Subtitle vs Dubbing

I hate dubbing in movies, plain and simple. I can understand why it was done in the 1970s-80s, but for the love of whatever i can't understand why it's still being done now. Granted, it makes old-skool Kung Fu films look retro and funky, and i'm cool with that. Just not NOW, when it's used in contemporary world cinema. Are people still that narrow minded, illiterate and just plain lazy?

Just learn to read faster!! It's not hard! Sure, if they have trouble keeping up, then the text should be enlarged as an optional extra on the DVD.It just looks silly and stupid to see people talking another language when they clearly aren't.

Not only that, but the whole context of the film becomes null and void. Watching a foriegn film where people are dubbed and speaking in American/English accents- it just destroys the notion of the film being foreign! Your'e watching a different culutre, a different way of film-making, you should be watching it in the original language. The language doesn't translate well into English either. For example, the Japanese speak in a certian way where sometimes the pitch will change up or down according to what they are saying. Now, this won't work well when it is translated into English, and honestly speaking, it doesn't. The English voice actors who dub over will simply take the translation at face value, and just say the words how they are said in Japanese- hence the dialogue just sounding off-beat and silly. Watch any Anime, you'll know what i mean.

So anyway, i had just watched a fantastic Studio Ghibli movie called Only Yesterday. This movie wasn't dubbed in English, thankfully, as most Studio Ghibli and anime films are. As i went onto IMDb to rate the movie, i saw most of the message boards regarding the film centred around people asking the public sign a petition to get an English dubbing in place for the film. I'm like: WHAT? This movie is a gem just the way it is, and me watching it in Japanese made it even better! F you and your'e dubbing, you morons.

I don't mean to be rude or anything but dubbing truly destroys a film- especially terrible American voices. I DO NOT ever want to see Only Yesterday dubbed over with American actor's voices, that would just ruin a perfectly wonderful film. I like it just how it is- i'd die if i was watching it hearing Anne Hathaway in it (Studio Ghibli usually get get young popular actors/actresses to dub their movies, with Hathaway being in their previous release), or whoever else they rope into it. Just learn to read subtitles, it's really not that difficult. Leave it alone, please.

I mean, Spirited Away won an acadamy award becuase it was a great film- NOT because of the voice acting. All the awards for that movie were all for "Best Foriegn Language Film", "Best Film" Best Director" and "Best Animated Feature". I'm sure it would have won regardless of it being in English or not. Same with Pan's Labyrinth, they didn't dub that and it won several oscars. And can you imagine them dubbing that? It would just ruin it. To put it simply- iI have nothing against American voices, i just don't like English dubbing, as to me it just doesn't work.

Now, with a film like Only Yesterday, which is a wonderfully Japanese film, having English voices on it would skewer the context. It's set in Japan, it's characters are wonderfully Japanese, it's very traditional of the country of it's origin and is beaming with things that make that culture so great. Now, imagine the characters are speaking English on top of it. And not English English, Americanised English. No, sorry. Fuck off, it doesn't work. Japanese is such a lovely language anyway, it sounds better to have these characters speaking their actual native tongue. Now i know there are a lot of foreign films out there with dubbing and a lot of Japanese anime too, but for Only Yesterday i thought it just worked nicely as it was. Leaving it in Japanese will make it fit comfortably with the whole Japanese flow of it. In my honest opinion it just sounds better without any English, thats all.

Now i noticed that a lot of foriegn films are dubbed for American audiences only, when those same films go to Europe they come in their original langauge versions. However, this does not by any means imply that us Brits are intellectual coolios. Hardly the case. When i was working at a video store i got to see just how narrowminded our fellow film-loving friends can be. Every single foreign mainstream film released in the last year was dissmissed by the average film-goer, simply because it had subtitles! Shameful, really. I told them they were missing out on good films, and they didn't care. I told them "hey, you'll train your brain like Dr Kawashima tells you to, it's good for you!!!" And they still didn't want to listen. Oh well, if they want to watch the usual Hollywood tosh, i'm not going to blame them. No, wait, i am. Morons.

I thought it was just the Americans, but serving the customers in this country you can see that wer'e not that great when it comes to choosing films either. I guess every country has it's majority of idiots.