I am writing today in response to Mark Gallagher’s article “What’s So Funny About Iron Chef?” The first third of his article (up to the middle of page 3) is all stuff I can agree with, explanations of the premise of Iron Chef, descriptions of the set and characters, a little history on other Japanese cultural exportations, and general information on globalization as an idea of study. After that, Mark Gallagher points out a humor in the dubbing of Iron Chef that neither I nor my colleagues seem to “get.” I feel like I missed out on the joke, during a viewing of Iron Chef I did not think the dubbing was comical at all. I am generally the type of person to “get” jokes. I’ve watched much highbrow and lowbrow comedy and understood what was funny about both. I did not understand what Mark Gallagher thought was funny when watching Iron Chef. The dubbing seemed earnest and unassuming, not trying to be anything other than dubbing. As mentioned in class, Japanese and American English aren’t necessarily languages that line up at all perfectly, and anybody who knows anything knows that to be true. So there really is not any humor in languages not being the same, linguistics as a field of study wouldn’t exist without the difference. Linguistics is rarely used in humor. I also noticed that not many students in class laughed during the viewing of what was presented as humorous and bad dubbing of Iron Chef. Even with an introduction suggesting that the dubbing was funny, not many people if anyone laughed. Also I would like to point out that I completely disagree with the notion presented in class that this bad dubbing was somehow retribution for World War II, a war in which America dropped the only two nuclear weapons ever in history on innocent Japanese (killing 129,000 instantly, not including those who died after the first day) and Japan bombed Pearl Harbor (killing 2,403 people, or 1.8% of those killed in Nagasaki and Hiroshima). If your preferred form of retribution is death and destruction, that was taken care of. If your preferred form of retribution is bad dubbing sixty years later, I would suggest not telling anyone.
Of course, Mark Gallagher isn’t the only human on the planet who found the dubbing of Iron Chef humorous. The comedic hit-and-miss-ers of Saturday Night Live made a sketch based on this comedic premise. Spoiler alert: this sketch is a miss. It stars Charlie Sheen as an overly American contestant and a bunch of white people as Japanese people. Jimmy Fallon’s impression of kitchen reporter Sinichiro Ohta is particularly racist, complete with squinty eyes. Unfortunately Chris Parnell does not even have a good Emeril impression to save the sketch during a fake commercial break (who doesn’t have a good Emeril impression???). The sketch can be viewed here and if this is your kind of humor, I have some ’30s Disney cartoons that you’ll LOVE.
Sydney Megan Jow says
Great post Logan. Although some of my points may be a slight reiteration of the previous comments, let me share my thoughts. I feel that Mark Gallagher’s use of Japanese dubbing was kind of a “cheap shot” in trying to explain cultural imperialism. Of course, there is something comical about words not matching out with mouths. We see quite often parodies created around wrongly dubbing characters. However, Iron Chef is an extremely poor example of this. I do not in any way believe the Food Network was taking a cultural/racial stab at the Japanese by dubbing this program; there is really no way to dub any language into another in an absolutely smooth manner. Someone in class suggest that if Iron Chef was not acting in cultural imperialism, then why didn’t they just use subtitles? My guess is that viewers would rather listen to a dubbed voice and be able to focus on the food, than have to read extensive subtitles throughout the entire program. In fact, it seems that Gallagher may even be accusing the television network of racial slander, which is completely unfair. And trying to connect it to the brutal racist misconduct of WWII? That’s just preposterous.
Mackenzie Rose Liberatori says
I particularly like that you make the point to challenge the views presented in lecture. Generally the analysis portion of our discussed topics do not involve much debate and this take on Gallagher’s attempt to deconstruct the humor cues in programs like Iron Chef gives an excellent new way of viewing the topic. Rather than accepting the theory that Iron’s Chef’s perceived humor to westerners is due to continuing micro-aggressions aimed at the Japanese in retaliation to the atrocities committed during WWII, I personally saw the humor as being rooted in the variable of cultural differences. If I was told to think about Japanese stereotypes off of the top of my head I’d tell you crazy commercials, bizarre commercials, and people with both perpetually serious yet content dispositions. In many examples it is easy to find humor in things that we do not understand, especially cultures and the mannerisms of people from different places. I am not trying to justify the fact that people find it so easily to see something different and point and laugh at it as an inherent reaction, but I feel that this factor also really ties into where some audience members may see some kind of humor.
Sarah Nicole Weidenbaum says
I completely understand how you did not see the “joke” in the dubbing of Iron Chef. You’re right, not many people laughed in class when we watched the video despite being primed into thinking the content would be humorous. Not to defend the author but perhaps to defend people who do laugh at dubbing the voices are laughing at the lack of sincerity in the English voices and they sound as if they are not committed to the emotions they are supposed to be portraying. Another critique would be that I think the author is saying that we sound like we are mocking their culture by using voices that do not fit with the character. Other than that, no I did not find the dubbing funny in Iron Chef, I agree with you that in this case it seemed appropriate unlike in a comedy where they would implement bad dubbing for humor. Going with comedy, I think your example of Jimmy Fallon’s Iron Chef does sound like it has some underlying themes that could be seen as inspired by racism but those jokes sell unfortunately. Lastly, I completely agree with the point you made about dubbing for Japanese characters/ people having no relation to post WWII resentment. I also feel that is a stretch to make that connection because the dubbing isn’t offensive, it just is different and sometimes the best way to cope with difference or the unknown is by finding humor in it, even if it was unintended.