The Dubious Pleasures of Dubbing
By Ardath Rekha
Synopsis: Dubbing can make a film or TV show accessible to a whole new audience that previously didn’t have access… but at what cost if it isn’t done well? Ardath takes an uncomfortably close look at the dubbing work on the Pitch Black DVD to try to answer this.
Note: This was originally written sometime in early-mid 2002, and then was lost during AoVD’s very first site outage, when we lost a few months of posts to the vagaries of our former webhosting service. I dusted it off and reposted it in October 2003, and it vanished into the depths of the board where it has lain dormant since. But if you’ve ever wondered why cinephiles tend to insist on subtitles rather than dubs, most of the time, this might help explain. —A.
Category: Non-Fiction
The views expressed in these articles are solely the views of Ardath Rekha. References to specific works, actors, and writers are done in keeping with the Digital Millenium Copyright Act’s fair use policies. eBook design and cover art by LaraRebooted, drawn from a photo by Ann Nekr, licensed through Pexels, the Great Vibes font from 1001 Fonts, and background graphics © 1998 Noel Mollon, adapted and licensed via Teri Williams Carnright from the now-retired Fantasyland Graphics site (c. 2003). This eBook may not be sold or advertised for sale. If you are a copyright holder of any of the referenced works, and believe that part or all of this eBook exceeds fair use practices under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, please contact Ardath Rekha.
Rev. 2022.10.09
The Dubious Pleasures of Dubbing
For those of you who are, as I am, completely obsessive about Pitch Black, there are two versions of the DVD available in America. One, the most commonly-available, is the unrated Director’s cut, featuring approximately three or four minutes of additional footage. Although the footage is entirely comprised of additional character-driven dialogue, since the MPAA never saw it when they gave the movie its rating, it has to be listed as “unrated.” And because Wal-Mart is pathological about such things, they won’t carry it. For them, and other stores like them, an R-rated theatrical release version is available.
I own both. I told you, I’m obsessed.
Now, I recently discovered that there’s a nice little “bonus” on the R-rated version that doesn’t exist on the unrated version: a French audio track. I was excited. I popped that sucker back into the DVD player and keyed it up.
It was awful. Folks, I feel terrible for anyone who watched Pitch Black for the first time listening to this
Let me explain. And yes, I’m going to do so at length.
Acting is not just a matter of stepping in front of the camera and looking good. Both sight and sound are joined in the creation of a gifted performance. If you take one away, the other suffers. Sound — and voice — are crucial. Tone, intonation, or a hidden hint of irony may shape or reshape an entire scene and change the whole meaning of what’s occurring.
This is never more apparent than when the original actors’ voices are stripped away and new ones are substituted in.
Now some dubbing jobs are masterful works, employing deeply talented actors and actresses who have listened to and understand the lines they’re replacing and can match their spirit. But I have got to
First — let’s talk about miscasting. The most egregious examples of this are in the voices for Riddick, Shazza and Jack.
Riddick’s voice isn’t deep enough. Worse yet, the growl is gone. The hints of an urban upbringing are gone as well. We’re left with a voice and delivery that evokes the image of an oily, mustache-twirling villain from a bad ’40s Film Noir. The grace, the charisma, the sly intelligence and the raw sexual magnetism of Richard B. Riddick are severely subdued, because the new voice doesn’t merely fail to convey those attributes — it contradicts them.
Shazza’s voice, conversely, is far too deep. As done by Claudia Black, Shazza had an extraordinary voice, ranging from a soft, deep purr to a somewhat hoarse baby coo. It was the voice of a sharply intelligent, capable woman with nothing to prove, simultaneously powerful and feminine. The actress dubbing her, however, seems to be under the mistaken impression that a strong woman has to be hopelessly butch. She pushes her voice to the deepest part of its range, practically croaking out some of her lines, seemingly determined to come across as more masculine than the men around her. The result is that Shazza is vocally reduced to a
Jack’s voice is probably the worst miscasting of all. As Void commented to me while we watched it: “Well, she sounds about twenty-nine years old.” The voice is unmistakably the voice of a woman in her late twenties, not that of a thirteen-year-old child of ambiguous gender. Where Rhiana Griffith used the deepest part of her range while masquerading as a boy, and then switched to softer, higher tones after Jack was “outed,” her dub makes no attempt at all to vary her delivery. The voice is far too feminine, and far too mature, for the character.
Although I do take issue with some of the other actors’ and actresses’ deliveries, I don’t necessarily take issue with their
Delivery is definitely the next issue, and the worst offender in this department is the actress “playing” Carolyn Fry. Her voice is fine, but her interpretation of the character is way off.
Fry, you will recall, is a subtle, multilayered character. Reeling from the devastating loss of friends and ship, grief- and guilt-stricken over the consequences (both real and imagined) of her momentary panic, Fry is forced to take on a role she neither wants nor feels qualified for, that of Captain. Her determination to do that job well, to acquit herself for her past failings, drives her. Her growing awareness that Johns — ostensibly her logical ally — is too unstable to be trusted, shapes her choices. And her genuine love for the passengers that she almost sacrificed, but has now come to know, is what spurs her to right the wrong she almost did them, at the cost of her own life. It’s a spectacular arc for any character, and Radha Mitchell did it amazing justice, giving Fry a quiet, melancholy strength.
The dubbed Fry, unfortunately, is a whiny ninny! She has no connection to her crewmates — as Owens is dying and she calls for her passengers to bring him some anesthesia, she delivers the line with all the passion of someone announcing “there’s a turkey leg in the fridge if you’re hungry.”
Her whoop of victory, upon discovering the skiff, is an appalling squeal now, making her sound (in Void’s words) “like she just stepped on a shell at the beach.” And when the creatures almost pull her back into the cave, things descend to a new nadir. This Fry screams and screams the whole time, sounding like a little girl who just had a spider dropped down her shirt. Listening to this Fry whine her way through the movie, one has to wonder why any of the others paid attention to her at all, much less followed her orders. And by the time she’s pulled out of Riddick’s grasp and into the darkness, the shock of the moment is no longer “oh my god, she’s not going to make it” but “how the hell did she manage to survive this long?”
Pitch Black was an amazing movie that took the more clichéd elements of science fiction and turned them on their side. Between the writing, directing, acting, and stunning visuals, new life was breathed into an old concept. So it’s amazing to discover just how much of that life a bad dubbing job can kill. No wonder it did no better overseas — without the depth given to it by the original performers’ vocal deliveries, Pitch Black gets knocked back into the realm of “just another sci fi movie.” Fry’s moral struggles and Riddick’s enigmatic charisma are lost, making it much harder for a viewer to connect with their dilemmas and root for them.
Void’s analysis is that the voices sounded French-Canadian, so it’s possible that another, better French dub has been released in Europe. But it’s a damn
Plus, given the effect Vin’s voice alone is known to have on women (and yes, I speak from personal experience here!) it seems like a genuine crime that viewers in foreign countries had to listen to some lesser voice in its place.
Okay, my rant is done. 😉