Netflix is Dubbing My Films

I have long been an advocate for banning dubbed films completely.  It is my firm opinion that movies were meant to be watched in their original language and that dubbing over them for the convenience of those who are too lazy to read is akin to dying a poodle bright pink and carrying it around in a little purse.  In other words, it offends me.

Upon turning on my Netflix On-Demand the other night, I saw a flick that I hadn’t seen for a while in the queue, a remarkable film called Avalon (2001).  I was excited, as this is one of my favorite foreign (Polish / Japanese collaboration) dystopian movies of all time.  Anger spread through me, however, when the first words out of the protagonist’s mouth were in English.  It wasn’t just dubbed, but dubbed so badly by such an atrocious voice-actress that I cringed to hear it.

Now, maybe I am just less Netflix-savvy than I like to think, but I could not for the life of me find a way to put the situation right.  This has happened to me with other films as well.  I went to watch IP Man some time ago only to find the same problem – English voices coming from Chinese actors.  With IP Man it was worse though, as when they reached the point of the movie where the Japanese were introduced, they didn’t even bother with the dubbing – it was just in Japanese.

Netflix, please, put your default settings to subtitles or at least provide an easy way for us purists to switch the dubbing off.  I understand that dubbing may make foreign movies more accessible to the general public, but the process ruins a perfectly good film.  Movies should be proudly played in their language of origin and not subject to whims of a semi-illiterate English-speaking populous.