The English language’s hold over TV and culture is fading

Heavily subtitled drama Shogun‘s 18 Emmy wins show we’re finally growing up

September 19, 2024 11:00 am(Updated 11:24 am)

Hiroyuki Sanada as the powerful Lord Yoshii Toranaga in FX’s ‘Shōgun’ (Photo: Kurt Iswarienko/FX Shōgun)

Shogun, one of my favourite television dramas this year, has rightfully won its place in Emmy history with a record 18 wins at this week’s ceremony in Los Angeles. But it’s not this enormous quantity of prizes alone that interests me; I want to talk about one award in particular.

The Disney+ series, which is set during power struggles in 17th century Japan and follows English sailor John Blackthorne after he is taken captive by samurai, is the first ever foreign language series to win the award for Best Drama – a triumph we should herald as an important and timely change in the content we value.

Earlier this summer, Ampere Analysis found that frequent viewing of foreign language content has gone up by 24 er cent among English-speaking markets in the past four years. Given how shows from markets like the US tend to dominate the streaming platforms, this is extremely impressive.

But in reality, English-speaking audiences are merely catching up to the rest of the world. In countries where English isn’t the main language, 88 per cent of consumers regularly engage with foreign language TV shows or films. That English-speaking audiences haven’t always had the same appetite for foreign content is telling.

For one thing, we use that word – foreign. We often designate films or TV shows simply as “foreign language”, irrespective of what kind of genre they are. The industry is trying to change. A couple of years ago, the Oscars changed the category they had called “best foreign language film” for decades into “best international feature film” specifically to try and reconfigure how they treated world cinema.

We live in a globalised world where we should be delighting in commissions from many countries and in many languages. That Shogun won Best Drama without the need for a foreign or world category shows that times are changing for the better.

It has always been criminal that foreign films have held a reputation for being more challenging to watch, as if the mere presence of subtitles suddenly intellectualises them. As recently as 2020, Parasite director Bong Joon-ho felt compelled to defend them. “Once you overcome the one-inch tall barrier of subtitles,” he said while picking up a Golden Globe for best foreign film, “you will be introduced to so many more amazing films.”

Yet this stereotype is fast disappearing as a growing acceptance and demand for subtitling on social media has normalised seeing them when we stream, too.

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With AI translation improving, we may not even be reliant in the future for formal subtitling to take place; we’ll be able to watch anything from anyone in the world and see their work translated at unprecedented levels of accuracy.

But I also think Shogun is a precedent for how language needn’t simply be the medium a show is in, but a creative tool to be deployed to build drama and character.

First of all, the writers kept all Japanese dialogue in period-appropriate Japanese while the Portuguese characters, when allegedly speaking Portuguese, simply spoke English in Portuguese accents. I don’t believe this was only because the writing team was mostly built of English speakers, and intended for a US audience; it was also because we were compelled as viewers to understand the British and Portuguese characters as sharing an identity as outsiders.

It was also reflective of the viewpoint we were hearing this story from. John Blackthorne is based on the real-life first Englishman to sail to Japan- William Adams – whose seafaring would have made him very multilingual.

Throughout the series, we see Blackthorne speak to everyone from a Spanish pilot to Dutch crews in English because the reality is a well-travelled and educated man like him would have spoken to everyone in their own language. Privileged with the access Blackthorne gives us as narrator, we hear everything already translated, and understanding every word.

Other streamers should take note. Shogun was a masterclass in how multiple languages can be exploited for dramatic effect – and its success is hopefully a sign to writers and producers that we need many, many more series like it.

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