#which is why i so want tien to have to actually tackle his issues- whats the point of conflict if it isnt resolved right

[tenshindon]

i just feel like the tien episode of super could have been a great opportunity to not only include yamcha in the series as a fighter again while also tackling his feelings of inadequacy since yamcha’s been known to visit tien and he could very easily already be there when goku visits and they could join the team together, but i feel like it could’ve been a good way to also explore tien’s distinct trauma in having to watch both chiaotzu and yamcha die and be put in severe danger time and time again while he was helpless to do anything, resulting in him insisting they stay away from fights all together yk. like ‘yamcha not feeling up to par enough to join the team’ and ‘tien being so scared for yamcha’s mortality’ just perfectly dovetail into each other (not to mention their fears also enable each other; by yamcha being too afraid to fight anymore tien doesn’t have to fret so much about him doing anything dangerous) and have the potential to be resolved in an arc together

[doktoreth]

Rebuttal against dragon-ball-meta

So my stupid ass has no idea how tumblr works, even to this day. After meta responded, I wasn’t able to reblog his stuff, message him, or even follow him. I’m quite certain he blocked me, which is . . . unexpected to say the least. And sad. A real eye-opener, that is. Here’s my rebuttal to his response. Someone let me know if he replies again or something, maybe copy+paste his shit for me, I dunno. Let’s begin:

Hey, thanks for responding, man. Appreciate it.

It’s Toriyama’s words against yours, pal. Regardless of how it was ignored or overwritten, none of this actually precludes its canonical connection with the main story. This isn’t actually an argument against filler’s canonicity, it just reaffirms the admittedly nonsensical connection Toriyama himself decided to establish. Let’s examine the entirety of the last scan(remember, fourth post):

“12: From time to time, il would happen that people whom I didn't even know were approaching me about the anime. Things were often said like: "Oh jeeze, between the manga and the anime, you must never take any time to let yourself breathe!". In reality, I had hardly worked at all on the anime, I had put confidence in my collaborators. I had enough to do just with the manga. I didn't want to work myself to death, you know...

Toriyama: I want to live until I'm 100 years old!

13: For example, drawing an image of a movement in a manga is relatively simple, but to animate this image, you had to decompose the movement and draw all the intermediary movements. That demands a colossal amount of work. (Ok, the example of Kame-sennin might not be the most appropriate...)”

Nothing much here. He’s essentially elaborating on how much his work is cut out for him. Now all that’s left is the final quotes:

“14: Of course, those who have read Dragon Ball have noticed that certain stories which are found in the anime didn't existe in the manga.

Oolong: What's this? I never saw that in the manga....”

Toriyama and Oolong mention the original stories found in the anime, the filler stories. Obviously.

“END: As one adventure in the manga corresponds to about 10 minutes of animation, and since one episode comprises on average 30 minutes, the entire series of Dragon Ball would have passed by very quickly. The team of animators therefore had to insert some original stories. I admire what they have done, that's a hell of a job!”

Toriyama’s reasoning for inserting original stories is padding, as you know. He’s not talking about how it’s fine if people like both or how the padding didn’t upset him. Anywho, we know that when he speaks of “original stories”, he’s speaking in a narrative context.

“Toriyama: Dragon Ball, it's the anime and the manga!”

Whereas the previous quote denotes his reasoning, this final quote confirms his overall treatment of the anime, being that it along with the manga comprise one wholesome narrative. Everyone knows it’s for the sake of padding. That’s been obvious from the very beginning. Still doesn’t negate Toriyama’s clear and explicit connection between the two mediums. Remember, Toriyama > You/Me.

I’m not sure what your point is in saying I think those types of alterations are “akin” to the driving episode. My view on the filler’s canonicity is akin to Toriyama’s. I also think it was a stupid decision on his part to establish such a connection for reasons I’m sure you’d agree with, such as character breaking moments and inconsistent power levels. I see filler as supplementary evidence for Plague, honestly. He doesn’t need ‘em to defend Tien.

See, the issue there is that all that fandom backlash and meme shit is frankly an insignificant indicator as to where his popularity is concerned. Weekly Jump 1993 has Krillin living the good life just behind Piccolo, Weekly Jump 1995 has Krillin taking more of a backseat and yet he’s still popular enough to remain in the top 10, and Dragon Ball Forever has Krillin just catching up back to Piccolo. He’s evidently the most popular human character, so I’m not at all out of line in connecting the dots (or votes, in this case) to his relevancy in the series. No conceit or irrational dislike here, meta, when I’ve mostly no problems with Krillin’s treatment in the series, only how others like Tien are being left in the dust.

