Rant against dubbing

I just saw "No Country For Old Men", which recently came out over on this side of the Atlantic, at the Metropole theater in Lille. The movie was very good, but it was the rest of the experience that kept distracting me. Specifically, the French subtitles, which did not seem to convey even a half of what the actors were saying. I don't mean that they did not translate all the lines, just that the words used were inadequate.

Of course, this is always true of translation, and I don't want to get into a discussion of the possibility or lack thereof for a "perfect" translation. But I was very glad that we were able to see a VO, "version originale", instead of a VF, "version française". VO means that the movie is subtitled in French, while VF means it's been dubbed in French. Now, I can't remember ever seeing a movie in the U.S. that was dubbed, and certainly not a TV show, but in France and other countries in Europe, dubbing is the norm. All TV shows that are originally in English are dubbed into French, and most of the movies are, too.

Now, I suppose it is easy for me to rail against dubbing when I live in the country with the world's most significant entertainment industry. But though subtitles may be inconvenient, they are far better than dubbing. First, subtitles preserve the original dialogue for anyone who understands that language. I have seen French movies with English subtitles and even though I rely on the subtitles, there are times when the spoken words paint a better picture than the text at the bottom of the screen.

Second, acting is not a wholly physical thing, that is it is not merely a series of gestures and expressions. The voice is critical, not just for what an actor says but for how they say it. And this is where No Country simply would not have worked if it had been dubbed. How do you create a west Texas accent in French? And one of the characters has a slight accent of unclear origin. How to create that?

It turns out that not only are many movies dubbed in France, but each actor has their own dubbers. There is a man somewhere who dubs all the lines for Tom Cruise, and another for Tom Hanks. This to me is just bizarre, even more so in such cases as the Simpsons, where each character has their own French voicer. The voices, however, are all wrong. Marge's is low and phlegmy, while Bart's has none of the childish innocence that makes his antics anything other than punkishness.

And could anyone other than Tommy Lee Jones talk like Tommy Lee Jones? Like in that scene in the Fugitive where he starts barking out orders to create a perimeter and all of that. Take that away and the character becomes entirely different.

The Perfect Café pt. 1

I went to l'écart today to read (Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?, which, so far, I recommend), and one of the essays describes a café in NO, and I started thinking about what the perfect café would be - both the place and the drink.

Now, cafés are important to me. They are a symbol of the community, a sort of cultural town hall. And they provide caffeine, also important. But most of all, I find they are great places for me to read/write/work. Alone in my room I tend to drift to nytimes.com or some other website, or I watch the latest Daily Show online. Cafés provide just enough people-watching opportunities to provide inspiration and some helpful white noise. Well, on to the perfect café.

First, it must have a name that evokes the place. Some of my favorites:
* Le Relax, in Lille
* L'Illustration, also in Lille
* La Mobylette, in Paris
* Le Pichet Mignon (the Cute Pitcher), in Valenciennes
* The Federal Association of Globetrotters, aka AUR aka Savezno udruženje svetskih putnika, in Belgrade
* Filter, Chicago
* Diesel, Somerville
* Bourgeois Pig, Chicago

Then, there must be books. There must be books. L'écart has 'em which is one of the reasons I like it. Books of course give people something to do, which is nice. But also, a communal bookshelf shows both a value of the written word and enough trust in the clientele to put lots of easily-stolen things within easy reach. This means there is enough sense of community in the place to have communal resources, which is good. Also, they can be great ways to discover new writers, as they offer a much more chill atmosphere than, say, Barnes and Nobles to pick up a random book and read it for an hour or two. Finally, books are just great to look at; hardcover, paperback, all colors and sizes, they are at once regular and clean-edged and random and organinc.

Third, there must be nooks. There must be crannies. Dollop in Chicago is great for this, as is Bourgeois Pig. There should be big rooms where you can grab eight friends and have a raucous conversation over coffee, and small, intimate rooms where you can lean in with someone across the table and speak just above a whisper. And, there should be semi-hidden rooms that have an air of solitude and tranquility for reading or writing. And rooms should not be arbitrary divisions of the place; there should be rooms with old paintings and rooms with edgy aggressive po-mo art, rooms with antique furniture and rooms with sleek metal-and-wood stuff.

Fourth, there must be couches. Real couches. Starbucks here is a great example of how not to do things. They are mostly filled with tables and chairs, with a few generic and overtly matching cushy chairs that are never that comfortable. A café should not look like it was built and designed all at once. It should look like things were added over the years, as tastes changed. There should be couches that once were in someone's house, and solid chairs next to scratched-up tables of all sizes. There should be coffee tables, too. Tryst in D.C. should be the model. It looks more like you walked into someone's living room than a café. After all, a café is, for me at least, part of my home.

Fifth, it must be big, but not feel big. There should always be enough seating that you don't feel like you're costing them business by sitting there for a few hours, but not so much that the place feels empty. It should feel cozy but not cramped. Quasi-industrial high ceilings are fine as long as they make the place spacious but not gymnasium-like.

