Thursday, September 13, 2012

Les Simpson

It's strange to watch episodes of The Simpsons dubbed into French Canadian. It's very different from the French dubbing. It's also strange to watch the early episodes, how much it has changed. But it is only to be expected, I guess. It takes some time for cartoonists and animators to find the characters. I also saw a newer episode and was a bit surprised by how far the quality has sunk. In the episode Lisa meets a boy referred to as hemingwayesque, and in a dreamsequence we meet Hemingway's two first wives, Hadley Richardson and Pauline Pfeiffer. So it was interesting, surreal almost, but it forgot to be funny!

There's about 50 channels on my tv here, a mix of Canadian and American. There are lots of shows I've never seen before, but the only one that actually is pretty funny and has likable characters is Big Bang Theory. One of the channels sends an episode each evening, so I will have seen the two first seasons by the time I go back to France.

And, apropos of nothing, is there something particular about Canadians and tattoos? It just seems a lot more common here than any other place I've been.

7 comments:

  1. It's very sad to see the situation of the Simpsons nowadays. They stop being funny since the 12th season, more or less. Now if I watch a new episode, just with one time I have enough: I don't want/need to rewatch it.
    Here in Spain they show 2 episodes per day for more than 20 years (I'm 20 years old) and I still enjoy the older episodes.
    It must be the fame and the money...

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  2. The Simpsons have been localized, not just translated. Small stuff like "Springfield bridge" have been replace with "Pont Jacques Cartier". Not much but it adds a little.

    There was a Tattoo Art Show last Weekend at the old Windsor Station Downtown, so I guess there is truth about what your saying. But for some reason I haven't seen that much tattoos in Canada outside Montreal.

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  3. As odd as it sounds, one of my favorite memories of my visit to Paris was the night my girlfriend arrived very late by train from Nantes, at our little top floor hotel room. We bought wine from a corner store, and turned on the TV (which only got maybe 5 channels), as the Simpsons were playing in all their French-dubbed glory. Then I drank too much wine and fell asleep. Ah, Paris!

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  4. As for Big Bang Theory, the first three seasons are great. And I agree, the characters truly are likeable. However, by season 4 they start giving them girlfriends, and it slowly starts going downhill. The less said about S5, the better.

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  5. I got a grant to work on my new book, so I can afford to do some travelling. You can make comics anywhere, after all. And the summers in Montpellier are uncomfortably warm, it's difficult to get any work done, so I thought, Hey, how about Montreal?!

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  6. Tattoos and Montreal...

    I've only been to Montreal once, but my impression was that it was a bit like the Portland of the north--artsy, but in a more low-brow and rough-edged way, aspiring to an edgier style than, say, NYC artsy (which is slicker, cooler, swanker). And so the tattoos fit an intentionally tougher version of counter-culture aesthetic.

    I think it's also fair to say that Montreal, like Portland, is still "living the dream of the 90s," which is when tattoos went mainstream. (Compare this apt satirical song about Portland: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FE_9CzLCbkY).

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