While the whole Oscars’ ceremony was overshadowed by Will Smith’s slap on Chris Rock, the selection of nominees and ultimately the winners of the awards posed the usual question of where are non-English movies?
When diving into the list of nominees, you quickly realise that little has changed over the last decade, even after strong protests in 2016 for the lack of diversity on the panel of judges and nominee choices. With Parasite (Korean-produced) winning ‘Best Picture’ in 2020, it was expected more non-English movies would get recognition in years to come. However, conservatism and lack of cultural awakening means yet again this ceremony saw very few nominations for movies which did not have English as a primary language.
Outside of the ‘International Film’ section, only a few movies made it on the list of nominees. While this statement is less true in the short film categories, only 3 films were showcased in the long form categories, including two documentaries. Flee (Danish) and Writing with Fire (Indian) received nominated for documentary feature, while the sole Drive My Car saving face for non-English movies.
The Japanese produced movie appears in ‘Writing (Adapted Screenplay)’ as well as ‘Best Picture’. While the movie fits a typical Oscars’ format and slow pace, and is a beautiful story, there is a feeling it is rather there to continue the legacy of Parasite. Reduced by many as simply another Asian movie, Drive My Car is possibly there to meet the quota of non-English movies that participants of the Academy Awards hoped the panel would set following the success of Parasite.
Why is this so? Why are non-English movies not getting more recognition in the United States? And more broadly, why do Western countries continuously value dubbed movies in their own language, rather than celebrating the beautiful diversity that can be found in the film industry?
Western countries undoubtedly have firstly more money to spend on the cultural industry, particularly with movies, giving them the choice to have thousands of voice actors to dub international movies. This however goes deeper, with a certain sense of colonialism.
Take France for example. Every year, the French film industry produces hundreds of movies that go out in cinemas in its original language. Movie theatres will evidently also show tens of movies produced in the US, such as Marvel or Christopher Nolan movies. The latter are more often than not dubbed when screened in cinemas, but do often also have the original version with French subtitles showing once a day.
This is far less the case when showing a Norwegian movie like Worst Person in The World or even when Parasite finally came out in cinemas. The screenings in original versions were less recurrent, with dubbed versions getting the acclaims and screen time for French people to enjoy.
Some have argued that the West prefers this way of approaching non-English films due cultural standards, stating their language is supposedly better than the ones of smaller or far-away countries (such as Japan). We see this in live-action movies but even more so in animated movies and shows, with Japanese manga being one of the most dubbed genres of cinematic content.
As dubbing is costly and foreign movies will have different cultural aspects, which can be difficult to assimilate for Western cultures, there is often a pushback against screening (or nominating) movies from non-Western countries. However, dubbing in itself brings up many other issues which need to be addressed.
Apart from the very best movies, dubbing is often of poor quality when comparing to original content. This is not always the fault of voice actors or dubbing studios, but it is definitely difficult to recreate the atmosphere and personality of a character when it is not done by the original actor. Actors often study very hard and put themselves through certain trainings or diets to get ready for their roles. Inevitably, when trying to recreate that mindset as a voice actor, it is near impossible to do.
Additionally, other issues arise. Sounds are not always transcribed, such as the echo in the desertic surroundings of Christopher McCandless in the movie Into The Wild. Not adding that sound effect changes completely the atmosphere of the scene. When it comes to transcribing, another difficulty dubbing studios struggle with are play on words or expressions that exist in a certain language or culture that are impossible to translate. While subtitles cannot necessarily do a much better job at tackling this issue, it seems far too evident in dubbing when the original meaning is not transcribed.
Many studios, particularly in France, seem to use dubbing as a way to get celebrity names onto the poster, particularly with animated movies, in order to make more people go to theatres. Unfortunately, these celebrities do not necessarily have any acting background. This was showcased by Olivier Giroud and Presnel Kimpembe doing voiceovers in Spider-man: Into The Spiderverse, both being French international footballers, not actors. This takes away from the work put into these movies and denatures them.
Finally, watching a movie in its original version not only brings out the best of the work from actors and production staff, but it also enables the audience to better develop their skills in that very language. How many times have British, French or American people been told abroad that their level in a second language is poor?
International education company ‘Education First’ compiled a list in 2016 of countries’ fluency in English when it is not the first language in the country. Out of 72 countries sampled, the French came 29th, but were also the last amongst the European countries present on the list. While the new generation is improving their English fluency, the overall level is still far from the standards it could be.
There is a clear argument that watching movies in their original language would most definitely help the nation improve drastically. Mouhcine Kziber conducted research on “The impact of English movies on the spoken fluency of students” in 2020, are results are staggering. Not only do the students observed majoritarily think their confidence in speaking English improved by watching English movies, their vocabulary and their pronunciation did as well.
While widespread research is still limited, and fluency in a language is somewhat subjective, it is clear that the democratisation of Netflix amongst younger audiences and their access to English speaking content will most definitely help them improve in years to come. This, in time, will certainly help with opening to the world, and welcoming more non-natively spoken languages into our cultures, particularly in cinema. Hopefully, this will bring more movies from huge film production countries such as China, Korea or Scandinavia.
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