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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!
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?
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.
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
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.
Of course, the Simpsons never makes fun of Christians or conservatives.
"Don't have a camel, man!"
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 believe the alterations were made by Alex Cox, the director, himself, in response to the BBC's request for cuts so that it could be shown. So he decided to go completely and humorously over-the-top in censoring his own film, partly to make a point, one suspects.
See http://www.melonfarmers.co.uk/faqmf.htm
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!
Melon Farmers is a reference to the BBC TV cut of "Repo Man" where the words Mother-fucker were replaced by Melon farmer
On Canadian television, "mother fucker" is often censored to "*blank* fucker". yes, they cut out mother and leave the fucker. Im totally serious.
[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