Christ, this again? I can tell this conversation is heading to, “Oh, Krillin’s progress makes sense for his status as the strongest human” instead of addressing Plague’s overall gripe. Frankly, the exact point of plateau is too vague and arbitrary to pinpoint for any of these guys. Meta, please listen, just listen: I believe you. Krillin’s progression making him surpass Tien WITHOUT artificial power boosts is realistic. Would it have happened eventually or inevitably? Neither of us know, but that was never the point, which is that Tien’s importance as a fighter is no less than that of Krillin, and yes, even Yamcha. Plague’s premise was never reliant on Tien being the strongest, he touched on that for literally only a few seconds near the end, so let’s drop this tangent on who would’ve surpassed whom, yeah?

Well, first off, I would respectfully ask you to quell your bias for Krillin, as Plague’s video on Tien touches on him quite infrequently anyway. You spend too much time on this subject, and while I’m happy to engage you on it, it’s quite the digression. His videos being internet comedy videos (scroll down and you’ll find his comment), he makes sure to stay on point without rambling off-topic. The comedic value of his content would be severely diminished if he was all like, “Tien is fading into irrelevancy in comparison to other fan favorites”, instead of saying, “This is a Toriyama handjob.” You can call this intellectual dishonesty from a dishonest hack, I call it what it is: comedy. If you can discern no difference between the two in relation to his actual points, then I can’t help you there. I can only hope I’ve made everyone here more open-minded and vice versa.

I’m beginning to think you haven’t watched his video, meta. He doesn’t think Toriyama hates Tien. He called Tien’s stand against Cell his “greatest accomplishment” in the end of the video, albeit begrudgingly. Any examples in Z are mere digressions, anyway, as he specifically criticizes Tien’s treatment in SUPER. Anyone can look at Tien’s entry into the ToP and take that to mean he was kept important; Tien’s performance was a joke comparatively even in terms of strategy, forget power. His only notable achievements are Tri-Beaming an already incapacitated Za Priccio, courtesy of Roshi, earning Tien a knockout and his FIRST EVER ATTACK landed on an enemy that isn’t a Frieza soldier, and the most humiliating ringout ever in the form of using clones to tackle Harmira off the ring AFTER Tien’s original body was thrown off when he just as well could’ve used one measly clone as bait beforehand. Yes, power isn’t the sole indicator, but it’s the most important one in Dragon Ball. So when the ToP is played up to be needing more strategy, Tien is still treated as a joke of an afterthought.

That’s great, meta. Neither do I and neither does Plague.

I wildly disagree. His thoughts are spot on precisely because he acknowledges Tien’s motivations as a character. I don’t find them argued from emotion any more than I find yours regarding Krillin, tbh. It’s okay for you to be wrong sometimes too, meta.

P.S. You’ve said this already. I agree. I think the same can be argued for Tien given the extremely vague context as to what certain side guys have been doing off-screen. I’m literally watching the Tien video for the third time (you don’t stop talking about this, so I need to make sure), and I get the impression that Plague’s mad about Tien’s piss-poor performance comparatively rather than him being the strongest human (again, this was NOT the crux of his argument).

P.P.S You’ve . . . made this point already. Nobody said this. Plague didn’t say this. Jesus. He never even spoke of Krillin’s popularity to begin with. I know why Krillin’s popular. Hell, I loved his character from the very beginning. Krillin, Krillin, Krillin, Krillin, Krillin. We get it, meta.

[porcileorg]

A conversation about Kunstverein München’s group show ‘Not Working – Artistic production and matters of class’ (2020-09-12 – 2020-11-01)

Conversants: The Bensplainer, Magda Wisniowska, and Victor Sternweiler [talking on Skype, in the evening of Nov 11, 2020.]

Victor: We should start our conversation about Kunstverein München’s show ‘Not Working – Artistic production and matters of class,’ [online through 2020-11-22] curated by Maurin Dietrich and Gloria Hasnay, while making clear that we were not able to attend the parallel program, consisting of tours, lectures, performances, and video screenings, which were partially screened online, and an extensive reader was published too. This will simply be a conversation about the actual show. One could claim that such a review can’t do justice to the whole project, but I claim that nobody was able to attend everything, except for the makers, so one can only have a fragmented take on it, and therefore it is legitimate to, mainly or solely, talk about the work installed in the space. 

Exhibition consisted work by Angharad Williams, Annette Wehrmann, Gili Tal, Guillaume Maraud, Josef Kramhöller, Laura Ziegler and Stephan Janitzky, Lise Soskolne, Matt Hilvers, Stephen Willats.

