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- CommentAuthorJames Puckett
- CommentTimeJun 8th 2011
One thing i can't understand is when the yanks remake/re-do UK TV shows or Movies for the American market…It's as if the fact we all speak English is STILL too alien for them.
Americans can't always understand what British and Scottish actors are saying. There are some pretty thick accents and godawful sound mixes on British television. I rarely get through an hour-long British show without missing some mucky dialogue.
And because the UK isn't producing nearly as many movies and TV shows as the US does less is exported and Americans are much less familiar with the UK than the UK is with the USA. The same phenomenon happens with India. Bollywood movies are dubbed and watched all over the world and people in, for example, Russia got used to it. But you don't see much Russian entertainment in India. -
We need more folks like Kenneth Branaugh with his color-blind, accent-deaf casting.
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At a little bit of a tangent: Ta-Nehisi Coates commented on how the new X-Men movie, set in the culturally tumultuous 1960s, somehow left out all of the racial parts that made the 1960s interesting, instead having them face the already defeated bugaboo of Nazism.
Coates' thesis has more to do with a current trend in the U.S. (not throughout, just in a few painfully prominent places) to avoid talking about embarrassing points in our history.
That I definitely see. Give or take. It dovetails nicely on a blog I read earlier today taking on Pixar for low scores in liberated female roles. I don't entirely agree with the Pixar one, though I see the trend. All in all, it does bespeak a certain amount of cowardice and imaginative myopia. -
Americans can't always understand what British and Scottish actors are saying. There are some pretty
thick accents and godawful sound mixes on British television. I rarely get through an hour-long British
show without missing some mucky dialogue.
@James Puckett
But we get the same experience with US imports. We just get over it and usually try to understand.
America has a huge amount of accents, The impenetrable southern drawl,
.The complex street culture of "The Wire". There are kids in London
driving around blasting music that is only heard around the
"dirty south" of the united states and nowhere else. And they know
all the lyrics....
As for the Bollywood thing, there is every year a Bollywood season of some kind
on one of the main 5 British Channels we all receive in the late evening,
which are subtitled and shown in their full length.
As well as usually some kind of Asian cinema season[J-Horror, K-Horror, Hong Kong Action]
these are also usually on the main channels not just film channels or subscription channels.
I still need to get round to seeing, but The Killing is a Scandinavian cult hit on BBC4.
But there seems to be a resistance to the outside world on US TV.
We get huge chunks of American TV and if you have satellite or Cable,you get alot of
US channels as they are. Not just programs.
It all seems strange because every 2 years or so some UK reporter/star/celeb/commentator
takes a road trip documentary tour of the states , Stephen Fry being the last one,and
what they report back is always the huge cultural and ethnic diversity of the country.
Stephen Fry in America - "Voodoo"
Which you'd think would give them no problem in absorbing culture from
the outside world into their mainstream.
As for the Sound of UK programmes, i'm an Audio Visual guy.
The problems are on technical points....going from the UK PAL system to
American NTSC (Never The Same Color-as techies call it) are many.
Secondly the BBC's technical omnipotence especially in Research has given
rise to some rough standards across the UK industry and there will be a new European
wide standard on Sound and "loudness".
America is made of a multiple private channels and networks which have standards
on sound that change from channel to channel and each submission might have
to be tweaked for each one. The Channel compressor, the piece of kit that each channel has which
keeps their programs at a pre-requisite loudness so you don't have to reach for the volume on your remote all the time
can be very unique and may colour the sound. Altering the tone and intelligibility of the
original material. Especially if it has been optimized for making American dialogue clearer
and maybe not other dialogue and how they mangle their words from other nations.
I've sat through mind numbing seminars about this stuff. Then when it goes online,
the encoder of the streaming channel massacres the audio all over again...
Heri Mkocha
http://www.youtube.com/thearklight -
Relevant: "You Left Out the Part About..." by Ta-Nehisi Coates in the NYT, on the failure of X-Men: First Class to address the era of equal rights in which it is set. Worth reading.
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We need more folks like Kenneth Branaugh with his color-blind, accent-deaf casting.
Which still doesn't solve the other problem he shares with the makers of A(meri)kira: casting Keanu Reeves in stuff. -
- CommentAuthorBOODOFFSTAGE
- CommentTimeJun 9th 2011
I just object to anyone casting Keanu Reeves in anything.
As for Hollywood, it does what it does best. Make Money.
In about 10 years, The minority population will become a majority in this country. Hollywood will adapt accordingly and this whitewashing thing will go away.
Time is the only factor that will make America a true melting pot. -
#donaldglover4spiderman
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- CommentAuthoricelandbob
- CommentTimeJun 9th 2011
Let's not forget when Brannagh tried to act all Swedish in his version of "Wallander", when there was a perfectly brilliant actual Swedish version (which eventually aired on BBC4). -
On the subject of not understanding Brittish/Scottish/Accents, I had to watch The Wind that Shakes the Barley with subtitles. Couldn't understand a damned thing.
At the same time, I live in the American South. Lived here most of my life. I still have trouble understanding that deep southern accent. -
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CommentAuthorHEY APATHY!
- CommentTimeJun 9th 2011
Not physically white washed because Dutch people are white too but the remake of THE VANISHING was about as psychically whitewashed as you can get…
( IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE DUTCH VERSION DON'T READ THIS. GO RENT/DOWNLOAD IT INSTEAD IT’S SCARY AS HELL)
From Wikipedia:Jeff wakes up to find he has been buried alive in a coffin.
At that point the original film ended. The remake continues as follows:
Jeff is revived and is able to climb out of the grave and kill his tormentor with the shovel he had used to bury Jeff and Diane. The remake ends with Jeff and Rita back together, selling the story as a novel to a publishing company. -
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CommentAuthorMagicSword!
- CommentTimeJun 10th 2011 edited
Not whitewashing, but this should inspire a few facepalms from folks in this thread:
Troll Hunter already getting a remake
Chris Columbus: “Troll Hunter was a visceral, thrilling cinematic rock and roller coaster ride of a movie. Visually, there are scenes in this film that American audiences have never seen. We want to introduce an international audience to this amazing moviegoing experience!"
To which the AV Club writes "some would argue that introduction has already been accomplished by, you know, releasing the original in international theaters and on video, like it just was today. But we suppose copying it with American actors is another way to go about it." -
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I'm annoyed any time movies/shows are remade, or books/comics are made for screen and they change the characters. I don't care if it's whitewashing or forced multiculturalism or casting someone who can't do a proper accent for the character. If you can't find the proper person to do the damn thing, you didn't look very hard.