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http://ormondsacker.livejournal.com/51446.html
tv and such,
nerrd!
A while back, a commenter asked if I was still watching those foreign-language tracks that tend to pop up on TV show DVDs. I am. It's good practice. Also, there are other attractions.
1. Cultural referents What references translate? What subtleties get dropped as you try to cram 30% more syllables into the same forty second Anya monologue? Do Amy Wong's exasperated cries of "HoChiMinh!" and hirarious "l"/"r" confusion tell us anything about comedic evolution and where it hasn't so much happened? Does French Spike's "C'mon it's telly time! Passions The Simpsons is on, and Timmy Bart's down the well!" work as well? Do the Flight of the Colchords boys get even hilariouser reinterpeted as overwrought Mexican love-balladeers? (Last two answers: Yes)
2. Bender Bender Bending Rodriguez, hecho en Mexico, is the Mexican Spanish* voice-actors guild's chance to swing for the stereotype fences, and twenty seconds of Mexican Bender's quavering, adenoidal voice will give you an idea of how magnificently they responded. Aristophanes audiences in the 5th century B.C would get the idea of how magnificently they responded. "Ah, classic Cowardly Comic Servant #1," they would chuckle, dabbing their eyes, "Observe! He is clutching a giant hat!"
French Bender, on the other hand, is the voice of magnificent unconcern, a self-possessed boulevardier Falstaff offering you just one more glass of wine before he doesn't help you. It's a lovely, original interpretation of the character that's unfortunately tuned down as the series goes on - probably because it's hard to reconcile with the actual Bender spending every fourth episode as an insecure, panicky spaz.
3. Mexican old men Mexican dubs, lets face it, tend to latch onto stereotypes. Just look at Buffy, La Cazavampiros - goofy Xander, stern deep-voiced Buffy, Willow... god, Willow. I have never seen a picture of Mexican Willow-voice, but if phiz follows vox, she has pigtails, bubblegum-pink lips, some sort of large lollipop, and eyes the size of dinner plates. (I have no idea how that worked in season 6, nor do I want to know.) But stern professor Giles is lovely, a trend that seems to follow in older men across the board. There's perfectly-timed fountains-of-blood-ranter Prof. Farnsworth. There's Mexican C. Montgomery Burns, whose voice actor was so involved with the character he reportedly wrote a pamphlet of the Sr. Burns's observations on modern Mexico. ("Vincente Fox? Pah! No es bueno!"). Possibly the crowning example came on a Justice League Unlimited episode featuring aging last-generation superhero/bare-knuckle boxer Wildcat ("La Lynxa"). This is already a show that had gone to the gravel-voiced well a few too many times - for Batman, Green Arrow, the Question... - but for the man who considers all those as punk kids, they dug up a voice actor who... well, when he was seventeen he ate R. Lee Emery.
Getting long and getting late. I'll add part II (Frenchies Revenge) when I get back from Austin.
*European Spanish has its own independent dubbing guild, not heard on your average Region 1 DVD.
Published by :ormondsacker 2008-03-06 07:10:04.0
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