While working in the kitchen the other day, I heard my son and husband laughing loudly and reciting a line together along with whatever it was they were watching on the television. My curiosity was aroused so I asked what all the fuss was about. They responded in unison,
"I have had it with these monkey-fighting snakes on this Monday to Friday plane."
I soon learned that they were watching the movie Snakes on a Plane on FX and the line that they were reciting was the dubbed version of a profanity-laced exclamation uttered by Samuel Jackson's character in the theatrical version of the movie.
Here is the television version:
Apparently I don't watch enough television. I got such a kick out of the dubbed line that I googled it and there are numerous sites and blogs that discuss the line; one in particular that labeled it, "the worst overdubbed profanity replacement in TV history."
To give you an idea of how popular this line is, when I went to google the phrase "monkey-fighting snakes", I only got as far as "monkey fig..." before google's autocomplete suggested "monkey fighting snakes". And clicking on "monkey fighting snakes" returns approximately 27,300,000 hits.
Wow.
So I figured what the heck, I may as well google "Monday to Friday plane" to see what that returns too. I made it as far as "Monday to..." before the autocomplete suggested "Monday to Friday plane". While not as impressive as "monkey fighting snakes", "Monday to Friday plane" did return 5,910,000 hits.
The reason I bring up a topic that has already been written about so many times is that (regardless of the opinion of the majority) I do not think this was a poor job of profanity replacement at all - quite the opposite, actually.
If you ask me, it takes a certain amount of linguistic talent to come up with minced oaths that can be dubbed so synchronously while still making some sense semantically. (After all, there are snakes that fight monkeys and there are planes that only fly Mondays through Fridays.)
3 comments:
That is funny. Sometimes, though, the substitutes get so ludicrous that it seems like it would be a whole lot more dignified to just go with the good old fashioned "bleep" or silence.
Hilarious, thank you!
My son and I watched the same dubbed movie a while back and had the same reaction: we nearly laughed ourselves to death!
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