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.