I recently picked up Regina Spektor’s Begin To Hope, an acquisition largely based on the opening track ‘Fidelity‘ which piqued my interest in her after just one brief listen. As tends to happen when I listen to a new song or album, I go searching for more information, for lyrics, backgrounds and meaning.
It turns out that Fidelity was inspired by the movie High Fidelity, based on Nick Hornby’s novel of the same name and having never read said book or seen said movie I went searching for more information on that as well.
The opening plot summary on the movie’s Wikipedia article is what led to this rant – that “The book and film have essentially similar plots, though the setting, originally London, is moved to Chicago in the film.”
I’m sure plenty of Hornby fans got up in arms at this back in 2000 (when it would actually make sense to, what with the film being a new release then), but myself, a virgin to this particular occourance, found myself baffled and down-right agitated by the whole practice (which is replicated in many other releases).
The whole thing stems from pure ignorance, a pet peeve of mine. Now I’m not sure if the movie producers think that US audiences can only related to US characters or if they know same, but that’s irrelevant.
If it’s the former then it angers (but doesn’t surprise me) to know that movie studios see their audience as a socially enclosed, unworldly monotone incapable of contemplating any existence outside of its immediate surrounding. If it’s the latter it angers me that the audience is a socially enclosed, unworldly monotone incapable of contemplating any existence outside of its immediate surrounding.
I’ve heard the stories of US audiences needing subtitles for some of the more, shall we say, colourful accents in certain movies not made on their own shores but this is just plain frustrating.