The Porn On Offer
by Charlie Geer
Even the occasional flipper of channels will eventually discover that, in Spain, pornography is broadcast on network television after a certain hour. Here we are cruising past the late-night news, the Real Madrid highlights, a WWII documentary…and BLOMP! BLOMP! BLOMP! BLOMP! we have porn. Sadly, any thrill this discovery might offer a viewer quickly gives way to bafflement.
Why?
1) the porn on offer is more than a little unsettling
2) the porn on offer is dubbed
Like a lot of entertainment fare in Spain, the porn on offer is imported from the States, but even so, it’s not exactly clear why it needs to be dubbed. If the porn on offer were the old-fashioned sort, the sort that makes a gesture toward a storyline, dubbing might make sense. Maybe. But the porn on offer is not the old-fashioned sort. There is no dialogue to speak of. The porn on offer presents the raw physical act in all its possible manifestations, from all possible (high-zoom) angles. Elder porn, little-people porn, restroom porn, insult-and-abuse porn — if it’s extremely disturbing, it’s here. Aptly enough, the channel that offers the porn on offer is called DARK. That much is in English.
Why bother to dub? Outside of a few imperative mood phrases best not printed here, or in any language, there’s not a whole lot to translate. We’re not talking Leo Tolstoy, here, or even Dan Brown. One would think the sounds of scintillation are more or less universal. Or perhaps porn sounds are like animal sounds: particular to the country. American dogs say ruff ruff, Spanish dogs say guau guau. (American dogs have trouble understanding Spanish dogs. When they get together, they need translators.) Maybe porn sounds are country-specific that way. In which case, subtitles might work as a cheaper alternative to dubbing — translate a couple key phrases, put them on a subtitle loop, and you´re done — except that an individual watching porn is almost certainly too busy to read.
Putting aside for a moment the question as to why the porn on offer is dubbed, it’s hard not to wonder how it’s dubbed. How do the voice-actor auditions work, exactly? Once the actors are chosen, is the dubbing recorded in a studio? What are the actors doing as they record? What do their faces look like? Are they watching the relevant video? If not, how do things get synched up?
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Charlie Geer is the author of the novel “Outbound: The Curious Secession of Latter-Day Charleston.” His work has appeared in Tin House, The Sun, Bloomsbury Magazine, and The Southern Review.
