| re: my problem with Sondheim's problem with "I Feel Pretty" | |
| Last Edit: Chazwaza 08:57 pm EST 12/24/21 | |
| Posted by: Chazwaza 08:54 pm EST 12/24/21 | |
| In reply to: re: my problem with Sondheim's problem with "I Feel Pretty" - Singapore/Fling 08:26 pm EST 12/24/21 | |
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| I completely buy your point. And I wish the song had been done in Spanish in the movie for this reason. I think being set in their White-run (even if closed for the night) workplace, it is even more likely they'd be speaking (and there for singing) in Spanish to each other. I also intellectually understand the reasoning for not subtitling the Spanish but I think it worked against them. To be the wiser solution to not giving primacy to one language over the other would be to subtitle BOTH English and Spanish (English into Spanish and Spanish into English). To assume also that everyone seeing the movie speaks English fluently is actually the kind of exclusive/ignorant assumption or inadvertent gate-keeping they were hoping to avoid or stand against. All the words in the movie are worth communicating to the audience, to have the non-Spanish-speaking audience miss out on so many of the words that the Spanish-speaking characters are saying does a disservice to those characters, the audience, and the play. The statement is made, sure, but there's a sacrifice that comes with it that isn't worth making. Subtitling both languages would have made the statement and lost nothing for either an English-speaking audience or a Spanish-speaking audience. And "I Feel Pretty" is SO well known as it is, that it's an easy song to have English-speakers hear in Spanish, not to mention that it was already re-written for that for the 2009 revival, with the now-even-more-famous Puerto Rican writer Lin-Manuel Miranda doing it with Sondheim's oversight/approval. I wish the new movie had committed to this, or just left it all in English with the conceit we all have understood for decades if not centuries for plays that involve characters who might not always be speaking in the language of the play, the play translates it for us because it is a play... just as we all understand the conceit that when characters in musicals sing (and rhyme), they are not actually doing that, it is a translation for the audience via the format of the play/movie. Also, for fun, a shoutout to the best I've seen this issue dealt with in a Broadway play... Stoppard's The Coast of Utopia, taking place in Russia... the Russian characters all spoke in English with non accent, and when they were in scenes speaking English (to characters who do not speak Russian) they spoke the same English as before but in a heavy Russian accent. It made perfect sense and was a graceful clever way to distinguish (since of course Russian is not spoken in a Russian accent to Russians, the accent exists in comparison to non-Russian speakers and when saying non-Russian words ... etc). West Side Story was not written for this to be utilized, and so they must do the play as written, or go all in on addressing it scene by scene and use the appropriate subtitles (which can happily include subtitles for every word regardless of language). |
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