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Article published In:
Audiovisual translation in the age of streaming
Edited by Jinsil Choi, Kyung Hye Kim and Jonathan Evans
[Target 35:3] 2023
► pp. 404–425

The Boys in the Band

Linguistic and aesthetic nostalgia in translation

ORCID logo | Complutense University of Madrid
ORCID logo | Peruvian University of Applied Sciences

This article analyzes the Spanish dubbed version and English-language version of Netflix’s recent adaptation of The Boys in the Band (Mantello 2020), which was initially a theater play by Crowley (1968), and compares it with the first English-language film adaptation (Friedkin 1970), also dubbed into Spanish. The concept of nostalgia is used here to analyze the resemiotization of different audiovisual modes (particularly cinematography) and how they are combined with the linguistic code to reimagine the narrative of the homosexual community in New York at the end of the 1960s. The English versions of the two films (released in 1970 and 2020) repeat the dialogues almost verbatim; however, the versions dubbed into Spanish offer different translation solutions. The time of production of both dubbed versions accounts for the viability of the expression of different sexual identities in the Spanish context at each moment. Based on this, the article reveals how the audiovisual modes of the latest version of The Boys in the Band, including its Spanish dubbing, contribute to nostalgic aesthetics and discursive representation of the emerging cultural and social gay American scene.

Keywords: audiovisual translation, dubbing, nostalgia, The Boys in the Band , queer cinema
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.From a historical past to nostalgic representations
  • 3.The cinematic design of nostalgia in The Boys in the Band
  • 4.Linguistic nostalgia in the Spanish dubbing of The Boys in the Band
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 20 July 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/target.00017.mar
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