Ogredubbing on The Believer

Here at gnome we’re firm believers in The Believer. Witness this fantastic piece by Brian Edwards, from their March/April film issue, about the popularity of underground dubbed versions of Shrek in Iran.

A few disconnected thoughts on this:

#1 What is it with Shrek as a cultural icon? He was Will Smith’s companion of choice for the apocalypse in I Am Legend. And every time a crap stand-up comic wants to call someone ugly, poor old Shrek gets dragged into it.

#2 The notion of using a kids’ cartoon as a blank canvas for freestyle ‘dub’ interpretations is as intriguing as it is bizarre. It’s also reminiscent of Eric Thompson’s scripts for The Magic Roundabout, which jettisoned the French originals and took their cues from the visuals alone.

#3 There’s a nice linguistic irony in the idea of Iranians - in a country whose leaders divide their time between denying their citizens basic freedoms and preaching vehement anti-Semitism - painting their walls with a green cartoon monster whose name comes from the Yiddish word for ‘terror’.

    posted by Edward

    Posted 2 years ago

    About:

    A gnome is:

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    gnome online is:

    Ossie Froggatt-Smith works 9-5 as an editor and sometimes a journalist. He studied Byzantium and still thinks about it all the time. He manages gnome.

    Edward Randell is a journalist. He sings in Paris with the Voice Messengers, and has written for the TLS and Jazzwise. He edits gnome.

    Roberta Klimt spends a lot of time at the British Library, so much that she gets paid for it. She blogs and writes at gnome and the Oxford Left Review. She also studies medieval Italian literature.

    Andrew Naughtie studies sociology. He lives in Bristol, but is moving to Chicago, Illinois! He blogs and writes at gnome.





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