Emily Munro: Subtitles

Subtitles: the argument for the prosecution

By Emily Munro Not long ago I presented the German film Lola rennt (Run Lola Run, dir. Tom Twyker 1998) at the Glasgow Film Theatre.

It’s a loud, Generation-X, 90s movie propelled forward by a techno soundtrack which echoes the female protagonist’s breathless determination to run across Berlin, collect a sizable figure of Deutsch Mark from Papa and save her boyfriend from ruining his future or losing his life so they can lie and smoke dope in a room where all the lights have red gels. Lola was one in a series of weekend films programmed for teenagers who could have the price of their admission ticket subsidised by Glasgow City Council. Pleased to be doing-it-for-the-kids I delivered a fun-but-educational intro to jolly up the crowd, exponentially built on references to pop music and video games. Pleasingly, I also achieved the near impossible task of making working for the British Board of Film Classification sound hip by noting that they had been advertising for a board member with a high standard of computer gamesmanship. And, through the back door, I rolled out a small line of bunting for subtitles: for films like this proved that watching a subtitled film needn’t be hard work … My audience were very polite. They were also mostly aged 25 to 60, although a couple of school boys did slide into the third row after I’d stepped down from the mic.

Subtitled films have a hard time seducing the young, don’t they? Do they? Consider for a moment one of the biggest growth areas in genre cinema in recent years – the Asian horror film, creeping into mainstream theatrical exhibition from the teenage domain of the home video market. Still, we find Hollywood cashing in on the bet that a substantial market in the English speaking world will not pay to see a subtitled film. The remake is a high risk translation practice and the rewards can be great. But in facing the fear of the subtitle, the context may provide a greater clue than the films themselves.

Subtitled films have filtered into the multiplexes which fill their smaller, top floor screens with ‘niche’ product and capitalise safely on the demonstrable popularity of some foreign language genre films. And yet there remains a misperception in the UK that subtitled films shown outwith this popcorn context are such a world apart from popular culture that they must suffer from a severe case of the elites.

A programme mix of foreign language films, American ‘indies’, documentaries and rediscoveries or revivals from the ‘classic’ cinema canon, non-commercial cinemas are often perceived to be a specialist taste, despite all this variety. And with the disappearance of a theatrical exploitation market for ‘sexy’ European films (whoever came up with the slogan ‘SAVAGE ORGY OF LUST!’ for Rossellini’s Rome, Open City (1945) was clearly the family genius), the subtitled film is once again less Bardot than it is bourgeois.

The connotations of art and (high) culture surrounding these cinemas do not emerge from inherent qualities in the films they programme. Rather, the role and status of the subtitled film has been determined by interminably

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linked traditions of cinema exhibition and reception. The ‘Art House’ – is anyone entirely at ease with these words?

The Glasgow Film Theatre’s catch-phrase ‘cinema for all’ can either seem boldly optimistic or hopelessly naïve coupled with the cinema’s reputation as an art house venue. The motto links conceptually to an ideology of film appreciation developed in Britain most vigorously in the 1930s and 40s then reinvigorated in the late 60s and 70s when a labour government deemed the development of regional film cultures and not just film production an area worthy of subsidy. Not coincidentally, the gorgeous art deco GFT building on Rose Street began its history in 1939 as the Cosmo, the first purpose-built film theatre outside London to specialise in Continental films, and was reopened as a Scottish Film Council venture in the mid-70s.

The film appreciation ideology which emerged in 1930s Britain was supported by the British Film Institute and its in-house magazine Sight and Sound which, incidentally, published a feature on the Cosmo. Film appreciation as a cultural movement was informed by Leavisite discourses on education and an opposition to mass culture particularly with respect to youth and morality. For the good of society, the general public taste in cinemagoing needed to be raised out of the Hollywood gutter and audiences were to be taught – by film critics, dear god! – how to make informed, critical and moral judgements on the range of films available to them. The film societies which had been operating since the 1920s had gained a reputation for brave political and artistically discriminating programming by singing the praises of Soviet film art and screening films that were banned from mainstream British exhibition, mostly products from abroad.

A privileged place was given in the emerging film appreciation canon to foreign films, motivated by a belief in the desirability of international co-operation and understanding and art’s role in facilitating this. Although the Venice film festival was inaugurated in 1932 and ran during the Mussolini years, the first film festival boom occurred in Europe after the Second World War and helped to raise the profile of an international film industry trading in subtitled, aesthetically worthy films in peace and economic prosperity.

The film clubs were considered training grounds for future specialised theatre audiences. At the same time, though, the specialised theatres often declared intentions to broaden the appeal of non-commercial cinema to the widest possible audience and avoid the snobbery that had developed amongst some film society members, particularly those who regarded themselves as intellectuals or highbrows. The middlebrow film culture which was the mainstay of film appreciation, neither high-intellectual nor low-popular, was significant for its self-conscious sense of social responsibility in a liberal humanist vein which extended beyond national borders but was nonetheless limited in outlook by its patriarchal attitude and top-down institutional structures. Given this legacy, the avoidance of the art house can be argued as a legitimate reaction against an exclusive culture which has in

the past devalued the pursuit of popular entertainment and working class cultural engagement. The political backlash against the film appreciation line came in the 70s from a faction within the British Film Institute itself and the founding of an intellectual film journal called Screen. Certain Screen contributors, bolstered by the radical implications for politics in education signalled by the events of May ’68 in France, took umbrage with film appreciation’s support of a commodity-based European ‘art film’ cult and urged that state subsidy go towards the financing of independent, workshop-based, avant-garde cinema activities with greater and local social relevance. And so it was in the UK that the values surrounding the exhibition of subtitled films in specialised cinemas were questioned from the left. The liberal ‘art house’ with its internationalist ideals was perceived to be implicitly conservative and, like the upper middle class brands of film societies that came before it, a meeting place for the cultured establishment. So much for a defence of the subtitled film, then. But now, let’s look at the alternative.

