Albert Camus, philosopher and writer by trade. He reached into the Greek moth-eaten trunk and hauled the ancient myth of Sisyphus into the spotlight. This man, condemned to the absurd, was forced to roll a boulder up a mountain — a boulder that, just short of the summit, rolls back down every single time. Again and again and again. A man engaged in a sweat-drenched, utterly pointless task.
Did Sisyphus ever ask about the purpose of his never-ending drudgery, which has nothing but meaninglessness to offer? Perhaps.
Absurd?
The absurd can, however, be genuinely funny — even when sense, deep or shallow, appears to be entirely absent. This brings us to Kazakhstan and the English comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, that zealous champion of the absurd in film and television.
In 2006, Sacha Baron Cohen’s film *Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan* was released — and the Kazakhstani government was not even remotely amused. The then Foreign Minister Tokayev threatened the comedian with legal action. The government of Kazakhstan took out costly advertisements in the Washington Post, presenting Kazakhstan as a modern, proud nation. Tokayev was puzzled by the effect of the advertising campaign. Once the film had opened, tourists were scrambling for flights to Kazakhstan. The tourism authority confirmed that many visitors were travelling there explicitly because of Borat. The government suddenly found itself in a Kafkaesque bind, for the fictional character Borat — the very thing they had fought against — had become a driver of tourism for Kazakhstan.
But that was only the beginning of the absurd. At the 2012 London Olympics, Kazakhstani shooter Maria Dmitrienko won the gold medal in shooting. The organisers accidentally played Borat’s parodic anthem, “Kazakhstan is the Greatest Country in the World.” The audience waited in vain for the real national anthem of Kazakhstan. The head of state stood to attention on the podium, hand on chest, listening to the words “All other countries are run by little girls.”
Absurd. But funny.
Yet the very peak of Borat’s mountain of Absurdistan came when the 2020 sequel *Borat Subsequent Moviefilm* opened in cinemas. Sacha Baron Cohen travelled to Kazakhstan once more — because the government had now officially surrendered. The Ministry of Tourism, with considerable cleverness, adopted Borat’s catchphrase “Very Nice!” as its official advertising slogan and from then on fed it into every image campaign for the nation of Kazakhstan.
Kazakhstan had won — by jumping on the train of absurdities.
Does the absurd always deliver this much fun when the sensible fails to show its face?
Oh yes.