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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!
[comic book guy voice]Worst...Adaptation...EVER![/comic book guy voice]
Come on, you all were thinking it, Homer without the H or beer or hot dogs or bacon- eeeew.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
D'oh has now been changed to lâ ilâha illâ allâh
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.
The also must be asking what evil people use nuclear power instead of that delicious arab oil! Is the nuclear power plant digitally edited into a oil refinery?
Have to wear a Burqa?
time is a perception of a being's consciousness
time is your 6th sense, the wierd ones are 7+
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.
So instead of Apu the Quik-E Mart guy you have... Joe... The Scumy cashier at the Adult Bookstore... Omar : Yes I'd like some lube, gay porn magazines, vibrating finger rings, Goatse DVD 2 and some Illegal fireworks.. Joe : Sir, we don't have any fucking illegal fireworks... *whispers* right this way... */whispers*
"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.
This reminds me of the Doki Doki Panic/smb2 incident. Super Mario 2 was originally a Fuji Television promotion starring an arabian family called Doki Doki Panic. The people at Nintendo USA thought the Japanese version of SMB2 was too difficult, so they changed the Arabian characters in Doki Doki Panic to Mario and his friends. It's a really interesting story. Check out more here.
First you animate. Then you SUSPEND!!!
Lisa is stoned to death when Badr steals her burka while playing in a park and Omar is pummeled when he is found with contraband spare ribs and a copy of Maxim
You do realize he's not an arab, right? Right?
The article writers have made a mistake in addition. 60% of the population is below 20, and 40% is under 15, that makes 100% of the population under 21
40% under 15
+ 20% ages 16 - 20
==================
= 60% under 20
Apu is Hindu and from India, not Muslim from Arabia. Many of the stereotypes about Indians are probably held in common.
There's a movie in France called "Les visiteurs" (the visitors). It's a hilarious movie about some middle-age french aristocrat and his servant time-travelling into our age and messing things up right and left. The movie is very funny... in France, because it relies almost exclusively on twists of the French language, and on French cultural references. I heard this movie was adapted to the US market and did a perfect flop there.
Well I believe it'll be the same for Omar Simpson: the original Homer is funny because it deforms and amplifies flaws in the US society. It's reasonably funny in many western countries, because the american culture is kind of universal, and even when it's dubbed, it's not too hard to understand half of the jokes (many very US-centric jokes are lost in France, Sweden or Spain though, particularly those involving famous personalities known only to the US public).
But in countries far from westerm values, and not as developed, with different and sometimes stricter sets of moral values, adapting the Simpsons to suit these people will suck the marrow out of the bone. It'll the arab version of the US "the visitors" flop. Either give them the full unabridged, ashamedly US version of Homer and let half of them love it and the other half hate it, or give them Omar and let all of them hate it.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
some sort of cookie instead of a donut
For the record, it's a kahk.
He's a kahk-gobbler.
Omar al-Shamshoon loves the kahk.
Dare to Hope. Prepare to be Disappointed.
The recent violence of Sept. 11 and the Iraq war has had an immense impact on the psyche of both peoples. This will translate into a deeper knowledge of each other and, hopefully, more understanding.
Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Knowledge of one's enemies transmutes to some extent in a sharing of cultures. Violence, as the ultimate virus, might be seen as injecting plasmids into each sides cultural DNA.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
"Don't have a camel, man!"
I live in Quebec (Canada) and we have a french version since forever. They tried for years to make the text more "local" and it ended up being very weird someone because some things just don't fit out of the US context. You laugh anyway because you still get the original joke. And someone it just doesn't fit so much that they keep it american ("I never been so proud to be American" in front of the toilet that flush like in America).
On the other hand, this is the only show where I think that the voice acting is better than the original. Not that the original voice acting isn't good but actors in the french version are just doing a better job.
Fortunately, the ones for the last few years are more sane and portray the familly as 100% american.
But the worse adaptation we have is King of the Hill. They decided to remove any and all reference to US in the text and turns it into total nonsense.
Both shows are funny to watch even tranlated but we are in a North American context too and can understand the jokes even when they are butchered. I guess it won't be the case in middle east...
Slashdot anagrams to "Sad Sloth"
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?
I, for one, welcome our new American overlords.
Okay, I'm sorry. That was insensitive and I should never have pressed the submit button.
personally i think this is a wonderful project, it's a shame he's already having skittish reaction from hollywood execs
if we could just laugh more, in both the muslim world, and the west, at each other, how awesome a leap into a better world would that be?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
7-11s run by Indian guys
Nuclear Power Plants
Catholic or Christian churches with Evangelical stereotypes
Comic book stores
Nursing homes
donuts
Tom and Jerry
American Football, Politics, National Forests, and dive bars?
If not, how is a majority of this humor going to translate? It's a heavy parody of American culture. I'm just not sure how that's supposed to sell.
[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?
Your first point is interesting, though. I would love to see Arabic literature (including certain select TV shows) translated to English... I'm not quite sure why no one has done so.
Hrm... perhaps I should start a company....
Ne Cede Malis.
If showing sexual content and harsh language to children leads to the lowest birthrate among teenager, then we should do that...since we have the highest teenage birth rate. Japan's is 4, ours is 64, and this data comes from unicef.org, not exactly a obscure or untrustworthy source.
http://www.unicef.org/pon96/inbirth.htm
Saying "Did you ever consider that maybe Japan's culture is wrong?" shows not only that you are a idiot, but that you have no idea that not only do people in Japan have less sex, and lower crime rates. So to say that they are somehow immoral because of what they show their children is idiotic, they know how to raise their children, they dont let their televisions do it for they as you obviously let your television do. Stop berating people of other nations and start looking at the problems in your own home you intolerant ignoramus!
