Dear friends -
Here is a question for all true film-philosophers.
Why aren't 'foreign' song lyrics subtitled in movies?
I just watched a wonderful Bollywood musical SAATHIYA. Dialogue is
subtitled, but not the many songs, of course crucial to action, character
and plot. Carlos Saura's dance films are distributed here (Australia)
without the wall-to-wall songs being subtitled. If there is a song within
the scene or on the soundtrack in an Almodovar film - carefully and
meaningfully placed - it is not subtitled.
The problem is even more pervasive. In the published English-language
versions of Dennis Potter's teleplays - many of which are completely
constructed upon the elaborate miming of popular standards - the song lyrics
are never included.
Why this discrimination against song lyrics - not in any of these films
themselves, but in the ways they are then exported, represented, depicted
within film culture?
Adrian
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