How did Black Panther botch so bad?
Okay, Black Panther is kind of old news. But it's still worth talking about.
Especially since now it's been out so long we can talk about it without people screaming SPOILERS!!!!! and running away in panic. This is your official spoiler alert. Seriously though, if you haven't seen Black Panther by now you're sort of late to the party.
Black Panther is worth talking about for a few reasons. It's surprising box office success? Yes. It's social commentary on racism, classism, and foreign policy? Yes. And of course, how it's taken Afrofuturism mainstream.
If you have no idea what Afrofuturism is, don't worry! Listen to the episode above before going further.
I could talk about Afrofuturism all day, but that's not why I'm writing. I'm writing to tell you about this one scene in Black Panther that came up a lot in Korea we couldn't fit into the podcast.
Everyone (us included) were excited that Busan was part of Black Panther's backdrop. There have been several movies now using Korea as part of the story, like in Cloud Atlas, and even in Avengers: Age of Ultron, where Seoul was a huge part of the plot. Busan is the country's second most famous city, located in the South. It kind of has a rough edge to it, since it’s a port city. The accent is famous, the beaches, the culture, and of course, the people are famous too. Busan men are known for being terse and extra manly. It’s pretty great that a Hollywood shoot wanted to do a cool car chase scene in a place with all this background.
There is one scene in particular from Black Panther that we didn’t know anything about until we saw it on Internet forums. Apparently it was controversial.
It's a short scene in Busan, where T’Challa, Nakia, and Okoye arrive at this back aisle of the market. Here Nakia is showing off her street cred with her Korean, and this salty Korean lady is giving her crap. It’s a short conversation in Korean before they enter an underground casino. The Korean lady nailed the Korean ahjuma vibe where she is funky but warm. We didn't think anything of it.
Apparently the original was not the same.
We found out on some forums that the Korean lady was not so Korean after all. Her accent and delivery was not even remotely native-level, and was so appalling to Korean Americans, elicited such a bad reaction from Korean speakers, they dubbed over it for the Korea release.
What we were hearing in the theater was dubbing by a native Korean voice actor. No wonder it sounded fine to us. Of course we wouldn’t notice this until we read the forum. The dubbing was good and the Korean lady’s accent was authentic. Soo Zee was recently on an international flight and watched Black Panther again, where she actually saw the original, pre-dub version.
It was horrendous. The old lady's Korean was worse than Nakia’s. That horrible reaction from Korean Americans and Korean speakers is totally understandable. How is this even possible?? I mean, in a HOLLYWOOD movie? With millions of dollars in budget! There are hundred of steps along the way where it had to be okayed. Surely someone noticed. Surely there was time to address it properly before release. It's not like it's hard to find Korean speakers in Los Angeles. There was likely one on set. The largest population of Koreans outside of the peninsula is in Los Angeles!
We are film people. We understand how details get simplified for filming, how consultants are never called because of budgetary concerns, but this was a pretty big oversight. It's nothing short of puzzling how cultural stuff like that gets so bungled in Black Panther, when other movies and television shows manage to do a passable job of it.
Anyway, it was eventually addressed in the Korean release. Hopefully when they release it for purchase on iTunes you get the version we saw in theaters and not the version Soo Zee saw on the plane.
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