Word from Hollywood via NPR:
There's a backup plan: If U.S. movie audiences don't buy tickets to see The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo in Swedish, Hollywood is already gearing up for an English-language remake.IOW, if Americans don't like the original then Hollywood will bowdlerize it. And since Dragon Tattoo is not going to open in my local cinema, this will very likely happen. There's nothing "liberal" about the destruction of culture by translation. I can already see where Hollywood can go wrong just by watching the trailer.
My favorite semester at college was spent in International Studies 120 and 220, Culture Through Cinema I and II. The professor was very, very good at teaching the signs and signals we needed to really appreciate a film like Nobody Loves Me. It was because of Dr. Adler that I was able to appreciate the best moments in Seven Samurai for the very first time and actually understood the cultural existentialism of Lost In Translation.
Which is the operative phrase, because all of this is destroyed when Hollywood translates. Their version of Dragon Tattoo will inevitably disappoint me after seeing the original with subtitles. As our good friend Dr. Joseph Suglia put it to me in an email today:
Films such as Takashi Miike's One Missed Call, Open Your Eyes, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, etc. irritate the American entertainment industry. There is only one thing to do: neutralize the irritation by homogenizing everything in those films that is heterogeneous, familiarizing everything within them that is strange. That is the purpose of a "remake": to domesticate the foreign.And how. City of Angels seems incredibly pretentious when you've seen Wings of Desire. There is a segment of America that is aware of books it has not read but chooses to read them after seeing the movie to avoid disappointment. Having worked in bookstores and spent far too much time in libraries, I cannot count the number of times I have heard this said.
Hollywood is quite aware of this. My local cinemaplex will not be showing the Swedish version of this movie. As usual, I must travel at least an hour, probably three, to witness it in an actual theatre. This is because Hollywood obeys Barnum's dictum of lowest common denominator: no one in Tinseltown ever went broke underestimating taste. Art is inevitably made artifice. Characters are recast as comic relief. A fart joke must be inserted.
And there must always be more violence.
I maintain that Inglourious Basterds is a meta-narrative about this very phenomenon. It isn't about the Holocaust of World War II, but the cinematic holocaust of Hollywood. Language is indivisible from culture; when Hollywood translates, it adopts spectacle to give the masses blood. What makes me say all this is the amazing passage I found at the beginning of Steig Larrssen's novel:
The policeman was a hardened veteran...He had been involved in nine murder or manslaughter cases.Nine. In a long career of urban policing.
This is one way America stays stupid about the world.
Hollywood will do an English language remake whether the Swedish version is successful or not. It's just how they do it and yes, most of the time it sucks. Not always: The Departed, a remake of a Hong Kong film, was excellent.
ReplyDeleteAnd it goes both ways. We're watching on DVD right now a BBC series, "First Among Equals," which is a blatant "Dallas" rip-off, down to the theme music and title sequence. I realize "Dallas" isn't fine film-making but you get the point.
I think DVDs and streaming and all that has really changed the game. A film doesn't have to show in a couple thousand theaters anymore, all it needs is good buzz and people will see it. I heard an interview with the "Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" director on NPR today, I think it was Tom Ashbrook's show, couldn't remember. Anyway, they are going full out to generate buzz on this film, and they already know that it will only appear in a few art house theaters in most cities. The distribution deal was lined up months ago.
I doubt it will play Nashville, we have one independent art house theater but hopefully we can catch it in New York.
Who wants to bet me that the subtitled Dragon Tattoo never shows up in the machine at Wal-Mart, either?
ReplyDeleteI thought "The Birdcage" was a pretty decent remake of the French original.
ReplyDeleteWho wants to bet me that the subtitled Dragon Tattoo never shows up in the machine at Wal-Mart, either?
ReplyDeleteBut it will be available in your public library, which is even better. (Or at least in my public library.)
Ender, the crossover that doesn't suck is rare. Even "The Office" pales when compared to the British original.
ReplyDeleteElizabeth, that's good for me; I love the library. But it's not good for American culture because a minority of Americans actually visits libraries anymore.
ReplyDeleteI love the Ricky Gervais original, the new version makes me cringe.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I agree with you that it is highly likely that you are absolutely right when you predict that the Hollywood version of this story (and yes, I have read the book, quite long ago) will be a pale shadow of the original, I must disagree when you say, "As usual, I must travel at least an hour, probably three, to witness it in an actual theatre. This is because Hollywood obeys Barnum's dictum of lowest common denominator."
ReplyDeleteAmerican filmgoers will simply not go to see subtitled movies. If your local multiplex showed this film, it would be to an almost empty theater. The three venues showing it in Los Angeles will be lucky to have good houses.
That's the truth- unfortunately. The audience for foreign, subtitled films in this country is almost nonexistent.
It isn't only Hollywood.
ReplyDeleteThe Brits are fully capable of turning excellent material into swill.
BBC and Kenneth Branagh spun Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander into an advertisement for Volvo and summer tourism in Sweden. Wallander in the novels is a Swedish detective living in the city of Ystad and is a remarkably complex character suffering through divorce, diabetes and depression. Overweight due to a diet consisting almost entirely of junk food and an alcoholic. And his car is perpetually in the shop and he endlessly worries about his inability to afford a new one. His daughter (once suicidal) a source of constant angst and his dating skills are, shall we say, minimal.
In the BBC series he's Kenneth Branagh with a couple days beard (standing in for all the complexities glossed over) behind the wheel of a snappy shiny new Volvo.
A very dark urban vision crime and personal redemption has become yet another exercise in product placement. I'm more hopeful of the Swedish version which likely will be released on DVD one day.
At least I hope it will.
I remember when fear was so high that video recording would kill Hollywood and they were pushing for a tax on each machine to replace the lost revenue. So much for Liberal Hollywood.
ReplyDeleteWhat a godsend for movie lovers. I can watch all the subtitled movies I want.