B-grade subtitles

This chapter investigates the 'badfilm' or paracinema celebration of translational errors in sub-standard subtitling, a practice that Abe Mark Nornes (2007) traces back to "to the silent era when early film critics ridiculed sloppy intertitles,” before discussing its resurgence within international Hong Kong cinema fandom circa the 1970s and 80s. While such B-grade subtitling sits easily within a 'badfilm' frame, I argue that inept subtitles or 'flubtitles' as they are sometimes called, do not simply delineate another genre of badfilm production or appreciation. More tellingly, they testify to the significance of the intercultural within badfilm movements, which they also necessarily destabilize by potentially transforming any film into bad film. With reference to Derridean deconstruction and Lawrence Venuti's The Translator's Invisibility (1995), I outline how B-grade subtitles might provide a means of reconceptualizing badness itself.