Day 281 – The curious subtitle demographics

I usually fall asleep before my plane takes off and wake up when it hits the runway and everybody starts clapping. By the way, why is that? Why does everybody feel the need to give ovation to the pilot, why don’t we do it every time a bus makes a successful next stop or a subway train comes on time? Surprisingly, this time is different and I cannot fall asleep. Luckily, there is nobody sitting next to me, and after propping myself with all the pillows and blankets available in two sets I am comfortably set to watch all the movies in the world. That is, in the world of plane movie selection.

Since all the movies are usually in English, I never paid attention to the subtitle choices available for each piece. But now I’m so much more aware of my surroundings in general (although some people may disagree, but that is only because they didn’t know the way I used to beJ), and so I see this as I flip through the channels…

Romancing the Stone	English, German, French
Fight Club	English, German, French
Here comes the bride, my mom!	Japanese (mind you, this is a Japanese movie, so of course it makes perfect sense to also have Japanese subtitles)
Alien	English (again…)
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse	English, Japanese, Italian, Russian
Moulin Rouge!	English, Japanese, Korean, Russian
Inception	English, Japanese, Korean, Thai

Now, what conclusions can we draw from this sample (not very extensive, granted, yet still extremely curious)?

• English-speaking people are suckers for any movies (it’s absolutely clear though that they would never understand the depth of the mother-daughter relationship in contemporary Japan, so there’s no point in even trying to open their eyes a bit).
  
  
• The German and French are into romantic adventure (although Fight Club is not exactly a melodrama, but you cannot deny that it’s fairly romantic in its core idea).
  
  
• Some American movies have to be watched with the English subtitles, because you wouldn’t believe your ears if you didn’t have the written proof of what you are hearing. Also, such movies cannot be translated into other languages, because it’s difficult to translate an incredibly ridiculous dialogue, it just wouldn’t make any sense.
  
  
• The Japanese, Russians, Koreans like fantasy in any shape or form.
  
  
• The Thai are esoterically advanced and don’t care about anything else.

I wonder who did demographics analysis for Finnair Airlines… Also, thank God I know English, otherwise my cinematographic education would be pretty limited.