I've watch the shart film some times, and in the beginning I was just awestruck by how good i t was, but then I noticed something:
Why are only the black people subtitled?
They both speak equally understandable... I mean I would prefer if they subtitled the guy talking at about 3:20, but he's not.
Any thoughts?
"You got Frohwned!!!"
You're being really ridiculous. Some people can't understand their accent, or the language their speaking. There's other people on this earth, you know.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=BNJNj0ZggOg
http://youtube.com/watch?v=jAgxUxCvxcU
i agree. a little ridiculous.
share[deleted]
If you're releasing a movie in the US, would you subtitle the American actors speaking English?
If you're releasing a movie in France, would you subtitle the French actors speaking French?
If you're releasing a movie in Spain, would you subtitle the Spanish actors speaking Spanish?
Let's look at it another way:
If an American filmmaker makes an American funded movie, commercial or not, geared at the average American citizen, would they subtitle the American English-speaking actors in their film?
If a French filmmaker makes a French funded movie, commercial or not, geared at the average French citizen, would they subtitle the French-speaking actors in their film?
I think you get the point.
If a director is making the movie for a certain audience, that's his decision and doesn't automatically mean it has anything to do with his beliefs or feelings toward other elasticities. To think so it must is just as ignorant as the racist you're uncover.
"Last survivor of the Nostromo...signing off..."
[deleted]
South Africa has 11 different official languages, and loads of different regional accents and slang within even one language. If you ever seen a South African investigative program like Carte Blanche or Special Assignment you'd know that this is quite common practice as it's impossible for everyone to understand every possible combination of accents. Even locally made soap operas get subtitled (in these cases changing evertyhing to English as there is usually a multitude of languages being spoken).
shareso in south africa, whites are not sub titled but blacks are in spite of whites speaking their own regional dialect/accent.
i get what the op is saying. we are not all south africans and we're not going to understand all the little cultural taboos and traditions; we none south africans are just going to see black south africans subtitled and white south africans -- who sound just the same as black south africans to us -- not being subtitled.
the OP is right. everyone should be subtitled.
The subtitles were not racist and also were not any kind of comment on a racism via filmmaking.
As people have pointed out above, the black folks spoke in accents that were more difficult to understand to North American audiences, to whom the film was marketed.
If you don't believe me, go watch "District 9" and see how they subtitle several blacks in that movie too, in particular the guy who talks about how alien parts cure various diseases like "diabetes." Without subtitles, there is no way in a million years I or any American would have understood that guy, or several other similarly interviewed black subjects in the movie, but all the white characters I could understand fine.
In closing, the subtitles have nothing to do with racism. Nothing to do with a subtle comment on racism. It was strictly so audiences could understand what was said.
The people who were subtitled were mostly outside (or in markets) being interviewed, with lots of noise around them. The actors who were filmed inside on sets, or by themselves outside with no noise in the background, were not subtitled. If you watch a show like "COPS", they will often add subtitles because of background noise that makes it difficult to hear what is being said. This had nothing to do with race; it was about making it easy for an audience to understand what the performers were saying.
sharedude. its meant to be a mock documentary, so its the subtitles are on porpose to show the racism of the documentary, because the whole message of the film is how racist we are to the aliens (they are symbols for other races)
share i agree with the response above. the director seemed as though he did this on purpose to express a point. i don't think he was being racist.
Warner Music Group Sucks!
this movie is about racism! why do you think it ironically takes place in south africa! why do people try to look at everything from a point of view that irritates them. this thread is retarded
shareof coarse the movie is about racism . I'm just saying i don't think the director himself is racist.
Warner Music Group Sucks!
Dude, RACISM is totes wrong! I think people should like stop being racist and open their eyes to a beautiful world and listen to the Beatles together.
PS- The Beatles' music is kinda racist too by these standards.
"The Beatles' music is kinda racist too by these standards."
Everyone's got something to hide except for me and my monkey.
"Enough of that technical talk, Foo!"
yes it's true most of the people on the imdb board missed the point... because as far as messages in movies go this is definitely a quintessential piece. I don't want to give it too much credit though, at least not until i watch it again.
shareyou can find racism in anything, i learned this in my english class when my super liberal teacher took a simple movie and tried to play the race card in it. Race has nothing to do with this, not only that but all the people in the film are of the same race, just not skin color so you saying this is "racist" is a flat out wrong comment. BTW finding this as racist proves you were looking for racism and that you in fact are racist yourself. people need to wake up.
cellar door
sktborder826 makes a valid point here, but I think you are mixing up race with nation. Race is by definition, the genetic differences acquired by specific geographic isolation. Therefore, the color of their skin would separate them by common racial definitions. Considering that the white people in SA are all either English or Deutsch descended and have only been there for a couple hundred years it is safe to say that they are of different races.
The use of the subtitles is probably a play off of the old apartheid idea that white people couldn't understand black people's English, because it was mired down by the native accent. I believe it was common practice to use subtitles in news broadcasts and the like back in those days.
there was a need for subtitles for the people in the film either way, putting race in the equation is just childlike
cellar door
[deleted]
i remember one of the white women being subtitled, stop bitching even if he is racist then big deal what are you going to do, blog about it?
cellar door
It's still common practise, more so today than during Apartheid. South Africa has 11 different official languages + different regional dialects, most people speak English as a 2nd language so it's nothing to do with rascism, it's just impossible for everyone to understand all the different accents. Not just the news that get subtitled, lots of other locally produced shows get subtitled.
sharerace is an artificial construct of society. It has nothing to do with geographic isolation.
We are raised to segment people into defined little boxes based on their facial characteristics. For example, lot's of biracial people and even people that are 1/4th or 1/8th black are simply called black. They are defined by a certain type of nose and a few other characteristics like hair.