That explains why I feed a lovely dog at my house and I'm muslim. Thanks for misinformation.
pushing it? how about they stop buying it, or stop producing it themselves?
i find stuff like rammstein's "amerika" quite amusing. their song is a pointed criticism/whine/lament about the pervasiveness of "american culture", yet rammstein themselves are part of the problem -- they're playing rock music, which is perhaps the single most pervasive and identifiable aspect of american culture.
they'd be less hypocritical if they played polkas or something.
blaming the us is stylish and cool, but american culture and music was already popular in eg communist countries under tight dictatorships -- it's not like we forced it on them at gunpoint, and there wasn't exactly advertising campaigns for it either. might be better to ask yourself why american culture and products are popular despite not being forced upon people at gunpoint.
>>> "... 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.
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?!?
You can touch a dog everywhere
:o)
Wow, that's well... progressive of them..
I thought it was only the Danish that did that.
[Perhaps you think sexual depravity is OK, but that doesn't stop your implied conclusion from being poorly supported].
... just because you disagree with a person doesn't make them ignorant. For all you know he may be Japanese (seems unlikely I know).
OK, well, here goes. My as well post AC on this one. I'm Japanese, and live in Tokyo. Sexual depravity does not explain the situation. Japan is very open to sex in general, and has a thriving large sex industry. No, not the underground, illegal, dangerous industry as seen in other parts of the world (although there is a small bit of this too), but a regulated, legal industry. Want sex? Can't get any for free? Pay for it!
Whether you like the idea or not, it seems to work over here. The women get paid generously, of which the majority aren't forced into the trade as slaves or anything. As for sex related crime rates, well, there are still unfortunately a lot of "chikan" in the trains, but rape is way down on the list. Got drunk, wanna fuck? Well, I think the fact that you can walk into a brothel and get some sorta decreases the drive to actually rape anyone. Afterall, I find it amazing that rape rates are so low considering how much we drink, and how drunk we get.
And finally
Not the grandparent, but ask and though shalt receive.
if Japan were such a repressive society, perhaps due to an obsession with ancestor worship then this might explain 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.
Japan is repressive in a lot of ways, but very open in others compared to western nations. Sex is one of them, public drunkness another, and so on so forth. I don't think you can really compare them head on and expect to see a clear correlation of facts without considering a whole boat load of intricate details.
That said, here's my take on the issue. In Japan, there are no real dirty words to start out with. There are bad words, some are censored, but none have the same connotation as "fuck" in the English language. You could probably interpret this as being that there ARE words like this (kuso = shit, direct translation) but there's no stigma attached to them, and thus they aren't really that "dirty". So the Japanese have a difficult time in general understanding how a word like "shit" and "fuck" could be such dirty words, merely because there's no comparative word or even the concept.
As for nudity and sexual images in children's anime, it's all in moderation I suppose. For example, you can't show genitals in any publications in Japan. None. It's illegal. TV, magazines, photos, what not. (And I'm not talking about children's stuff here, I'm talking about porn.) On the other hand, the general concept is that boys will be boys, girls will be girls, and no ammount of censorship will change the fact that they'll eventually be intrigued by their sexuality. So what's the point in trying to pretend it doesn't exist. That's why mild nudity is no big deal in anime. Some parents don't want their kids to watch it, or watch it until a certain age, and they control that. But it's not a big deal.
As for teen pregnancy, I suspect there's a bit of a twist here. I think it's more prevalent than unicef makes it out to be, but that there are a lot of abortions that probably go un-reported. If you're an anti-abortionist then this may shock you, but it's not a big deal in Japan. Historically Japan has not exactly been a thriving nation where everyone had plenty to eat. Kids were occasionally "pruned" to make sure the entire village wouldn't starve at times. Same goes for the elderly. In times of famine, this makes sense, but I suppose there was a high probability of famine back in the day. (I'm talking 150+ years ago.) I suspect that such trends help in creating an atmosphere that the unborn are, well, unborn and not quite hum
When the American 60's TV situation comedy "Hogan's Heroes" was finally able to be shown in Germany, there was the delicate issue of the various 'Heil Hitler' salutes done by the various Nazi officers. Delicate because this gesture is illegal (as I understand it) on television shows in the post-war German Republic.
So, (I'm been told) whenever anyone makes a stiff arm salute, the voice-over dubbing says "Look how high the corn grows!".
I wonder if young Germans ever insult their bosses and superiors by calling them 'corn growers' as an oblique reference to their acting like fascist assholes.
I think your remark about openness of society about, for example sex, of 'the western world' applies more to the united states than to western Europe. In the Netherlands there's even sex on 'public' cable television (not state sponsored though),there are no problems with nudity in any media (not even for children) and being a prostitute is officially 'just a job'. As for the rest of Europe, it might not be exactly the same, but it's not that different at all. I think the USA is one of the most prudish countries of the western world.
Please don't link low pregnancy rate with abortion this way. You'd only fuel (as if they need any) the already crazy anti-abortionists. If you compare the low birth and abortion rates for teenagers in Western Europe to the American figures you'll see that there's no correlation. (see this and use google). I suspect the same is true for Japan, but I couldn't find any figures.
As a side node, I'm not a big supporter of abortion, I too am troubled by the notion that an unborn child is not considered human until it has reached a certain age. However I very much dislike the self-righteousness of some of the (mostly christian) 'pro-life' groups.