There is a great moment in Saving Private Ryan that most of the audience missed on the original release. A few captured Germans plead for their lives and are gunned down by U.S. troops who joke that one of them was saying, "Look, I washed for supper." What was actually said was something like, "Please don't shoot me, I am not German, I am Czech, I didn't kill anyone, I am Czech!".
http://www.ww2f.com/threads/saving-p...-supper.57917/
The audience was largely ignorant of what was said, because no subtitles were provided. This was a sort of Easter Egg for a portion of the audience. Aesthetically, the refusal to translate puts us in the position of the U.S. infantry, unaware of what is being said, only aware of the bloody combat. It's an interesting choice and adds a layer of meaning and distance from meaning in the film.
Spielberg is at it again with West Side Story, but this time the motivation appears to be more overtly political than aesthetic, although it must be owned that our aesthetics are always an expression of our politics (look at America's love of bloody films and it is not hard to understand that the U.S. is also the world's biggest arms dealer).
https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-ste...es-11639144802
Part of the point, if that last line to be believed, is to exclude part of the audience, if that last line is correct.
I wonder, if one sees this film in a foreign country like France or China, is one provided with subtitles for both English and Spanish dialogue or just the English? Is the goal only to exclude English-only speakers in a predominantly English-speaking market? Isn't that a curious thing?
If Puerto Ricans are the intended audience or intended to be welcomed as significant part of the intended audience, then why are there no English subtitles? About three quarters of Puerto Ricans (in Puerto Rico) don’t speak English. About 90% of the island’s 650,000 public school students lack basic English skills upon graduation.
https://daitips.com/how-many-people-...n-puerto-rico/
How seriously are we supposed to take this invitational rhetoric of inclusion by exclusion when the allegedly marginalized audience is not provided with English subtitles? And you can bet dollars to donuts that the lion's share of the dialogue is in English.
And isn't it a bit concerning that it's socially conscious whites who are still calling the shots (e.g., using words like "Latinx" which Latinos don't use and largely deplore)?
And is this a sign of things to come? Will withheld subtitles be a new "For Us, By Us" with people who don't speak the language disinvited from the party? This might sound silly, but consider that there are subreddits that now require racial and/or ideological qualifications to be allowed to post. Segregated dormitories are making a comeback on college campuses
https://www.tech-gate.org/usa/2021/0...lack-students/
as are spaces intended for BIPOC or POC (in whole or in large part).
And this raises more questions. Are subtitles ever an act of cultural appropriation? Let's say that some distributor finds a film made for a market that speaks a particular language and is embedded in a cultural context of understanding. That is, it is a message for a particular audience which may only be fully understood by a particular audience. To pull the gem from the crown by purchasing the rights to the film and commodifying the message in a manner which was not intended could be considered an act of vandalism. What if the message, taken from its context and put through the blender of translation results in an artifact that reinforces negative racial stereotypes?
And this should cause us to consider the more general question of when subtitles are withheld in the movies. The Hunt for Red October does that great trick of switching to English on "Armageddon," but it also has words spoken in Russian, some of which are not translated for the audience's benefit (keeping them on the outside). How much should the audience be "in on the joke"? When should details be withheld? When should we lose our linguistic omniscience?
http://www.ww2f.com/threads/saving-p...-supper.57917/
The audience was largely ignorant of what was said, because no subtitles were provided. This was a sort of Easter Egg for a portion of the audience. Aesthetically, the refusal to translate puts us in the position of the U.S. infantry, unaware of what is being said, only aware of the bloody combat. It's an interesting choice and adds a layer of meaning and distance from meaning in the film.
Spielberg is at it again with West Side Story, but this time the motivation appears to be more overtly political than aesthetic, although it must be owned that our aesthetics are always an expression of our politics (look at America's love of bloody films and it is not hard to understand that the U.S. is also the world's biggest arms dealer).
https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-ste...es-11639144802
Mr. Spielberg said the choice was intentional. Using subtitles would be “very disrespectful” to Spanish-speakers, he said, because it would have signaled that they weren’t the intended audience. Lines in Spanish are loosely dispersed, and designed to be “understood emotionally for those who don’t understand a single word of Spanish,” the director said during a panel discussion this week. If that forces non-Spanish speakers to listen closer to keep up, or even miss a few jokes, that’s part of the point.
I wonder, if one sees this film in a foreign country like France or China, is one provided with subtitles for both English and Spanish dialogue or just the English? Is the goal only to exclude English-only speakers in a predominantly English-speaking market? Isn't that a curious thing?
If Puerto Ricans are the intended audience or intended to be welcomed as significant part of the intended audience, then why are there no English subtitles? About three quarters of Puerto Ricans (in Puerto Rico) don’t speak English. About 90% of the island’s 650,000 public school students lack basic English skills upon graduation.
https://daitips.com/how-many-people-...n-puerto-rico/
How seriously are we supposed to take this invitational rhetoric of inclusion by exclusion when the allegedly marginalized audience is not provided with English subtitles? And you can bet dollars to donuts that the lion's share of the dialogue is in English.
And isn't it a bit concerning that it's socially conscious whites who are still calling the shots (e.g., using words like "Latinx" which Latinos don't use and largely deplore)?
And is this a sign of things to come? Will withheld subtitles be a new "For Us, By Us" with people who don't speak the language disinvited from the party? This might sound silly, but consider that there are subreddits that now require racial and/or ideological qualifications to be allowed to post. Segregated dormitories are making a comeback on college campuses
https://www.tech-gate.org/usa/2021/0...lack-students/
as are spaces intended for BIPOC or POC (in whole or in large part).
And this raises more questions. Are subtitles ever an act of cultural appropriation? Let's say that some distributor finds a film made for a market that speaks a particular language and is embedded in a cultural context of understanding. That is, it is a message for a particular audience which may only be fully understood by a particular audience. To pull the gem from the crown by purchasing the rights to the film and commodifying the message in a manner which was not intended could be considered an act of vandalism. What if the message, taken from its context and put through the blender of translation results in an artifact that reinforces negative racial stereotypes?
And this should cause us to consider the more general question of when subtitles are withheld in the movies. The Hunt for Red October does that great trick of switching to English on "Armageddon," but it also has words spoken in Russian, some of which are not translated for the audience's benefit (keeping them on the outside). How much should the audience be "in on the joke"? When should details be withheld? When should we lose our linguistic omniscience?