Dubbing foreign films is not mere double-talk

By Lie Hua

JAKARTA (JP): A film depicts a made-up representation of reality. It is not reality but derived from reality and speaks to viewers through a visual discourse. A good film is understood even in silence. Charlie Chaplin's films are fine examples of this characteristic of a moving picture. In brief, a film presents a portrait, in varying degrees of accuracy, of reality.

Human beings perceive their surroundings through language. Language is a collection of signals, visual and auditory. In communicating, a person uses words and gestures while speaking. People understand because of the words and gestures used. A mute person will use gestures to make themselves understood. So, language may be silent or audible. Either way, it connects a speaker and his listener with reality.

The reality from which a film is derived is the reality experienced by the filmmaker. It is a contextual reality encompassing universal truths. The truths presented in a film are a combination of those which are contextual, experienced by the filmmaker in relation to his own society, and universal, experienced by all members of the human race.

A film is also a cultural event. It reflects the cultural background of those involved in its creation. Culture means the particular system of art, thought and customs of a society. A film is therefore a cultural product reflecting the system of art, thought and customs of the society to which those involved in its creation belong.

Compared with other art forms, like paintings and literary works, films appeal more to people because of their closeness to reality. Rolling before you is a micro-universe created by the filmmaker. Everything seems real but never will be because reality cannot be repeated while the reality in a film is.

So, every time we see a film, we know that we are watching a world of make-believe. The hero never dies and the villain is doomed to failure. This is almost a truism with every film although it is not always the case in real-life.

That's why when we watch a foreign film, we know that we are watching foreign people acting before us. We will share their experiences if these relate with the universal reality of which we are part (such as feelings of anger, hatred, joy and sorrow), but will feel strange about some events which are not usually found in our contextual reality.

It is at this point that we may be on guard about the way alien values seep into our minds. Identification with the hero/heroin in a film may make some people forget they are imitating something alien. Empathy, and then sympathy, may indeed affect our own way of thinking. If this happens consistently, it can safely be assumed that alien values can easily make their way into our conscience, subduing the "police" (to borrow Kant's term) guarding our own values.

This can happen whether or not the film has any sound. This can happen whether or not the film's dialog is understood. What plays a more significant role is the way we, the audience, identify ourselves with the hero/heroine in the film because a film, first and foremost, speaks best in the language of pictures.

But then there is dubbing. It is true that dubbing a foreign film into one's mother tongue can make a film better understood and better experienced as a cultural event. In a good film, good dubbing is an added value to the film's artistic quality, while bad dubbing will destroy the aesthetic quality.

In the case of a bad film, one that runs counter to our moral values, good dubbing will only boost the process of imitation on the part of film watchers, while bad dubbing will do likewise at a lower intensity.

Therefore, a film can harm its audience in terms of moral corruption, not because of its sound (speech, dubbed speech, music and sound effects) but rather because of its story. With or without sound, a film will relay its message to its audience inasmuch as it appeals to the eye with the made-up reality it presents.

It is therefore the film's story line we must guard ourselves against, first and foremost. It is the story line which will corrupt our minds and, in the case of a rotten story line, our moral values.

The government's decision to ban dubbing of foreign films into Indonesian and requiring them to be screened in English with Indonesian subtitles, somehow raises our eyebrows.

The government, through its film censorship board, must firstly tightly select foreign films to ensure that their story lines do not run counter to moral values. Only films that meet the standard of our moral values will be passed for public showing.

If this job is done satisfactorily, then whether or not the films are dubbed into Indonesian will not matter much. In fact, if a foreign film is considered suitable, in terms of its conformity with our moral values, for public showing, then dubbing the film into Indonesia will only make the film better understood as an artistic entity, especially if the dubbing, which is also in the aesthetic domain, is professionally done. (Of course, in this respect, the censor board must only pass dubbed films if the dubbing is good in terms of its translation and dialog quality.)

Not allowing the dubbing of foreign films into Indonesian may to a great extent also be disadvantageous to children. If a foreign film has positive values for children, then dubbing the film into Indonesian will only provide greater benefit to children, especially those who cannot read or who are still learning to read. Children can learn good moral values not only from the film's story line (what they can see) but also from the dialog (what they can hear). Both sight and sound will therefore be positively and indirectly trained.

But the key to all this is professionalism: in dubbing and in censorship, on the part of censor authorities.

The writer is a lecturer at the School of Letters, Universitas Nasional, Jakarta.