Kazakhstan: The decay of culture and media · Global Voices
Adil Nurmakov

Today’s roundup of blogs from Kazakhstan is dedicated to culture and media and how they come across each other.  Of course, it did not go without politics being involved in it, as well as well as in many other things in Kazakhstan.
Megakhuimyak thinks that the main problem of Kazakhstani literature and arts is their irrelevance and lack of topicality [ru]:
“I am talking about satire and caricature – the genres, which are reflecting the current situation. The ones that exist at the moment are restricted by the editorial policy and trite techniques. In my personal opinion, it will be possible to say that our culture comes to life, only when these two genres revive”.
Ehot, a media professional, has tried to watch a weekly news bloc on the state TV-channel.  Here is what he thinks about it [ru]:
“I am not sure, whose idea it was to announce the content of the broadcast for entire 5 minutes, but it was too much. What can be said about average TV-viewers, when it was so much boring even for me, the one who deliberately tried to watch the news? I switched off the TV-set before the announcement ended”
A-strekoza has also tried to do her best and watch the film about the incumbent president after she downloaded it from the official web-site of the film’s main character [ru]:
“It’s kind of a disaster.  I have no complaints about the cameraman’s work, but the entire movie is a wild mix of an uncovered flattery with bad off-screen voice saying something pathetic and a far-fetched script… I wonder who has decided that such film can improve the image of the country and the president?”
Count-asylum shares his ideas that he has got after participation in the meeting of anime fans in Karaganda. What exactly happened there is that the police was watching closely the group of young fans of the Japanese animation art. The law enforcement was afraid that they had gathered for some unsanctioned meeting [ru]:
“It is necessary to top some pathos and exaggeration over this story to add more drama. Like this: “When they cracked down on the opposition newspapers, I was speechless – I read news on the web. When they put Zhakianov [opposition leader] in jail, I also did not say anything – I was a schoolboy. When they blocked Livejournal, I still did not resent –  I know about anonymizers.  But when they came for anime fans, nobody has been there to protest”.
Also posted on neweurasia