A film screening series selected by Nadja Abt, showing work by Adrian Paci, Agnès Varda, Ayo Akingbade, Barbara Kopple, Berwick St Collective, Laura Poitras and Linda Goode Bryant, Max Göran.

A single event screening with films selected by Simon Lässig.

Accompanying program consisting of a book presentation (Düşler Ülkesi) by Cana Bilir-Meier (in conversation with Gürsoy Doğtaş), lectures by NewFutures, Ramaya Tegegne, Tirdad Zolghadr and a publication presentation (Phasenweise nicht produktiv) from a collaboration by Carolin Meunier and Maximiliane Baumgartner.

The reader containing contributions by Annette Wehrmann, Dung Tien Thi Phuong, Josef Kramhöller, Laura Ziegler and Stephan Janitzky, Leander Scholz, Lise Soskolne, Mahan Moalemi, Marina Vishmidt and Melanie Gilligan, Steven Warwick.

Exhibition documentation: https://artviewer.org/not-working-artistic-production-and-matters-of-class/

Magda: To help, I was rereading today the booklet accompanying the exhibition, although I don’t see how the text is really going to address what we see in the actual Kunstverein space. For example, I quote, “The works on view are characterized by a consciousness of how background, socialization, education, and artistic practice are inevitably entangled. They hence allow for a consideration of these categories in relation to the actual lived realities of their producers.” Does it mean that the artists somehow reflect their own social background? Autobiographically on their own lived reality? Well, by large, they don’t. We don’t know what social background these artists are coming from.

Victor: How would you know anyhow?

Magda: Instead, the coherency of the exhibition relies on going through all the positions which were outlined in the booklet’s introduction. So, Stephen Willats investigates the historical aspect of class, Annette Wehrmann performs the interrogation of the economic model, Josef Kramhöller’s is a more personal approach to consumerism, Gili Tal tackles gentrification and cosmopolitanism, and Angharad Williams addresses the performative and fashion , and so on. And at least two of the artists are no longer alive.

Victor: In the time of Covid, where you try to make ends meet, how can you say no? What I’m trying to say is that the precariousness of their class is testified also by artists not being able to nowadays refuse to participate in an exhibition in which they potentially don’t think they fit in. They do it, plain and simple.

The Bensplainer: I don’t think it is due to Covid. It’s a general trend. If you're invited by the artistic director of the Venice Biennale, whatever their exhibition idea is, you participate, as an artist. It’s not anymore the time when an Alighiero Boetti could angrily refuse an invitation by Harald Szeemann.

Magda: Is that really the central problem of this exhibition? There are a lot of problematic issues, and I am now again looking at the text, especially at the end, where it states that “today the question of class is not addressed anymore.” That is completely untrue. Much of postmodernism consisted precisely of the critical inquiry into questions of class. I don’t know about you, Bensplainer, but in my time in London we had to read a lot of Bourdieu, especially his idea concerning cultural capital.

The Bensplainer: Jameson was my lighthouse at that time!

Magda: It was a big thing! You can’t say really the topic had been ignored since then.

The Bensplainer: Especially after the last Documenta in 2017. 

Magda: I acknowledge that the question of class is no longer about a white male perspective, defined by simple economics. But really? What does this exhibition add to this conversation? 

The Bensplainer: I think that the main problem here is when you set up a thematic exhibition. If you, as a curator, have some aprioristic ideas about the specific interpretations on cultural work, then you tend to apply them to your own exhibition making. Although, you tend to lose contact with the works themselves. You tend to look more at the anecdotal parts of the work and at its processes. Let’s be honest, there are no great works in the exhibition, the ones being able to question your own vision of forms and of the world in which these forms happen.

Magda: I think the older works displayed here, as Stephen Willats’ ones, from the 1980s, present some problems: they are, in fact, historical, and at that time had a certain currency, whereas they seem today …

The Bensplainer: … nostalgic.

Magda: And dry as well: this kind of class idea, of people living in a housing block – like he documented and interviewed – it doesn’t seem relevant anymore. The other thing is that it seems so British, so entwined in that specific culture. We know this Monty Python sketch, right? This kind of satire, for example, wouldn’t fit German society at that time, I think.

Magda: The other thing I was thinking of, while walking through the exhibition, was Pulp’s ‘Common People.’ (1995) Did anyone think of that? The song is about a girl from the upper classes, who wants to behave as being from the lower. But she never achieves that, because she always has her rich daddy in the background. I think that a potential problem this exhibition faces is of glamorizing this kind of a working-class cliché.

Victor: That song is especially ironic, as it was brought to my attention by a friend that Danae Stratou, the artist, industrialist heir and wife of Yannis Varoufakis, is the subject of that song. 