Sixth, the staff should be helpful, knowledgeable, and cool. What's the difference between the Fair Trade Nicaraguan blend and the Organic Caribbean blend? The person behind the counter should know. And, they should know what "Fair Trade" means and what "Organic" means, and even better, how the coffee got from a tree somewhere in the tropics to the grinder on the counter. There should not be a uniform. Employees should not be reduced to automatons. That's fine if you're selling electronics, but your "barista", as they are unfortunately called, should know you, and you should know them. They don't need to start making what you want before you even tell them, but they should recognize you. One of the thinks I loved about Ebel in Prague was that the servers would hang out in the café when they weren't working. That's good, it means the customers and the servers are all making it a meeting-place instead of just a place of caffeine consumption.

At another time, (maybe), I'll describe what I think is the ideal cup of coffee/espresso.

Right now, my café of choice is Diesel in Somerville, MA, in Davis Square. The front has mostly two-person tables and chairs, while the back has booths, couches, and a sort of computer bar, with high stools. Though it is a bit lacking in the nook department, there is one all the way in the back, and the sort of long hallway that separates the front from the back does enough to isolate the two areas. The staff is great, and often tattooed. Plus, when I go in I often discover a new body part that, evidently, can be pierced. There is a lack of books, and the industrial theme sometimes can be too cold. But with so many students and people working on laptops, it has a great atmosphere anyway, much as Filter (at least the old Filter in Wicker Park) managed. Perhaps if you put the Bourgeois Pig in Davis square, you'd get the perfect café. But for right now, I'll take Diesel over most anywhere else.

In fact, as I told my friend Evan, if I move to Boston at some point, I'll try to live in Davis Square because of Diesel. Also, the Chipotle across the street. It's a deadly combination.

If anyone has a favorite cafe, please post a comment. I'm always looking for new places.

And...we're back!

Well after a not-at-all deserved break, Staring Through Shades is back. At least for now.

First, and update:

I am in France, "teaching" English in Lille, which is about an hour from London, Brussels, and Paris. Actually, I am living in Lille and teaching in Valenciennes, about 40 minutes by train to the south.

Yesterday I heard an interview with this guy named Eric Weiner, who used to be a foreign correspondent for NPR (*shakes fist at Eric Weiner in jealousy*) and then went around the world writing his book, The Geography of Bliss.

I have not read the book, but he said some interesthttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifing things in the interview. One was that happy places tend to be cold, not hot. His theory is that in cold climates everyone has to work together or everyone dies, and this has fostered a strong sense of community in places like Denmark, Switzerland, and Iceland.

Iceland, by the way, seems to be paradise, despite months of 24-hour darkness. Apparently, as Weiner told Stephen Colbert, in Iceland they don't drink at all during the week and then binge on the weekends. Colbert replied: "So they're all like college students?" Any connection to the fact that many people city their college years as the "happiest" of their lives?

Another study found that both lottery winners and paraplegics tend to return to their previous level of happiness, from before their great (mis)fortunes. (Though I remember this study being cited in an economics paper from, if I remember correctly, my Public Policy Analysis class, when I saw the sample sizes of this study, 22 for lottery winners and 29 for paraplegics, the economist in me winced.)

In any case, the science of happiness is one of the new things in Academe, and it's starting to be debated in policy arenas as well as those of psychologists and economics. So maybe fifteen years from now there'll be a Federal Department of Health, Happiness, and Human Services.

But thinking of happiness reminded me (of course) of Aristotle, and a Scav item from my first year: Eudaemonia. If I remember my Aristotle accurately, eudaemonia is a sort of enlightened happiness, a happiness of purpose, as opposed to, say, a happiness of ease, ignorance, indulgence, or hedonism. This is the happiness that people pay 40k a year at liberal arts colleges to receive, an educated satisfaction that comes from being educated. Now, for all it's virtues, the U of C is more about the enlightenment part than the happiness part (though that's getting better). But, there is an element, perhaps similar to Weiner's idea about cold climates, of forced community about the U of C, as well as an environment that tremendously heightens contrasts of ecstasy and misery.

An example: I took Stat 244, which is the most rigorous intro-level statistics course, and though I often describe it as one of my favorite courses, it was also probably the most difficult. I regularly worked all night on problem sets only to get a 70%. The reward for that work was that I felt I gained a fundamental understanding of the statistical theories and algorithms rather than just having memorized the equations. Needless to say the exam (which was my last of the term) was difficult, and I studied the material for days until the time came to sit in the huge lecture hall of Kent - the chemistry building was the only one with rooms big enough to fit everyone in Stat - for two hours. But then, and I can vividly remember this as one of the highlights of college, I walked out of Kent, knowing that I had finished and survived, and discovered that during the exam it had begun to snow. The U of C looks beautiful under a fresh layer of snow, with the gray and white and brown bringing out the red roofs and dark green bushes and pine trees. And I was consciously happy, aware of my own happiness, at the snow and returning to my warm room and being done with exams and then starting vacation and then going to Paris. And, I felt tremendously satisfied with my work: I had paid attention in class and struggled through every assignment and studied furiously and in the end had done rather well.

The point of this example is not just that a miserable present can turn into a wonderful past, but also that happiness is the result of the past, present, and future. It is the things we have done, the things we are doing, and the things we hope to do.