Do you support subtitles or dubs?
I, like most of the world, prefer dubs. It seems like America is an outlier on yet another thing. Most Hollywood movies are dubbed into French and Spanish at a minimum. But most foreign movies are not dubbed into English. I think most Americans aren’t aware of this and assume subtitles are the norm. A lot of snobs act like dubs take something away from “the director’s vision”. But you don’t understand the inflections in someone’s voice if you don’t speak the language. I think it was Kurwasawa who said no American will ever see one of his movies the way a Japanese will, and vice versus. Something is necessarily lost by you not speaking the language, and you can’t get around that either way. This point of view makes dubbing seem like a much more accurate way of translating a movie experience, since it approximates the original, whereas subtitles are a completely artificial and abstract addition.
So dubs bother you because the lips don’t move right with the words. Yeah yeah yeah, I hear you. Get real. Subtitles cover half the screen and you can’t see the lips at all, even if they weren’t covered, because you’re busy reading. It’s a fundamentally lesser form of immersion. It also seems to give people an inaccurate perception of what the movie is supposed to be. People think dubs make movies seem silly. But usually those movies are supposed to be silly. Really, it’s the subtitles that make silly movies seem serious, and serious means important I guess.
I think it’s a conspiracy. Hollywood is big and powerful and knows that people hate subtitles no matter how convincingly they lie to themselves. So they make sure all their own Hollywood movies get dubbed, for foreign markets. And distributors resist allowing dubs for foreign movies. Keeps uncultured Americans locked in.
What are your thoughts? Do you agree or disagrees? I am originally from India btw.