Magda: Yes, that’s why I mention it. 

Victor: I had a chat with The Bensplainer at some point and we had concerns about the installing too. It seemed, we agreed, like an art fair show display. The question is: how do you display all these works like a survey of an idea?

Magda: It is about all the artistic positions that the text referred to. As I said before.

The Bensplainer: If you see such an exhibition, you might consider how it fits a piece of writing, it being a master or a PhD thesis. On the other hand, it really lacks the viewer’s possibility to freely interact with the works. In other terms: how could you translate an idea for an exhibition, if the exhibition itself follows a logocentric and rational process? There is no surprise, indeed: I wanna see something, I don’t wanna learn something. 

Victor: This is a kind of philosophy made clear by the exhibition makers: what can art do and how it can utilize itself, in order to convey politics?

The Bensplainer: Do you mean how art can be utilitarian?

Victor: Let’s say you have a curatorial agenda, or an hypothesis: art-making as a precarious condition. And then you, as an exhibition maker, attempt to visualize that. In this sense, these works witness this very aspect, like art illustrating an intellectual point of view.

Magda: Otherwise said, either it is the work that is convincing, or the hypothesis. Right now, it doesn’t seem to be either. About the works I don’t wanna say much, but the text, its arguments can be easily dismantled. In many places, it is simply not coherent. For example, why do you state in the exhibition text that the coronavirus pandemic is what makes visible the rise of social inequalities the exhibition addresses, and then you show works from the 1980s? It makes no sense.

The Bensplainer: Works from the 1980s which recall works from the 1960s.

Magda: Exactly! If you were really consistent with your method, you would research the topic, then find out who’s working with it now. Not the artists who kind of work with the idea… just a little bit, so that they can fit your curatorial idea.

Victor: On the behalf of the curators: why should you do a show like that? What are their motivations?

Magda: Of course, you can do a show addressing the notion of class. There’s nothing wrong about that. Even if it were an illustration of ideas, it could work. But you need a good thesis first, while here the positions that are supposed to illustrate it, are weak. Who liked Laura Ziegler and Stephan Janitzky’s installations?

Victor: As a person who attended some performances by Ziegler and Janitzky previous to the KM show, but not to the last one actually at KM, I would say I see their sculptures as stage props. These performances enchanted or activated their sculptures. So, I’m quite neutral about their works in the show, but at the same time I’m neutral about all the works featured. It seems to me that the show has an agenda in representing all kinds of mediums. Photography, video … like a checklist.

The Bensplainer: Maybe old-fashioned?

Magda: It is a safe agenda. If you take Mark Fisher’s ‘Capitalist Realism,’ he states that museums and related institutions are safe spaces where we can make criticism of capitalism, while capitalism itself allows it.

Victor: Yeah, Roland Barthes already said that. On my part, I am totally opposed to the idea of ‘making art’ as a profession, in the capitalist sense. When paying your rent depends on the money from selling your art, then soon you’ll be under pressure to produce, and that in return, I think, ultimately leads to overproduction and junk.

Magda: Then we ought to know more about the artists and how they position themselves to the capitalist model. 

The Bensplainer: I think we are derailing the conversation. I mean, after 1989, there is only one religion, which is capitalism, and you hardly can escape this fact (I agree with Giorgio Agamben on this). Insisting on this leftist nostalgia is counterproductive. Art is luxury. Some artists are fighting against this mindset, but we are still in such a system.

Magda: Indeed – and yet the exhibition promotes an anti-capitalist position. For example, The Coop Fund’s aim is to provide an alternative funding, so that is very clear. Guillaume Maraud is also doing a standard institutional critique by creating an alternative fund. 

The Bensplainer: At the same time, these practices are canonized. When KM showed Andrea Fraser in 1993, the questions she raised were novel and on the point. The visuals in this present show are canonized. Stephen Willats repeats a visual language of more established artists, as Hans Haacke for instance. 

Magda: Yes, maybe the only thing Willats adds is a British perspective on the problem.

The Bensplainer: Victor, you said on the occasion of our NS-Dokumentationszentrum conversation [link]: „Preaching to the converted.“ Basically, we find here the same pattern. So, you can argue with a lot of reasoning about a motivation for an exhibition – in this case an anti-capitalist agenda – but what I expect is to see works and practices which change the way I see. Sorry if I repeat myself, but seeing works which repeat, without a difference, canonized visual experiences from the past gives me such a kind of déjà vu effect. What is this exhibition about? What are the politics that motivated it? From the point of view of the exhibition making, it is in itself a sort of repetition. In the last Documenta, the assumptions were similar: a lot of nostalgic Marxism and related leftist theoretical positions, which are good, but at the end of the day, the works become an illustration sketched aprioristically by the curators and the artistic director. Here lays the critical point which we really have to address. Paradoxically, if the works are repeating themselves, aren’t also the politics of exhibition making repeating themselves? 

