film

by

Asian language in US movies, now becoming more authentic

Screenshot from interactive Web page on Asian movies in NY Times

The New York Times announced recently a new series that examines the output of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) in popular culture. The first  piece in the series, “Found in Translation: Asian Languages Onscreen,” is focused on the use of Asian languages in US American movies and TV. The article itself is quite interesting, but particularly effective is its online presentation, which features an innovative visual design by Alice Fang. The article points out that traditionally US movie viewers have been averse to reading subtitles but that has changed recently in respect to Hollywood movies with Asian characters. Recent hit movies Shogun and Everything Everywhere All at Once feature dialog, respectively, in Japanese and Chinese, mixed in with English.

The Web version of the article shows in interactive format how in a scene from the recent HBO mini-series The Sympathizer, a movie about making a movie, there is a kind of hidden dialog going on through the subtitles that illuminates what is happening on screen. The movie is set in Vietnam, but in that scene an actress who is playing a Vietnamese peasant speaks Cantonese. According to the article:

A crew member sheepishly explains to the director that they didn’t bother casting a Vietnamese speaker since “there’s no line in the script.” Eventually, another actress who does speak Vietnamese is brought in, and they reshoot the scene. Instead of the line the director suggests — “Don’t shoot me, I’m only a peasant” — the actress shouts one fed to her by the Captain, the on-set cultural consultant who is actually a Communist spy: “Our hands will close around the throat of American imperialism!” The swap goes over the director’s head, but for the viewer, who can read the subtitles (and for anyone who speaks Vietnamese), the layers of language become a narrative tool for political satire.

The article points out that this trend is likely to continue, as it seems to play well with audiences, adding a welcome tone of realism to movies about Asian characters that in the past were highly Americanized. For audience members who actually speak the language used in the film, the meaning is deepened, giving those viewers a special, inside track on what’s going on. The article points out that Internet users, through exposure to multilingual videos in YouTube, TikTok, etc. have grown more accoustomed and accepting of subtitles. In movies, adding authentic language enhances the story line: “Multiplicity of language is most interesting when it’s used to progress these stories — to ratchet up tension, to encase or reveal secrets, to create emotional resonance, to reflect or deflect identity.” That’s the case, for example, in the rich code-switching in Everything Everywhere All at Once which often features characters mixing Chinese and English in the same sentence. Subtitles not only enrich movies, they are also a wonderful (and entertaining) way to learn or maintain a foreign language. The fact that English language TV programs have long been shown in Scandinavia in English with subtitles has been shown to be a major factor in the citizens of those countries speaking better English than in countries such as Germany, that has always dubbed foreign video into German.

Interesting in terms of language in movies, a recent trailer has stirred a good deal of comment on accents used. The upcoming movie is the sequel Gladiators 2, which features Denzel Washington. The issue with many viewers of the trailer is that Washington does not adhere to the cinematic tradition of actors in movies about ancient Rome using British English but instead speaks in his regular New York accented American English. It’s a rather strange criticism in that ancient Romans certainly did not speak English of any kind. As many have pointed out, the Roman Empire was multicultural and therefore likely had many speakers with different accents speaking Latin. So criticizing the movie for mixed English accents is way off base.

by

Hair as politics

annie

Quvenzhané Wallis as Annie

Two recent stories on NPR highlight the importance of hair styles for personal identity, and point to the cultural and political messages hair can send. There is a trailer out for the new movie version of the muscial Annie, which features African-Americans in the lead roles. That includes Annie, the orphan with the full head of red, curly hair. In the movie, Quvenzhané Wallis plays Annie and, as can be seen in the trailer, her hair is not styled at all, not really an Afro, as is the traditional image of Annie. Terri Francis from Indiana University commented in the story:

“The original Annie had a red Afro,” she points out. So when you’ve got a black actress playing Annie, why not keep her ‘fro? “The ‘fro is too political or too threatening or too black,” Francis speculates. “Or something?”

Of interest as well is the fact that Daddy Warbucks (renamed Will Stacks in the film), traditionally bald, wears a hairpiece:

Black baldness, says Francis, means something different than white baldness.
“The baldness is not about losing hair,” she explains. “The baldness is badness.” (And just to be clear, that’s baadnessss with “two A’s, four S’s,” Francis says.) Giving Daddy Warbucks a hairpiece tames him a little bit, she says. It makes him less virile.


If black baldness may send a signal, that is also the case with dreadlocks. That may be particularly true if the African-American happens to live in a predominantly white neighborhood. That’s the case with Mark Quarles, who wears his hair in dreadlocks and lives in an affluent area on the Monterey Peninsula in California, along with his German-born wife and 2 children. In a conversation with NPR’s Michele Norris, Quarles discusses how his appearance influences how his neighbors view him, which is with suspicion. He mentions that before he grew his dreadlocks, he had established stable employment and financial security. That plays a role in the advice he says he would give his son, if he were to say he wanted to have the same hairstyle as his dad:

Well, if he came home and said he wanted to grow dreadlocks, I would share with him – well, son, I hope you’re prepared and ready for what’s going to come along with that because it’s going to take a great deal of patience, and you’re going to have to be ready for what people will say and what they will think about you… and I would tell him, son, I’ve completed my education. I have a very good career. We have a nice home, and I did all of these things before I decided to grow my dreadlocks. And, again, the world will make assumptions about you based on your appearance. So right now, I just need you to be a clean-cut, well-dressed kid without your pants hanging off of your butt.

Hair plays a major role as well in a new Venezuelan movie, Pelo Malo, meaning “bad hair” in Spanish. The main character is a 9-year old living in a poor neighborhood in Caracas. As is the case with many Venezuelans, the boy has European, indigenous and African ancestry, which gives him thick, curled hair. In advance of having his picture taken at school, he becomes obsessed with straightening his hair, trying everything from blow-drying to applying mayonnaise. The signal that sends to his mother is that he must be gay.

It’s not just Venezuelans who think about straightening their hair; it’s the case with many women of African descent. Chimamanda Adichie has written about the importance of hair for Nigerian women (in Americanah), and for her personally. In a video clip she expands on the cultural and political significance of black hair:


As a child of the 1960’s, my experience of hair as politics goes back to the signal sent by hippies letting their hair grow long, as beatniks did before them, as a way to signal visually that I am embracing a different culture from the (clean-cut) mainstream. This was famously expressed in “Almost cut my hair” by David Crosby, a celebration of letting your “freak flag fly”.