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Homer Becomes Omar
geekster writes "With Omar as Homer, and Badr substituted for Bart, The Simpsons is now playing on Arab television.
But in order not to risk offending an Arab audience, the characters in Al Shamshoon, as the show is now called, have modified some of their most distinguishable traits." And you thought internationalization was hard for software!
Taking Homer and stripping out all of the Americanisms isn't going to make it funny to people with a mideast cultural sense of humor (it would probably be funnier if they just left the Americanisms in). Homer is a success in America because we are laughing at ourselves. I would bet Omar could be as much of a success if the show could present the same kind of local irreverent humor about life there like it does for life in the US.
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
Even more damning was the response of Al Jean, executive producer of The Simpsons. He said: "If Homer doesn't drink and eat bacon and generally act like a pig, which I guess is also against Islam, then it's not Homer."
Sums it up quite nicely I think.. not having seen this of course.
"Arabisation is going to boom in these next few years," she told the Wall Street Journal. "We're such an impressionable people and we aspire so much to be like the West, that we take on anything that we believe is a symbol or a manifestation of Western culture."
Oh bother. Why can't you just keep your own cultural identity instead of trying to be the same as us? Homogenizing the world just makes it a more boring place.
You do realize he's not an arab, right? Right?
Apu is Hindu and from India, not Muslim from Arabia. Many of the stereotypes about Indians are probably held in common.
Of course, the Simpsons never makes fun of Christians or conservatives.
Television is not emasculated to suit the whims of anyone. Television is governmed by Media Overlords (TM), who have Democrats and Republicans alike eating out of their pockets.
*cough* Telecommunications Act of 1997 *cough*
But since someone mentioned Muslim fanatics, I suppose your comment was to be expected.
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
In America, you can go on television and air criticisms of Republican, Christian or any other viewpoints; and you may get a debate or -at worse- a reprimand.
Let me ask you, how likely is it to put forth atheistic and/or anti-muslim views and have them broadcast...and if, by some miracle you were able to; what would happen to you?
Compare and contrast.
Just like Jerry Lewis!
Let me ask you, in Saudi Arabia how likely is it to put forth atheistic and/or anti-muslim views and have them broadcast...and if, by some miracle you were able to; what would happen to you?
Look, the issue isn't that we're emasculating our own content. But you can't tell me that we're not pandering to christian values when... well, this is too long to put in a dependant clause, I explain.
Watch some Anime, originals from Japan. There are shows that are marketed to children, or young adults, or at least air during such hours that American families usually allow their children to watch TV. These shows have STRONG explicit words in them occationally, and nudity.
So, what do we do in America? Well, first we change the explicit words so that when say, an actor says "Chikushou" = very strong curse word, along the lines of "fucking christ!", or "kuso" = literally, "shit", we change these words to be "darn" or "dangit". I mean, we change the words coming out of the characters mouth from "JESUS FUCKING CHRIST THAT HURT!" to "OUCH! Hey man, that hurt!"
Next up is how to deal with nudity. Well, we have good examples of these... we just digitally insert bikinis on to them. There you go, all happy christian-safe now.
So, yes, the US does censor content coming from foreign countries, the same as this Al-Shamshoons does in Arabia.
I am unamerican, and proud of it!
how about we stop pushing our culture on other countries? hasn't recent history shown that western overload on cultures that aren't ready for it results in some sort of backlash? okay so that was probably more due to US capitalism and oil greed shoving its way around the middle east like a bull in a china shop. but still, do we have to actively seek feeding our dribble-for-culture across the globe? i really do like the Simpsons... ? damn, i must really be hating the US these days.
[rant] .. I cringe every time I see a US adaption of classic non-US work. It seems as if the American audience can't consume anything that is not made safe for them by converting it to a local reference point. Case in point, all the British sitcoms that have been remade over the years. Trying to take something that does not naturally occur in your culture and then (figuratively) bashing it around the head to make it fit does not result in a work with the same or better quality as the original.
As a person who is not a citizen of the US
So to all you people beating on the Arabic adaption of the Simpsons, all I can say is welcome to how the rest of the world sees what you do to non-US culture.
[/rant]
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
I'm interested to see what they do about Krusty, who's Jewish.
...yet another "kill Krusty" scheme, this time by hypnotizing Bart into becoming a suicide bomber and killing Krusty on the show. However, at the last minute, Krusty makes an on-air apology to Sideshow Bob for all the pain he's caused him, causing Sideshow Bob to have a change of heart. Sideshow Bob warns everybody that Bart is a bomb, prompting Krusty's monkey to swoop in and throw the bomb away (the only people hurt are the evil network executives, whose body parts merge into a T-1000 like monster).
