Saturday, April 19, 2008

Say What?

In Germany, every non-German movie and TV show is dubbed in German (with the rare exception MTV Germany, which shows some of the finer programming from the US, like Flavor of Love, FoL Charm School, I Love New York, A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila, Parental Control, X-Factor...etc. Not that I watch ALL of those...)

Anyway, this is frustrating, because there are lots of American programs that play here, but that I can't enjoy because of the language. Even though I have seen a good many Law & Order episodes, and know what's going to happen, it's still more fun to watch in English.

Where am I going with this? Well, one of my pet peeves has to do with dubbing and the marketing of American movies, both on the radio & on TV. Some months ago, Jerry Seinfeld's animated Bee Movie was opening here. So Jerry & Renee Zellweger appeared on a very popular variety show, Wetten Das?, to plug the movie. They showed a clip of the movie. Which was dubbed in German, by actors who WERE NOT Jerry Seinfeld and Renee Zellweger.

Um, why were Jerry & Renee there? They actually do not 'appear' in the movie over here. In fact, they have nothing to do with it here. For all intents & purposes, it is a German animated movie. This bugs me.

This is also the case with radio ads. One morning I was listening Einslive, the Rhein area pop/top40 radio station, and the DJs were talking about There Will Be Blood opening that weekend, and then they played a clip of Daniel Day Lewis from the movie. Which was actually a clip of the actor who dubs DDL's voice in the movie. NOT actually Daniel, eh?

The really funny thing is that most Germans don't want to see dubbed movies. When we go to the theater in Cologne that shows flicks only in original version (with and w/o subtitles), the theater is packed with a mostly German audience. Saw Be Kind, Rewind a couple of weeks ago here in D'dorf - theater also packed. Unfortunately, I don't think the dubbing will ever change here - there are too many jobs at stake. But one can hope...