Magda: Yes and no. My question is: why are you repeating these positions? You can repeat a practice under the change of circumstances: the pandemic has changed the parameters. 

The Bensplainer: I agree: the pandemic has unveiled changes which were not so clear before that. 

Magda: So, does the repetition offered in this exhibition reflect that? Does our present context require repetition? How are the works from the 1980s and 1990s relevant now?

The Bensplainer: Let’s be clear: I don’t consider repetition with a negative value. I remember a wonderful group show at KW, Berlin, in 2007, titled ‘History Will Repeat Itself.’ Precisely, it was interesting because it focused on repetition as a visual device, that’s to say how artists and works dealt with the notion of repetition, be it of other works or of overarching experiences. I remember this great video by Jeremy Deller, ‘The Battle of Orgreave’ (2001), directed by Mike Figgis, in which the artist reenacted the famous 1984 clash between workers and police in Orgreave, South Yorkshire, England, and interviewed some participants from both sides too. By the way, it was a ground breaking show, but if you now repeat because it is fashion, a canon, then repeating loses its critical charge. Moreover, works become simply an illustration of the curator’s idea. It seems to me so frustrating now, especially when Anton Vidokle already addressed the question in his seminal and controversial article ‘Art Without Artists?’ on e-flux already in 2010. [link]

Victor: Yeah, that’s what I find problematic with this show: in this time of existential precariousness, how can an artist be critical or be able to question the politics of an exhibition? You’re invited, you get attention and funds, you simply go along with it. The institutions are creating ideological precariousness by wagging with the money. Nonetheless, I see that an artist needs the money. I think it is an inherent issue of institutional exhibition making, but I can’t see an immediate way out of it. It is a trap. The people in the institutions are also paid to play their role, and if they refuse to, replacement will be found quickly.

The Bensplainer: I don’t think that it is the main point here.

Magda: I recognize that there are many artists that suffer contemporary financial precariousness, but there are equally many who do not. Let’s be honest, how many artists, or student artists, may claim that they are coming from working class families? I mean, many are playing the role, but really?

The Bensplainer: I have to check it again, but there is a statistic in Bavaria that states that families on the edge of or below existential and financial poverty who are able to send their kids to higher education are 6 or 7%. That’s a ridiculous percentage, especially because these underprivileged students or artists have then a structural difficulty in order to enter the so-called art system.

Magda: Mid- or upper-class people study art. They come from that comfortable background. At any given time, they may or may not have money, but they indeed have a safety net. 

Victor: People that I talked to were missing a critical view on the institution itself and how this show sits within its history and why they did the show there, since the Kunstverein was developed specifically to cultivate an image and space for the bourgeoisie, the middle class, by propagating aesthetic values from the upper class. It was the beginning of the ‘public sphere’ separate from the court, but also was the image of upward mobility and how its members today, generally upper middle class, use the space as a form of patronage and charity as an additive to their cultural capital. So, one might interpret this show as cynical, but I personally think that there is also the possibility of freeing yourself up from that tradition and subverting or bastardizing that project of that middle class of 200 years ago. However, I think that the show is too conventional and there is an opportunity missed here. 

The Bensplainer: Sorry if I always bring up my PhD topic about the Russian so-called Avant-Garde. If you analyze it socially, the Avant-Garde cloud was also animated by class and social warfare. Practitioners from the periphery came to the capitals, Moscow and St. Petersburg, and they had to fight with their contemporaries belonging to the urban mid- or upper-class world. For instance, you have Malevich who needs to rent a big apartment for him and his family, in order to sub-let and make a little profit from other people. But he also has to provide meals for them and he can paint only when he has some spare time. You still have today this romantic idea of the Avant-Garde, forgetting that it was also a very hard social situation.

Magda: But, the thing is that the economic or even its symbolic model, doesn’t seem to be really relevant. Class as it was in the 1970s, 1980s or even 1990s doesn’t exist anymore. What about class and technology? You can’t apply for jobs because you don’t have easy access to the Internet, because you don’t own a laptop or a smartphone. You can’t have a flat because you don’t get the notification on time. And flexibility changed the notion of work. There are a lot of structural changes in our societies, which the show’s accompanying text acknowledges clearly, but they are not examined in the work, or at least only in the orthodox leftist way. These positions are repeated nostalgically in the art. To me, the working class today is exemplified by DHL delivery workers.

