The film ends with a question; “How can we truly utilize cinema”—posing a question not of how we can use it in our everyday but how we can use it to push political ideals and influence. Obviously the answer here is that it has great influence but it is often strongest when the ideology lies in the background; when the out of place, ugly, individualist male saves a princess from a high tower but they run into a grasp of a totalitarian society run by a dictator. Such an example pushes a huge political/social ideology to it’s audience, especially when such a tale is directed at impressionable children. Thus maybe such a film would have more influence than an intellectually satirical exercise like Can Dialectics Break Bricks?as it meets with a general, as opposed to a niche, audience. However this isn’t the key discussion we want to look at today. Instead we’ll turn our gaze to the film’s form as a ‘détournement’—in English, literally a ‘hijacking’.
Can Dialectics Break Bricks?takes the 1972 martial arts flick Crushand ‘hijacks’ it redubbing over the entire run-time with French political ideologies, changing the original conflict (between Korean and Japanese occupiers) into one of the proletariat utilising the power of their dialectics to fight the bureaucrats. Obviously this comes with a level of humour, they scream the names of Marx and Tolstoy, children swear at adults and a wealth of sexual turns are added. In many ways such a device works more strongly for it’s comic relief than to actually push ideology—as such a dubbing technique is more absurd than serious. However it does bring a larger question of dubbing’s potential and responsibility as a whole.
Being a native English speaker, and being crazy about film, I have rarely ever been exposed to dub—and I even actively avoid it. However I’m well aware of many countries or situations where dubbing is used; American children’s film are all dubbed here in Korea, and Italian cinemas (as I have discovered through my housemate) dubs pretty much everything. At face value dubbing seems like a simple defacing of an original—changing the audio track doesn’t simply alienate you as George Clooney begins to speak Italian, but it goes out of sync with his mouth breaking the idea of realism. But then we need to contrast such a technique with subtitling, a technique that forces you to avert your eyes to the very bottom of the screen—forcing us to miss key details in the shot, from expression to fine set design. This posits both alternatives with a weakness, but Dialectics suggests that the tool of dubbing is more powerful than that of subtitling. For example they could have achieved exactly the same theoretical effect by replacing the subtitles of the film, instead of dubbing it. However the immediacy of hearing the voice saying it, instead of being forced to read, pushes the meaning to the audience more easily. Yet this is complicated further as I, a non-French speaker both experience the dub and the subtitling of the dub. In such a way I feel the films impact would be heightened for a French audience, and it is lessened for me as there is relatively no difference between the original Chinese audio and French audio for my ears (but then would this be the same film?).
With this array of questions aside, the true lesson learned from Dialecticsis the creativity in the dubbing process. Translation always comes with a caveat; do you translate the meaning directly or the meaning with the same feeling and implication (which often proves impossible). Just as dialectics reimagines the original film Crushthe English subtitles, albeit in a less radical way, reimagine Dialecticsinto a new version with different inherent meaning. This inevitability is fascinating as it makes me wonder what information I miss when I watch a subtitled film, or even one which is dubbed—and as the studio/creators will rarely be in control of this process (and rarely be able to understand it’s outcomes) what is the dubber/subtitler’s allegiance? To withhold precise meaning, to flex their linguistic abilities or to reimagine a scene into a form which they feel would be more impactful?
It is a complicated job to translate, both in and outside of film, but it is certain that we can never quite view the ‘original’ that holds all subtlety and intonation if we cannot understand the native language. But let’s give a hand to all those wonderful translators who let us get at least part of the way there.
~Leo
Can Dialectics Break Bricks? (1973)
2/3/2
7/13
Afterthought: Again it's interesting to consider our rating system here as such a film almost cannot receive compliments for visuals or editing, as they are not by any means crafted by these filmmakers. In such a case should we give the points in favour of the original filmmakers, or restrict them as this alternative version of the film doesn't add to them?