On sincerity in pop culture

The lovely Rekhs dropped me a link to share this morning regarding an inane Buzzfeed style "listicle" from IBN of "subtitle fails" from South Indian films. I'll share her link with you little further below but since I'd been planning on writing a little something about social media today anyways, if only to clear some celebrity "official account" pics I'd saved off my desktop, I'll combine my thoughts into one rambling post. Hopefully it will hold together.

As Hrithik says, "Happiness is simply a stimulated mind."

And do you know what? I love that Hrithik thinks that and I love that he told somebody to put the quote on a picture of him riding a horse down the beach and post it to his official Facebook account. There is nothing not amazing and lovely about it. He had to have a photo of him casually riding a horse down a beach. And a guy to MS Word a caption on to it. And he cared enough about us fans to take the time to put it up there because he thought maybe we'd like it? Or we'd like him? Or maybe just that he wanted to share his words of wisdom. Hrithik is wonderfully, unselfconsciously over-the-top in his sincerity and I love his social media feeds for it.

Or like Sasha casually chilling with a lion for no reason.

Or Akshay and a dog in matching hoodies.

And the most Bollywood of American celebrities: VIN DIESEL!!! ♥
I wish we could all live life like that.

Here's the thing, it is so easy to make fun of everything, especially for those of us drowning in the American cultural idiom, where "making fun" is the default position. Don't take anything seriously (except superhero franchise films and the work of Christopher Nolan, for some reason) and certainly don't let anybody get away with being earnest. Don't do anything yourself but do mock others for caring, trying, and/or putting themselves out there. And by all means, please nitpick things that don't matter and ignore the things that do.

Which brings me to Rekhs link.

Apparently IBN put up a "listicle" of "hilarious" subtitle fails from South Indian films and this was the response on twitter.

My favorite response:

@IBNLiveBuzz Yeah some subs were not good as it should be.But pls appreciate the good ones too.Pls refer @rekhshc subtitled movies.

— Trollywoods (@Troll24x7) June 26, 2014

Because you know what, it's easy to sit and laugh at subtitle "bloopers" while conveniently ignoring a) the content of the film itself b) the fact that somebody had to have put hours of effort into even the crappiest of subtitles. Having done some translation work myself, I know it's tedious and time consuming and not easy. We take so many things for granted… the subtitlist all but invisible until he or she makes a mistake and then hours of effort, not to mention the work of the filmmaker and the actors, are suddenly invalidated by a single typo? Or a unfortunate turn of phrase?

I depend on subtitles to watch so much of world cinema and good subtitles can enhance a viewing experience a good deal. But it really, really annoys me to see people picking on bad subtitles as if any subtitles were something we English-speakers are entitled to rather than something we should be grateful for, even the half-assed ones, even the ones by people with imperfect English.

Well, I'm grateful.

And knowing the amount of work that it takes to go into half-assed subtitles, it just makes me EVEN MORE GRATEFUL for a lady like Rekhs who makes beautiful subtitles.

And, so, voila! A response to IBN and tribute to the lady from @kamaljii

Subtitling - South Indian Films

Dear IBNLive Buzz

We shall overcome some day!

When we look at South Indian subtitling journey. it might have existed long ago bu it got evolved with rekhs a 1 woman army & she has no competitors, but only imitators and she's far ahead of any other Indian, if I might say so in her rhythm, rhyming and still keeping the meaning intact.

She set a new trend, Watch Mr.Mani ratnam's Movie "Alaipayuthe" subtitled for "Pachai Niramey", as an example, you will find it amazed.

She's probably the only subtitlist to have a fan base and she does us proud. So lets celebrate her 225 films ( 125 solo) journey in less than 4 yrs in all South Indian Languages [Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu & Kannada] with pride as a subtitlist and as an Indian!

From the 225 Films, The best challenging songs that are subtitled are listed below as 38 videos and accessible through the youtube

You can check her interview

Further to add you have to be away from your motherland to realize the value of subs even more!

Now, I hope you shall appreciate and honour this works through your RT.

Thanking you.. Kamal (@kamaljii)

(Originally posted June 26, 2014)