The Bensplainer: I would add this. Today's working class might also be embodied by wannabe successful TikTok accounts! You may immediately perceive the fakeness in appropriating models from the supposed upper class in order to convey a different idea about yourself.

Magda: Fake it until you make it! TikTok responds to an already established model.

The Bensplainer: The novel level conveyed by TikTok is that it is not about hustling or conning anymore. Everybody knows everything is fake, so everybody accepts the coded rules.

Victor: That’s the classic definition of Žižek’s ‘ideology.’

Magda: Coming back to the show, I was surprised that urgent political issues were not questioned. I mean, the rise of populism is an issue, and it is class oriented. I don’t know much about Berlusconi and his years in power, but he did address the narrative of his politics to a certain class and set up a model for the recent years, didn’t he?

The Bensplainer: We Italians are not recognized in such a way anymore, but we’re still at the verge of the Avant-Garde! If history repeats itself as a farce, after Berlusconi everything is a farce. He had – and to some extent still has – an appeal to the working class, in the sense that he sold a narrative through which you can change your life only by willing it. At his first election run in 1994 he won in working class’ bastions, where traditionally the former Communist Party won with ease, efficiently selling his abstract ideas on liberty through his glittering television sets. So, already then, you might perceive that categories such as the Left and the Right were structurally changing. And this historical and epochal shift, so charged with ideological questions, is totally forgotten in this exhibition. 

Magda: Thus, I could have accepted as legitimate the exhibition’s assumptions, even if illustrational, if they would have addressed the ongoing complexity of the topic of populism, digitalization, 0-hours contracts, and so on, all related to an idea of the working class. Then it would have been fair enough!

The Bensplainer: I would add another topic to this. If you consider the state of satire, especially from the US, comedy is way ahead of visual art. It addresses those topics in a much more effective and creative way than visual art is actually doing. Only because they’re really reaching millions of people.

Magda: Yes, John Oliver, for instance.

The Bensplainer: I became a huge fan of Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night monologues in the last two years, because he and his authors adapted his style of comedy shifting from weird Hollywood absurdities to overall US social and political issues. So, his and his authors’ craft reached a new level of satire, and the audience’s awareness. What can visual art do, as powerful as it might be, in comparison to mainstream satire? Let’s simply think about how Kimmel dealt with the topic Obamacare and how he related to – his personal history.

Magda: This is important, as access to healthcare in the US especially, is a class issue. But then, yeah, why don’t you simply invite a comedian to KM, then? Ok, you could never afford that, but who knows?

The Bensplainer: It would be so wonderful! But this idea should also be declined in a weirder approach. 

Magda: For sure, a comedian in an art space could have more freedom compared to the one he could have on national television. 

The Bensplainer: Victor, do you remember Olof Olsson’s performance at Lothringer 13’s cafe in Munich in 2017? 

Victor: Yes.

The Bensplainer I found it brilliant, mixing visual and comedy devices, and very generous, because it lasted so long! This kind of transdisciplinary performance says more about social, political and economic issues, than a conventional show, like this one at KM. If I had to make a single critical statement about this show at KM is that it doesn’t move our present cultural perception to a different plane, as satire does.

Magda: My impression is that a student went through their assigned reading list, without going to the library. Everything which was required was read, but no insight was then further researched. 

[gamerfcapuno-blog]

The Adventures in Fansubbing: Localization and the Song of La Béfana (FR Miraculous Ladybug S2)

At this point, I just have a feeling I need to write this (mainly since I think people might find this interesting). If people are ever curious about the process of making subtitles/captions and what goes on, I’ll share some of that right now.

Now, releasing subtitles to a show isn't super abnormal these days. But there are some challenges that do come with making them.

Most people these days aren't too fussed with getting a direct translation from a fan subber, but when trying to create a quality project that keeps with the spirit of the original work is much more difficult to execute well. If you want to know more, keep going. You’ve got a lot of reading under the cut.

Professional captioners have some standards to keep to which can drastically alter what you read. These can include:

Ensuring the lines only show up in a certain number of lines and within a certain percentage of the screen. (The standard is a max of two lines, with few exceptions being three.)

Making the captions easy to understand and read in a timely manner.

Format captions to flow easily and smoothly to a viewer.

Making the idiosyncrasies, jokes and cultural references of one country understandable to other cultures. Otherwise, using an appropriate cultural reference in their place. (AKA Localization)

It's a lot of work trying to stick to that list and can often result in many things being lost to translation. A lot does hit the cutting room floor and things are altered to get an idea across in a shorter form. It's the kind of stuff that people might criticize on forums or such, but it's sometimes a necessary evil that has to be done.

