The media tour president Obama did over the weekend to promote his health care reform was widely analyzed by all sorts of English language outlets. Yet, as you may have guessed, none of them covered what happened on Univisión, the “fifth network,” even when Jorge Ramos interview was outstanding.
But to realize that, I had to get across what ruined my movies as a kid: dubbing.
Read my column for Mediaite here.
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Published by José Simián
José Simián (1975) is a New York-based bilingual marketer, content strategist and editor. His articles and columns on politics, media and culture have been published by the New York Daily News, Mediaite, The Huffington Post, Sports Illustrated Latino, Billboard en Español, Latina, Qué Pasa, Etiqueta Negra, La Tercera and El Mercurio. He is also the host and producer of Contraportada, a weekly interview segment with Latino artists and intellectuals on 24-hour news cable station NY1 Noticias, and Executive Editor of Manero. Before becoming a writer, José worked as a lawyer (JD Universidad de Chile, 2002; LLM Columbia University, 2005) and taught Jurisprudence and Law and Literature in Chile. He lives in Brooklyn.
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Had to laugh at the memory of growing up watching U.S. movies and TV shows that had been dubbed into Spanish. I too was struck by how the actors and actresses all sounded alike. Two stories:
I faithfully watched “Yo Quiero a Lucy” for years before finally seeing it in English on a visit to my grandparents’ in Missouri. I’d never known that Ricky Ricardo had a thick Cuban accent, and half the show’s humor revolved around his mangled English. All the scenes that should’ve been funny in Spanish, but weren’t, suddenly made sense.
When my brother returned to Venezuela to work in the early ’80s, he developed a mad crush on one of the actresses in “Hill Street Blues,” who had a particularly smoky, sexy voice. When he returned to the U.S. he couldn’t wait to watch the show in English, and when the actress came on, using her true clipped, nasal delivery, his fantasy life was destroyed.