Some thoughts about dubbing in Spain

Some days ago I watched Django Unchained for the second time. The first time was at the cinema when the movie was released. This second time was on TV and at first I was a bit reluctant because of the endless ads interrupting the film. But the thing is that it got better, obviously not because of the ads but of the option I had of watching it in O.V. It also got better because I had already watched it and I could focus on little details.

The first time I really liked the film despite the dubbing. It is not bad on some of the characters of the film, but I think it is awful on the African-American slaves. It is awful enough to notice it, and when you do that it means that there is something wrong about it.

So the second time I was curious about how the American southern sounded, and wanted to hear the quite different accents of the characters. This made me enjoy even more the film: listening the German accent of the co-protagonist in contrast to the African-American accent of his colleague was the icing on the cake that I needed on the first watch.

It is not only about diversity, it is about acting. I think that the way actors talk is like fifty percent of their performance, maybe even more, and we just ignore that whole part by dubbing every film arriving in Spain.

Furthermore, dubbing has also had a huge impact in the English learning of this country. I know some friends from the centre and north of Europe that speak an almost perfect English just because they watched animated cartoons in English when they were children. I am not saying that dubbing should not exist, I think Spanish dubbing is maybe the best of the world in terms of quality, and I can also understand that many people are not interested in watching a film in O.V or subbed, but from my point of view the television and cinema industry should focus on gradually showing more content in English so that Spanish people approach at least the average English level of Europe.

Now that we are aware of the importance of English language around the world we have to invest in updating and improving our media system to make people be in touch with this beautiful language.