With that, I want to talk about the last tick on the list (localization) in relation to S02E04 La Béfana in Miraculous Ladybug. Of course we’re talking about captioning the French language version.

I’ll start with a disclaimer: I am not a translator. I am not even fluent in a second language. I don’t even claim to be a professional captioner. I only do this for my own personal fun and education. Most of what you’ll read now is merely anecdotal and based on experiences doing this as a hobby.

It’s a pain in the butt trying to write subtitles for a language you aren't at all fluent in. What's worse, is when you run in to something that only works within the context of the original language or culture. It happens too many times to count.

I'm only going to detail a small sampling of what happens.

In this case, we have two very time consuming issues in La Béfana: the song that Béfana sings while flying around, and subsequently Chat Noir and Ladybug's responses to the song. These two are exactly the kind of localization problems that slow down jobs when you're not working on a team of multiple people. Let that be known if people are thinking of picking this up.

I won’t detail people on Miraculous Ladybug, one can easily Google the show on their own. But to set the stage for us here, La Béfana is actually based on the myth of Befana from Italy. She's a very popular figure who gives gifts to children on a flying broom, kind of like Santa. She gives candy and presents to good children in their stockings and coal or dark candies to bad children. The way Béfana in Miraculous Ladybug is portrayed is in line with this myth. Naturally, the show also has her sing a traditional Italian song while she's flying around. I wasn't able to find the original song this was based on (which may have made this easier to understand). Allegedly, it's a song that's found in a Befana opera, according to a friend of mine but I could be wrong. Knowing this background information can be helpful in understanding how to handle what we’re tackling. (Google is your best friend!)

The song in the show looks sort of like this:

La Béfana arrive sur son valle volant aus enfent j'en tiens don de bonbons aus enfent benial chet du charbons

*NOTE: I'm aware this is most likely not correct at all

This is not obvious to someone that doesn’t understand French, but this song isn't entirely in French. It's some sort of mixture of French with some thick Italian undertone and word selection. It's non-standard. The best I could do was sound it out and look through dictionaries and grammar books to figure out what Le Béfana is singing. This problem is exacerbated by the fact I know neither French or Italian and have no basis on their grammatical structure or phonetic language.

This language mixing also makes it hell for a normal translator to pick through since while it sounds like one language it doesn't line up with it (in this case it's French). It caused a lot of confusion when I asked a French translator to assist me. I spent hours trying to figure this out but I can't be spending more trying to figure this out if I'm on a timetable.

Needless to say, how do we handle this scenario for captioning?

There's two ways this can go. One is to try to bring over the spliced languages. I've actually done it before when working on No Game No Life. Of which I have and example here:

The alternative is to just play it straight and not even bother with bringing the song's language mixing over. That would look like this:

The Befana is here On her flying bike All good children get candies All the naughty ones get coal

In this case, I threw out trying to chop in multiple languages in the English caption and not bring over the idea of Béfana singing in not-Italian. Why? Because it would slow processing it when it's read.

This is just a song that La Béfana sings that (specifically) American-English speakers won't understand the significance of. Additionally, it might not even be intentionally mushed together! Trying to write the mangled-ness might even be insulting. I'm pretty sure the people who wrote the French script didn't actually intend for it to be interpreted as really terrible joke-Itali-French. And unless you live in that area of the world, the meaning of it is lost regardless of what I do and I don’t want to disrespect it.

This is a case of a functional change. I can't salvage this even if I wanted to. It felt best to not try and overstate the mixed sentences as a thing. However, I did leave the not-real spliced not-French-not-Italian caption above the English caption in case someone cares for it. (This technically is my file I make for fun. I can do whatever I want with it.)

At that point, it was just choosing between a direct translation and a more artsy lyrical one. Long story short, in this case, we (my translator buddy and I) just picked a lyrical one because we liked it more. It's not 100% what Béfana sings, but we wanted it to read as chipper as the tune. In the end, we end up with something that looks like this:

Doing alright so far! Next!

Our second issue was Chat Noir and Ladybug singing in response to Béfana in the second half of the episode. It goes a little something like this.

CHAT NOIR (singing) Chat Noir vient lui aussi Descret comme mort la nuit

CHAT NOIR (speaking; questioning tone) ...What also rhymes with "-it" [I]?

LADYBUG (singing) Il défend Paris Avec sa Lady

In this case, Chat Noir is wondering what will rhyme with "aussi" and "nuit" which end on the same phonetic sound of "-I". Ladybug jumps in and supplies "Paris" and "Lady" (which also end on the same sound in French). Oh man. This is a gag that specifically works because of how French is pronounced.

