The Fix Is In: Dubbing as Transcultural and Transmedia Adaptation

dubbing has commonly been understood as an issue of translation and exhibition practice in both film studies and audiovisual translation theory.¹ Topics such as the differences between dubbing and subtitling, issues with image/sound synchronization, and the spatial location of the voice in relation to the moving image have all been part of this approach. However, recent scholarship by authors such as Charlotte Bosseaux and Tom Whittaker has connected dubbing to questions of screen performance and film stardom, often by attending to locally specific characteristics of national and regional media cultures. This revitalization of interest in dubbing has developed alongside the emergence of transnational film studies and scholarship on other forms of voice work in cinema, such as playback singing and post-synchronization. As such, if dubbing presents a complication of film performance that exists "between" the body we see onscreen and the voice we hear, it is also something that travels through the spaces between film industries and audiences from around the world. Furthermore, dubbing is also frequently used in the adaptation of film for television and video platforms, suggesting a circulation between different types of screens. With all of that in mind, the tension of being "between" different aspects of film culture, aesthetics, and technology offers a productive space to renew our investigation into film dubbing.

The present article will focus on the dubbing of Hollywood films for Japanese television and video, with a particular emphasis on films from the 1980s and early '90s. This period saw the arrival and subsequent explosion in popularity of home video, but also a realignment of how films were being licensed for television broadcast. These factors led to a proliferation of film dubbing in Japan, which in turn fed into the trend of voice actors (seiyū) becoming figures of cult celebrity. The practice of using the same voice actor to dub a Hollywood star across a large body of films (known as "fixing," or fikkusu) also contributed to this trend by allowing for composite forms of personality, celebrity, and screen performance to develop.

Following those points, this article will approach dubbing as a form of transcultural and transmedia adaptation. I am using adaptation as a companion concept to translation in order to consider how film stars are made to more easily "fit" into local idioms concerning performance style, genre, and identity, both through the aforementioned generative relationship between onscreen body and audible voice and through the intertextual resonance generated by how voice actors are repeatedly paired with Hollywood stars across films. Furthermore, by emphasizing transmedia adaptation as part of the same analysis, I also aim to address some of the ways that dubbing adapts Hollywood cinema to Japanese television and video as platforms for media consumption. This form of adaptation therefore extends to thinking about films as cultural commodities as well as aesthetic objects. More abstractly, it is also part of how the figurative scales of different media screens and national industries come into relief through media consumption. Adaptation therefore speaks not only to the rescaling of issues concerning identity in film stardom and cultural prestige between Hollywood and Japan but also to how images move between screens of different sizes (and with different modes of access) to reach new audiences.

Double Identity

"Fixing" has been a common practice in the dubbing of Hollywood films for Japanese television audiences since the 1980s. Similar strategies can be found in Spanish- and Italianlanguage film dubs, as well as in the use of playback and post-synchronization in Indian-and Chinese-language cinemas. However, the sheer volume of dubs available on Japanese television and video, combined with the particular form of celebrity surrounding voice acting within local media industries, marks this practice as especially significant within Japan. Comic book artist and dubbing fan Tori Miki is credited with coining the term "fixing" to describe this part of how film dubs are cast, and the term has become part of the common vernacular among both enthusiasts and industry staff, as a way of characterizing the effect of blending and balancing star personas.² Fixing is a central component of...