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You pull the Hunt For Red October, you invoke the wrath of Kath.
Dear LOST,
What on earth is going on???
Oh, I'm not talking plot-wise. No one knows what's going on plot-wise. That is no big deal, and you can go all St-Elsewhere snowglobe, for all I care. Go BSG and make your whole fandom crazy with impotent rage. Go on. I am actually pretty cool with that.
What I want to talk about is language. Or rather, languages. Because you have always been a multilingual show. Relatively speaking, probably the most multilingual show out there, to be honest, with whole episodes comprised of dialogue that was mostly in Korean, or Arabic, or Spanish. So why is it starting to seem, 3 or 4 episodes before the end, like there aren't any languages anymore?
Before last week, I don't think there was any way to see this coming. We had just recently been treated to an episode where the Spanish language played a large part, both in showing a character's background in a Spanish-speaking part of the world and in using a bilingual character to convey a message between two others who otherwise wouldn't have been able to communicate with each other.
This kind of thing has been standard on your show for six years. Subtitles were a common occurrence and no one seemed to have any problems with that (although I'm not naive enough to think you've never gotten requests from ABC to dumb down the show with less of that foreign gibberish - I worked in a video store for nine years, I know all about John Q. Public's hatred of subtitles and how very vocal he likes to be on that subject). But fans were okay with it. Fans ate it up, in fact, because eating it up is how they became fans in the first place. It has been six years, after all.
Then last week's episode happened. Two characters who share a large amount of personal history in a language other than English had an important conversation. In English. Inexplicably. Both of them, at a crucial moment, a highly emotional moment, reached for their second language to communicate with each other.
It seemed unlikely, to me, and weird. Pulled me right out of the moment. And I say this, awkwardly enough, as an ESL speaker who prefers English to her mother tongue. I was unconvinced, and I'm someone who would probably do exactly that.
But it was still just one scene, so you had the benefit of my doubt. And what did you do with it? You brought it into yesterday's episode and then you completely squandered it with a Hunt For Red October moment! My most hated film cliché of all! THREE EPISODES before the end!
In case you don't know what I'm referring to: there is a scene at the beginning of The Hunt For Red October where two Soviet guys are walking down a hallway, speaking Russian with each other, as Soviets are wont to do. The scene is subtitled, at first. Then at one point during the conversation, the camera pushes in on these two characters, and they magically begin to speak English. Only, because of the Enchanted Push-In (tm), we are all supposed to grasp that they are still speaking Russian, and that what we're hearing isn't actually what they're saying but an instant translation. This magical use of non-language (where not only is Russian not Russian but English is also not English) continues throughout the whole movie. American characters speak English. Soviet characters speak English under the guise of Russian. They are not supposed to be able to understand each other, but they're using the same words.
I find this very frustrating. I am also bothered by the movie Chocolat, which is set in a French village where everyone speaks English with a different accent, almost none of which are French accents. The variety of accents is a step too far for me.
I'll happily watch historical films in historically inaccurate languages, though, or Star Wars, or Battlestar Galactica, where I understand on a very basic level that characters living in other galaxies in the distant past or future are not actually speaking English.
I think it has to do with maintaining the illusion. I mean, I don't think the people who made Rome are claiming that their characters are actually super secret anglophones hanging out in Roman baths (or whatever they do on that show). There's an unspoken understanding there with the audience. But the understanding has to be there from the beginning, has to stay the same, and has to stay unspoken, otherwise you draw attention to your language issues, which both makes you look ridiculous and sends a rather annoying "Let me dumb this down for you!" message.
LOST.
You did the Enchanted Push-In of instant English translation. You did it so awkwardly that it was actually impossible for me to decide what language the characters were supposed to be speaking for the entire rest of the episode.
I don't know how to feel about that level of fail so close to the end.
What on earth is going on???
Oh, I'm not talking plot-wise. No one knows what's going on plot-wise. That is no big deal, and you can go all St-Elsewhere snowglobe, for all I care. Go BSG and make your whole fandom crazy with impotent rage. Go on. I am actually pretty cool with that.
What I want to talk about is language. Or rather, languages. Because you have always been a multilingual show. Relatively speaking, probably the most multilingual show out there, to be honest, with whole episodes comprised of dialogue that was mostly in Korean, or Arabic, or Spanish. So why is it starting to seem, 3 or 4 episodes before the end, like there aren't any languages anymore?
Before last week, I don't think there was any way to see this coming. We had just recently been treated to an episode where the Spanish language played a large part, both in showing a character's background in a Spanish-speaking part of the world and in using a bilingual character to convey a message between two others who otherwise wouldn't have been able to communicate with each other.
This kind of thing has been standard on your show for six years. Subtitles were a common occurrence and no one seemed to have any problems with that (although I'm not naive enough to think you've never gotten requests from ABC to dumb down the show with less of that foreign gibberish - I worked in a video store for nine years, I know all about John Q. Public's hatred of subtitles and how very vocal he likes to be on that subject). But fans were okay with it. Fans ate it up, in fact, because eating it up is how they became fans in the first place. It has been six years, after all.
Then last week's episode happened. Two characters who share a large amount of personal history in a language other than English had an important conversation. In English. Inexplicably. Both of them, at a crucial moment, a highly emotional moment, reached for their second language to communicate with each other.
It seemed unlikely, to me, and weird. Pulled me right out of the moment. And I say this, awkwardly enough, as an ESL speaker who prefers English to her mother tongue. I was unconvinced, and I'm someone who would probably do exactly that.
But it was still just one scene, so you had the benefit of my doubt. And what did you do with it? You brought it into yesterday's episode and then you completely squandered it with a Hunt For Red October moment! My most hated film cliché of all! THREE EPISODES before the end!
In case you don't know what I'm referring to: there is a scene at the beginning of The Hunt For Red October where two Soviet guys are walking down a hallway, speaking Russian with each other, as Soviets are wont to do. The scene is subtitled, at first. Then at one point during the conversation, the camera pushes in on these two characters, and they magically begin to speak English. Only, because of the Enchanted Push-In (tm), we are all supposed to grasp that they are still speaking Russian, and that what we're hearing isn't actually what they're saying but an instant translation. This magical use of non-language (where not only is Russian not Russian but English is also not English) continues throughout the whole movie. American characters speak English. Soviet characters speak English under the guise of Russian. They are not supposed to be able to understand each other, but they're using the same words.
I find this very frustrating. I am also bothered by the movie Chocolat, which is set in a French village where everyone speaks English with a different accent, almost none of which are French accents. The variety of accents is a step too far for me.
I'll happily watch historical films in historically inaccurate languages, though, or Star Wars, or Battlestar Galactica, where I understand on a very basic level that characters living in other galaxies in the distant past or future are not actually speaking English.
I think it has to do with maintaining the illusion. I mean, I don't think the people who made Rome are claiming that their characters are actually super secret anglophones hanging out in Roman baths (or whatever they do on that show). There's an unspoken understanding there with the audience. But the understanding has to be there from the beginning, has to stay the same, and has to stay unspoken, otherwise you draw attention to your language issues, which both makes you look ridiculous and sends a rather annoying "Let me dumb this down for you!" message.
LOST.
You did the Enchanted Push-In of instant English translation. You did it so awkwardly that it was actually impossible for me to decide what language the characters were supposed to be speaking for the entire rest of the episode.
I don't know how to feel about that level of fail so close to the end.
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(Anonymous) 2012-08-29 03:16 am (UTC)(link)HZMgREzZWZL
(Anonymous) 2013-02-02 01:01 am (UTC)(link)