Similarly, 'white' people have narrow pointy noses, and lighter complexions. Though even if a person had a majority white ancestry, being part Asian, Black or native American is enough for them to 'not be white' by prevailing standards.
It a silly construct really. It doesn't really help you understand anything. But people read a lot into 'race'.
Ironic since in the USA we are a mixed up melange of genetic traits. In a few more generations most of these distinctions will probably be historical footnotes. Thought of as just as useless as phrenology or hand reading.
BTW Libyan and Ethiopian Africans can be very fair skinned.
As far as the subtitle thing, it IS common for documentaries in the south of the US to have subtitles. I have a bunch of 16mm docs about the deep south that have subtitles whenever someone isn't speaking midwestern American dialect English.
In Blomkamp's case I think he was making a point.
In the age of computers, I find hand reading more useful than handwriting :)
share[deleted]
I haven't seen this version of the movie, I came here to learn more about the remake called "District 9" and I came across this silly discussion.
It is not racist to say that White South Africans are of Dutch or English heritage and speak with an English or Dutch accent. Black South Africans, even though they are speaking perfect English, are of perhaps Zulu heritage or many other backgrounds that I confess I do not know, and may have an accent reflecting this heritage, so it is natural that an English viewer wouldn't understand them as well, even though they are speaking English.
For example, I played soccer with a guy from French-speaking Switzerland, and he couldn't understand Americans speaking English very well, though he could speak excellent English himself. Yet he found that he could understand Canadians speaking English quite well, because they had a bit of a French pronounciation which he could understand. In fact, once I said something to my Swiss friend, and he turned and looked at our Canadian-American friend, who repeated my exact words, and the Swiss guy understood that Canadian perfectly!
This film was so racist against white people! Why didn't whites deserve subtitles?
Black people get all the affirmative action, like subtitles and such. This kind of affirmative racial discrimination needs to end. We should all be treated equal.
Black people were not the only ones subtitled.
The aliens were too.
My opinion was that it was on purpose.
Why?
In South Africa past, and even present, there's tension between some of the Black and White South Africans. Where some of the White SA's (South African's) might not be able to sympathize with the plight of a Black SA's, based on their upbringing and racial issues, they might be able to sympathize with an alien instead. So, give the aliens a language that can't be understood and subtitle it. Then you subtitle the Black SA's too. The subtitles draw an association between them, the White SA's feel for the aliens and their plight, notice both aliens and Black SA's are subtitled, then BAM it hits them that the aliens are symbolic of the Black SA's. Once the White SA's realize this they hopefully can appreciate the issues the Black SA's are having and finally, through the connection and understanding provided by the alien in the clip, come to see the Black SA's in a not so prejudiced light.
this has to be the dumbest racism accusation I've seen since a guy tried to tell me how Leviathan was racist because Ernie Hudson died in it.
shareI've been to South Africa before, TV was subtitled majorly for common sense reasons... like being unable to understand an accent. It has nothing to do with race and everything to do with language and culture. It's just hard to understand some people and it's not because their skin color has magical properties which act as sound jamming devices on your ears.
I moved to Ireland from the US. People here sometimes don't understand what the hell i'm saying and i sometimes don't understand them. It's no big deal and I don't get all butthurt when someone doesn't understand me, then proceed to call them racists.
The aliens are subtitled for a different reason. That being that they don't really exist here. Do you see them running around outside? Are you familiar with their language? Notice, on Earth, we only speak human languages. Hence, the need to subtitle a fictional species speaking a fictional language.
Play a program on SA tv of some white european people with hard to understand accents and they will be subtitled in South africa. It's common practice EVERYWHERE to subtitle when the accent is difficult. Cause some people are just smart, not racist.
Bingo! Greenhorn 2, I think that your interpretation is very enlightening. And, I would have to agree that the OP's observation definitely was on the same track as yours.
***SPOILER ALERT***
My interpretation? The movie conveys succinctly the reminder of a proverb I remember reading in the Bible, something about, "..how do you see the speck (of sin) in your brother's eye when there is a log sticking out of your own?"
Is Blomkamp a racist? I can't pass that judgment. However, I think this brilliant short overflows with examples of bigotry and irony. The subtitles, I believe, are done with the specific purpose mentioned by Greenhorn 2. What I found ironic was that the black SAs blamed the aliens for increasing problems of society and complained of the alien SAs' strange behaviors (e.g., the woman who notes the increase in rapes since the alien SAs arrival when I'm not even certain the alien SAs have the necessary equipment to rape humans, the cabbie who complains of the aliens riding on the tops of the electric buses, the pistol packing butchers guarding against alien thieves and the groups of black SAs who organize the "running" protests against the aliens' presence, which reminded me of the protest marches against apartheid during P.W. Botha's administration. Although I'm not from SA, the attitudes of the black SAs towards the alien SAs in the movie resemble what I came to believe to be the attitudes that white SAs had toward black SAs during apartheid.
I think the movie is all about bigotry, how easy it is to spot it in others and how blind we all can be towards our own. Great movie.
It's real interviews asking local people what they think of the illegal (and legal) foreigners coming over from Zimbabwe and Nigeria, just used in a different context. Last year there was big xenophic attacks on foreigners, it's not based on skin colour.
shareWhen Mad Max staring Mel Gibson first came out in the US they redubed his voice and/or subtitled his lines because his accent was to strong and alot of people could not understand him. Was that being racist? Im going to have to agree with the posters who have pointed out the obvious illusions to White on Black racism duing South Africa's Aparthied.
Anyone who looks for trouble will find it where ever they look.
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I will eviscerate you in fiction. I was naked for a day, you will be naked for eternity.
true,
it is equally hard to understand sharlto copley in this short and yet he doesn't give him subtitles...
maybe what the white guy's saying just isn't as important.
;)