Cultural differences in films...

Argh... subtitles...
Yea, they're dead famous now thanks to the odex saga. (The yellow car is big tree's car) No, this is not going to be a post on why Odex sucked and why they have just alienated all their potential customers. If you want more of that, you can go check the forums over the hardware zones and odex own forum (did I mention there was an apology? erm, was that an apology? ehhh...)

Ok, I'm not going into the "odex holocaust" mood now since I was neutral up until the double 6 incident and eh, I think we all should take a step back and cool it.

Anyway, I was watching "Kiki's flying delivery service". Kiki's flying delivery service is an anime movie created by Studio Ghibli some time back. Its the same studio that brought to us Totoro and spirited away (more famously known among us as 千与千寻). I like listening to the originial Japanese audio, so I had no choice but to turn on the english subtitles to read...

What happened was that the subtitles showed people saying things when there obviously isn't anyone speaking in the japanese audio version. I was going to blame this on poor audio quality of the disc for causing loss of so many vocals...
But then it turned out that the problem was that the English version of the anime added lots of stuff to the film. They made the cat more irritating with more snide remarks and they added more background information that isn't really needed since we could have just as easily derive it from the film itself...

But it goes to show the great cultural differences between the West and the East.
For many years, we had been saying that the East is radically different from the West. The difference is so outstanding that games could be created featuring the war between the two sides with stereotypical images of each factions. Even as the world moves towards globalisation, we still see that there exist differences between the East and the West. The behaviour, attitude, character, of people living in the West and the East are different, and I guess this explains what had happened to the film.

When the film was sent to US for subbing and release in western countries, what had happened was that the subbers felt that more was needed to suit the audience there (something known as localisation). This resulted in adding whole stretches of conversations for certain characters, and creating less stagnant time when no one is talking. How does it show the difference?

Over long periods of time, people had always seen westerners as more "open" while the people living in the east were more "reserved". This can be seen in the way the film is made. In the East where the film is made, the director realises the power of the film when no one is talking and everyone can be just focused on the scenery that is being shown. Supposedly, it is more quiet and people have room to reflect and think, similar to what a lot of people call as being "reserved".

However, for the westerners, this moment of quietness is more then enough to bear. Watching the large amount of subtitles appearing at the bottom of the screen, and switching to the English audio version, you see that the words that are shown as subtitles are spoken only in the English version. It kind of shows the westerners being unable to think about the things happening around them for a moment. They have to be continuously talking about something.

And it shows in their classrooms. We have all seen clips of how the average western classroom look like, and we all agree that the western children are very active while the children in the East are just not as active. Partially, I think that the reason why the English version had so much things added to it was simply due to this difference in our two societies.

Studio Ghibli films tends to give its audience lots of time to watch stuff and not be bombarded by conversations between characters. They like to produce moving images that tells all the story rather then people talking to drive the plot forward.
I like the films that don't talk much, partly because it is very tiring to continuously listen to people talk, and frankly speaking, if I wanted to listen to people talk, I would be listening to my radio...

Another reason for this is that when people don't talk as much, you get to appreciate what is on screen and think about what the producer is driving across to you. Some films have very beautiful scenery that are captured. The moment of silence where soft music plays in the background as the main character views the scenery...
Its one of the methods the director use to give you time to feel the way the main character does and drives you into the story of the movie, tying you in it.

Another reason is that less dialogue means that more things are left to hang in the air. That doesn't necessarily mean it is a bad thing. The director could make it very explicit in the way he creates the scene, but does not need his character to say it. This self-realisation is often more powerful then when a character in the movie reveals it to everyone in the cinema.

Of course, lots of dialogue have its own good. It makes the movie easier to understand if it is too complicated for just the scene to explain the whole story. Dialogue, when done well, could make the movie more lively with more funny and witty remarks, sarcasm and perhaps the occasional jokes and explanation of what is going on.

The difference between the west and the east is omni-present. The only time when that happens is when one of the two loses their roots...
And I feel that many of us here are losing it...

(Is anyone reminded of "I want to BE a caucasian"?)

Discmon