Remember that episode where Sideshow Bob programs Bart, while wearing a suicide bomber's belt, to hug Krusty and blow him up? In the original version:
With "Badr" as the new protagonist, what happens in that episode now?
Did I just give away the ending?
In America, you can get fired, censured, and or fined for saying the wrong thing on public airwaves, but in the Muslim world(or not, you're really not safe anywhere), you can be executed, with support from the state, for expressing the wrong views: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salman_Rushdie.
I'm an atheist, and frankly, anyone who supports jihads, fatwas, crusades, etc., can, well, fuck off.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Huh? Great-grandparent was on a US show that was censored in the UK, grandparent was about censoring in Canada?!?
oh, yeah, this is Slashdot, where it's always America's fault!
You aren't. You aren't forced to watch The Simpsons or anything else on TV. You aren't forced to own a TV for that matter. Cultural values != individual values.
Having lived in Saudi Arabia when I was a kid, I think I can answer this..
>> 7-11s run by Indian guys
Not 7-11s, but most stores are run by Indian guys.
>> Nuclear Power Plants
No.
>> Catholic or Christian churches with Evangelical stereotypes
Not legally.
>> Comic book stores
No.
>> Nursing homes
No.
>> donuts
Yes - Dunking Donuts was rather common there.
>> Tom and Jerry
Yes - even dubbed(!!) into Arabic! Tom & Jerry was pretty much the only thing on TV for kids!
>> American Football
Yes!
>>Politics, National Forests, and dive bars?
No. No. No.
All I know, is when I travel to a foreign land, I always learn the phrase "Don't shoot me, I'm Canadian" in the local language. And I'm pretty sure the converse isn't true for Canadians.
Seriously, any Canadian that says they're American because they live in the Americas is just a retard.
Yes and by that logic we shouldn't call people from the country of South Africa, "South Africans" because clearly people in other countries in the lower half of Africa may be confused/offended since they too are from South (as opposed to) North Africa.
Canadians are North Americans, not Americans.
>>> "... you intolerant ignoramus!"
... just because you disagree with a person doesn't make them ignorant. For all you know he may be Japanese (seems unlikely I know).
Presumably you mean you can't tolerate him?
Oh and just because a nation has a low level of teenage pregnancy doesn't mean it doesn't have a high level of sexual depravity (rorikon? schoolgirl pants in vending machines?) it just means you've been blinded by the prevalence of one set of behaviours into thinking association (or maybe even correlation) implies causation. [Perhaps you think sexual depravity is OK, but that doesn't stop your implied conclusion from being poorly supported].
If a nation allows husbands to beat their wives and coincidentally has low rates of teenage pregnancy (causally connected or no?) then by your reckoning $nationOfYourOrigin should encourage wife beating.
And finally
Seems to me Freud would say something about a society majorly into repression causing the ultimate out-bursting of the repressed emotion in deviant behaviour; if Japan were such a repressive society, perhaps due to an obsession with ancestor worship then this might explaing the results. I am absolutely not saying this is the case with Japan, I am not a Japan scholar by any stretch of the imagination. I guess I'm just an intolerant, ignoramus.
Where's my "Bullshit" mod? What the fuck are all those New York Times reporters still doing with jobs?
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Guess what: the landmass we live on is called "America."
Guess what: No it isn't.
The landmass I live on is called *North* America. There is a formerly connected until they dug a big trench through it landmass known as *South* America. Pretty infrequently they are jointly referred to as *The* America*s*
There is no solo landmass referred to as America although the middle country in *North* America is very frequently referred to as America.
What exactly is so confusing about this?!?
***prepares for flamebait mod***
You can blame that on the religious folks wanting to press their beliefs on you. To them, taking The Lord's name is a BIG no-no.
But, of course, that brings up another question... If you're saying "damn it", you're cursing something. You're wishing ill, or a curse upon someone. Isn't God kind of implied in doing it? If you're going to bleep it out, it just occurs that you would bleep out the whole God Damned thing.
I don't moderate anymore. Karma penalty for 90% fair mods? Can I mod that unfair?
No, animation is not "high art". It is definitely art, though.
I'm not some American piece of crap... in fact, I'm a person who has watched the anime he likes to watch being almost consistently ruined for US consumption. Hence, I see the commercial translation efforts of the US as basically a defiling of art, and I'm not entirely convinced that an translation of the Simpsons for Arab TV would be any more acceptable.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!