Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

This is a topic I’ve wanted to approach for a very long time because the numerous comments I’ve seen people make on this issue have raised my frustration to very high limits. Granted, they might me simple minded people those who make these irrational affirmations, but still it is disturbing to hear it over and over again.

As you know there are many movies and tv shows out there, the grand majority American of course, whose story focuses either on past accurate historical events or on purely fictional events, be they inspired from the mythology of certain cultures or not. The language that the actors speak in is predominantly English with only minor exceptions here and there. Now, for some people this is apparently a problem.

First of all, some complain that, in order for the movie to be realistic, people should speak in the specific tongue of the characters they are interpreting.
For example, if the movie or series is about life in Ancient Rome, the actors should speak the language of the time (Latin) and perhaps even the specific dialect of the region or time period. Doesn’t this seem incredibly stupid to you? Aside from the fact that the viewers would find it very difficult to follow the show and the ratings would drop significantly it would be very difficult for the actors to speak every single line in a language that I am certain most of them are not familiar with. Surely some might have studied Latin in school but are there some many actors out there who can pride themselves on being fluent in Latin or Ancient Egyptian for that matter, should the story take place in that land? The results of actors simply learning on the spot the pronunciation of words that are completely unknown to them is close to disastrous, because correct pronunciation of a foreign language cannot be learned in a few weeks or months and because, most likely, not even the people who teach the actors how to utter those foreign phrases know the correct pronunciation themselves.

I remember the movie The Passion of the Christ where every character spoke in their native tongue instead of English and I appreciated that, especially since that wasn’t an action/adventure entertaining movie but when I heard some of the actors speak Latin it made my ears bleed, since, as a Romanian (whose language is around 80% of Latin origin), I can actually pronounce Latin words correctly. All these considered, aside from some exceptions such as The Passion of the Christ I don’t see the need to use the native language (especially when it is an old or ancient language) in movies and shows whose primary goal is to entertain.

[On a side note, I was just looking on imdb.com to get the actual name of the movie I listed above and as you probably know, at the bottom of the page there is the “Recommendations” category. There it says “If you enjoyed this title, our database also recommends:” and in the case of The Passion, the recommendations we get are: Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith followed by two Lord of the Rings titles, finally a movie called Jesus on third place and then some unknown Japanese movie involving a “typical college-girl”, as the synopsis sais. My first reaction was “WTF?”. I’m assuming that most people who watch The Passion are more in touch with their Christian religion. So they come to imdb.com to see what other religious movies they can find and what do they get? Extraterrestrials, fairy-tale creatures and Japanese horror movies? Okaaaaay … You explain that to me ‘cause I can’t.]

Secondly, while they are not exactly against historical and mythological movies employing the English language other people complain about the use of curses (such as f***, a**hole, jerk, etc) and diminutives (mom, dad, etc), saying that people back then did not use such words. All right, so, let me get this straight … YOU … some common kid/person from the 21st century are fluent in and have a perfect grasp of, let’s say, the Ancient Sumerian language (spoken almost 5000 years ago) and you know for certain that they used no curse words or employed any sort of diminutives? Let me tell you something, you don’t have to be some wise philosopher, archeologist or linguist to see that some of the basic, defining aspects of human civilization, ever since the dawn of time, are violence (physical or verbal –foul language) and sex. Curse words as well as diminutives have undoubtedly existed in all the languages of the world, past or present. All the information we have on ancient languages is from old tablets, partially destroyed manuscripts or scribblings on walls. Wise men have deciphered them as best as they could but mostly it was through guessing and assuming, so it is close to impossible to reproduce a forgotten language with 100% accuracy.

These people complain that the writers use modern curse words. There is no such thing! Just sit back and analyze some of the curse words/phrases you know. What do they involve? Mostly references to sexual intercourse or simply the male and female reproductive organs. It is considered swearing for instance to address a woman by using a certain vulgar synonym for her genitals or it is considered swearing to threaten someone with promises of forced sexual acts and so on. So please tell me, what is so modern about that? Haven’t men and women had the same anatomy 5000 years ago? Hasn’t intercourse been the same throughout history? Or did babies grow on trees back then? Seriously, these are very cretin accusation. If they need to use curse words in the movie and the script is in English what sort of words would you expect them to use if not English words? If you hear Romans in movies use the word “f***” it does not mean that Romans back then used the modern English word “f***”. They used its equivalent in Latin (basically nothing more than a vulgar synonym for intercourse) or some other form of this English curse word they might have had that denoted a similar concept. It is called TRANSLATION people!!! If you don’t know what that means then look it up in the dictionary and then maybe you will finally understand all of this. And for the love of God or whoever else might be there, please remember that action/adventure movie is not synonymous with documentary.