This is also entirely a children's show joke. There's plenty of words in French that rhyme with "aussi" and "nuit". It's silly, and perfectly in line with the normal comedy line of this show. The problem was trying to get that idea and feeling across to read in English captions. If you translated this more directly, it would look something like this:

CHAT NOIR (singing) Chat Noir arrives as well Discretely like the night

CHAT NOIR (speaking; questioning tone) ...What rhymes with “night”?

LADYBUG (singing) He protects Paris with his Lady

It's serviceable. It's functional. The gag is completely lost though and it makes no sense to read.

Well. Let's try an alternative version! It might go something like this:

CHAT NOIR (singing) Chat Noir is here as well Discrete as the dead of night

CHAT NOIR (speaking; questioning tone) ...What rhymes with "-ell"?

LADYBUG (singing) Defending from the tower, Eiffel Helping his Lady fight

Hmm. This at least rhymes now in English, but it's clumsy to read. I really don't like it. We don’t want it to look like some strange archaic poetry you need a masters in English to interpret.

As a related aside, sometimes you do have to completely rewrite a cultural joke or a gag to work when bringing a work to a different culture. This happens all the time (especially in dubs) and it's definitely based on how much people would know about at the current period.

A super famous example of localizing a cultural item was turning rice balls in to donuts. One has to understand, that at the time this sort of change was made (early 90s), people didn't know much about Japanese foods. The standard was people knowing about ramen and sushi. Rice balls look similar to sushi (specifically maki roll type sushi). They might have even been interpreted as sushi. But rice balls are 100% not sushi. (joking) What a mistake one can make! (/joke) On top of that, having rice balls be retained in the context of the show had a chance of not being accessible, thus a change was made to keep the flow of the show intact.

Another one that people might not be familiar with is changing ramen in the Phoenix Wright games to hamburgers. (If you want to see an insane piece of localization work, look up articles on the localization of Phoenix Wright. It's fantastic. The amount of alterations in that game series is astonishing.)

In our case in Béfana, this is just a phonetic gag. This gag may only make sense right now in French because of the way French is spoken, but it’s still only a phonetic gag. I don't have to look up anything like French expressions or idioms or cultural lore or even specific items. I could make a completely serviceable alternative that shouldn't look as weird or insert an equivalent American-English gag.

Unlike in the case above where we couldn’t retain La Béfana’s not-Italian song, we can do something here. Our goal here now is to capture the spirit of the joke or the joking nature of the lines. If we have to toss out the direct meaning of the words to do it, we’ll have to do it.

Spend a couple of more hours with a pen and some scratch paper and end up at this:

CHAT NOIR (singing) Chat Noir is now here, you see Coming like the night on the scene

CHAT NOIR (speaking; questioning tone) ...What rhymes with "-ee"?

LADYBUG (singing) And he defends Paris Alongside his Lady

Surprise! We got super lucky here! I didn’t have to rewrite an entire section of episode dialogue!

It isn’t exact, but it’s not a full replacement of the original French lines. The same questioning of the rhyme still exists. It's working on the fact that it's pretty much all half-rhymes, but if you actually read it out loud (of course pronouncing Paris as "Par-ee" and not "Pah-ris") it sounds pretty good! The line where Chat Noir is referring to the night can also be connected to the environment transitioning to night time so that tracks as well. On top of that, there’s plenty of words that rhyme with “ee” in English. (Get it together Chat Noir!) As a bonus, this version is singable to the tune they sing to in the show. It works just fine for my purposes. We saved the joke! That’s all that matters!

Job done! Looks nice! Time to ship it out!

Now, If you survived this long reading this and you're thinking "Oh god. Is it over?" while I did just write an essay, you probably only read this in a fraction of the time it took to solve this issue. I’m heavily generalizing this process. In reality, these two sections alone took maybe seven hours to settle on. Surprised?

You don't want to imagine listening to these dialogue exchanges for that long trying to interpret what's being said and workshopping captions till you find a set you like. This is just a small snippet of what goes in to these sorts of things. It's work. It takes (a lot of) time. It's exhausting. But in the end people that do this do it out of enjoyment of the same piece of media you enjoy and to help other people enjoy it as well.

That's about all I have to say for now. I hope this was informative. I may see you all again some time in the future.

Thanks to aprilblossoms for being my translator buddy for this one! And thanks to all my friends for putting up with me while I was giving myself a lobotomy trying to hammer this out! (Special note to C-Note for helping me come up with the final captions for Chat Noir and Ladybug's song response.)