There is a contemporary ideological argument in favour of dubbing. It goes that dubbing, in today’s interlocking politicaleconomic-cultural-linguistic circumstances, constitutes an action of principle against English language imperialism.

Dubbed films provide an opportunity for the audience to forget their own foreignness in relation to the film, a film which is no longer tied to notions of ‘authenticity’ but is a single text made multiple, instantly familiar to audiences across a range of cultural-linguistic contexts and liberated from the fetish of origins attached to the subtitled film.

In countries where re-voicing is the standard translation practice for mainstream US films, the status of national dubbing stars can be seen to undermine the cultural capital of American actors, American voices, American language.

And there are further pragmatic reasons to support dubbing in those countries which have been incorporated into that contentious geopolitical category ‘Europe’. Such as the claim that subtitling interrupts the visual pleasure of spectatorship and so discourages people from seeing ‘foreign’ films; that dubbing puts European post-production industries in a position of strength and provides film and television work in Europe for actors who have great faces for radio; and, finally, the hypothesis that if only dubbing were an accepted translation practice in English speaking territories (ie. in the USA), films from all over the world (the European Union) made in different languages could flourish.

But before we get too carried away, we should understand that dubbing’s origins are rooted in Hollywood market domination. When sound came decisively to film in the 1930s, dubbing was fixed upon in the Hollywood trade papers as the most desirable solution to Europe’s ‘language problem’ – said ‘problem’ being that everybody didn’t speak English. After the war, once the spoils of Germany had been divvied up, Hollywood took the initiative in the American sector to fund the operation of dubbing studios, the showing of American films in the German language being considered a process of de-Nazification. Unsurprisingly, dubbing’s other historical partner in Europe is fascism. Dubbing has been wielded as a propagandist and censorship tool for shielding the national in its most insular, mystifying and totalitarian manifestation.

Fascist governments in Germany, Italy and Spain strictly nationalised both film and language policies, and regulations were enforced to ensure that imported films were dubbed.

I have to admit that I’m pleased the film appreciation tradition has made the case for dubbing unviable in this country. The UK isn’t the only place housing specialised cinemas for showing subtitled films. Those Western European countries which invest in dubbing generally leave nonHollywood, small-scale productions in their original languages.

In a European context, then, the idea that dubbing is the panacea for ailing national film industries is simply wrongheaded. Partly in recognition of this refusal to risk investment in dubbing films with less commercial potential, the EU Commissioner for Education and Culture has declared her support for subtitling as the screen translation practice of choice. But she has also encouraged the production of a brand of ‘European’ popular cinema in the mould of Good Bye Lenin (dir. Wolfgang Becker 2003) and Amelie (dir. JeanPierre Jeunet 2001) without questioning the desirability of what is ultimately a culturally hermetic attitude to cinema co-production and audience identification, reifying ideas of a Europeanness that perhaps ought not to exist. The EU’s emphasis on the notion of European citizenship to support economic growth limits my enthusiasm for some of their policies backing the exhibition of subtitled films. When we watch a subtitled film we travel in and around film and that transportation must not be confined to imaginary European borders; it is we who are the foreigners, not the characters.

There is a film called Code Inconnu (Code Unknown, dir.

Michael Haneke 2001) which selectively examines some immigration issues in Europe. A feature of the film is the tension between language and silence. Those forced to become Europe’s newest citizens are shown nameless, speechless and even numberless, as surmised by the film’s title. In the first scene we are shown a mute but expressive deaf child backing away from the camera and pulling her body anxiously up to the wall. She is surrounded by classmates who use sign language to communicate their guesses at what she is acting out. Subtitles translate their actions, casting upon the screen a range of adjectives and nouns, describing the girl’s play variously as ‘alone’, ‘hiding place’, ‘gangster’, ‘bad conscience’, ‘sad’ and ‘imprisoned’. The child looks at her peers as if increasingly saddened that she is not understood.

Code unknown, the scene seems to suggest, is all of our guesses and also none of them. It is anonymity masked for a role. As new ways of categorising people emerge, communication paradoxically becomes more and more difficult. The ever urgent necessity for dialogue persists as it is the only way to deconstruct the labels which circumscribe our interaction with others. Subtitled films, unlike dubbed versions, encourage us to engage in dialectic and build a fuller discourse around what we thought we already knew. Subtitles are not only functional, they are a symbolic reminder of the processes of translation involved in making meaning and taking up the challenge to communicate despite our differences and cosy insularity. The alternative – dubbing – is the clown and, while we might say we enjoy its performance more, it may give us nightmares in the end. I’ll be returning to the Glasgow Film Theatre because ‘cinema for all’ isn’t a homily, it’s a pledge and a commitment to cultural exchange, on their part and on mine.

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