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I rewatched this the other night. Cityspeak was great as a concept and the way it was portrayed in the film, but the poorly done Chinese graffiti that appeared

I rewatched this the other night. Cityspeak was great as a concept and the way it was portrayed in the film, but the poorly done Chinese graffiti that appeared on walls and buildings at various points harmed the cinematic vision of this future city (well, for me at least). It was clearly drawn by someone, probably not a native speaker or writer, copying simple phrases or making up sentences from a dictionary (中國人好，美國人不好, "Chinese good, Americans bad"). Chinese has a long history of slogans, 4-character idioms, and graffiti. How hard could it have been to find someone -- an artist, calligrapher, or even a non-artist who grew up in Asia (almost everyone learns calligraphy basics using brushes in secondary school) -- to do it better? Or is the idea cityspeakers are clumsily writing random Chinese stuff on the walls?

entropicdrifter 7y ago
Probably since it's such a mishmash of languages around, nobody bothers much with proper grammar in a given language. At least that's my guess
- kjs3 7y ago
  I'm not a linguist, but it's been explained to me that grammar is important to understanding. Even mishmash languages (think Creole) develop their own grammatical conventions over time.
svnpenn 7y ago
Its for an English speaking audience, who largely aren’t going to notice. But now I am, because of you. This is one thing I hate about the internet: if you browse for long enough, someone will ruin something that you cared about.
- theli0nheart 7y ago
  Oh, come on. I hope you're just kidding. Surely you don't relish living in ignorance as you get older? The fun part about life for me is that the curtain keeps getting pulled back. Nothing is what it initially seems to be.
  - dajohnson89 7y ago
    He was being a little facetious.
  - svnpenn 7y ago
    Yeah, I like knowing how some things really work, but not movies. When I was younger, I would always watch these "behind the scenes" type shows and was interested how it was all made. Eventually I realized that it was just ruining movies for me. The director and crew work very hard to create a vision, create "magic". Why would you want to destroy that by learning how its all done? Its like a magic trick, most would agree that the interest, the mystique, is in not knowing.
    - shadowgovt 7y ago
      Some of the best magic tricks are the ones where you learn how it's done, and you discover it's actually done the hard way. I can't find the quote right now, but I believe there's a quote from Penn or Teller where they talk about how some of their tricks could be done more easily, but they intentionally do them the hard way because it strengthens the illusion when a cynical audience member imagines the hard way, discounts it as "too hard; there must be some trick," and discovers that, no, it's just done the hard way. I wish I could track down that quote right now.
      - andrewshadura 7y ago
        Even when a trick is done the easy way, for me it is still fascinating that this person has managed to pull it off with a straight face and it fooled me! Knowing how the trick is done often strengthens the illusion.
      - bradknowles 7y ago
        The famous trick they do which I know that they've talked about is "Shadows" -- see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJH9iFOji_A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJH9iFOji_A In the interview I saw, they don't talk about how they actually do it, but they've talked about the ways they could do it, or have done it in the past, but don't anymore -- and why. Good luck finding that interview. I found it extremely interesting, but can't dig it up at the moment.
mc32 7y ago
It depends . You see “amateurish” or anti-balanced typography for Chinese characters. Some people want to write beautifully but some people write it in a very mechanical (non flowing manner). Usually you see it in the less visible parts of a city.
fenomas 7y ago
I think one can overestimate how much care goes into background details like this. I recall there's a scene where an airship flies by, plastered in Japanese advertisements, and a fan figured out that the Japanese text was simply random headlines snipped from a women's magazine. Fake edit: it was a 1981 issue of "Josei Jishin" magazine. Here's the link (JP): https://ameblo.jp/allbr/entry-10038560072.html https://ameblo.jp/allbr/entry-10038560072.html
Isamu 7y ago
>How hard could it have been For me, it's those movies with ancient Egyptian sets with obvious crap glyphs. They can't be bothered even to copy from reference.
js2 7y ago
Having re-watched it last week I was reminded again of some bad choices for corporate logos. Coca-cola we still have. Pan Am and Atari, not so much. Related: https://typesetinthefuture.com/2016/06/19/bladerunner/ https://typesetinthefuture.com/2016/06/19/bladerunner/
- ctdonath 7y ago
  Those were juggernaut companies which seemed unstoppable at the time; that they would vanish was unthinkable. Keep that in mind when considering Facebook, Google, and others we can’t imagine will ever disappear.
mgbmtl 7y ago
Sometimes it's on purpose: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2015/oct/15/homeland-is-racist-artists-subversive-graffiti-tv-show https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2015/oct/15/homelan...
- TheGallopedHigh 7y ago
  That was interesting, thanks for the link. Within, street artists from Berlin were asked to add realism to the background of scenes in a Middle East refugee camp by painting Arabic graffiti. The artists painted criticisms of the show and no producers checked what was painted before it aired.
f00zz 7y ago
The neon signs in Japanese are also mostly gibberish. (You can even get a T-shirt with the nonsensical neon signs from this Japanese site: https://www.ttrinity.jp/product/2353750 https://www.ttrinity.jp/product/2353750)
mihaaly 7y ago
Not even the Hungarian part is proper, no one says 'azonnal kövessen engem' in real but more like 'azonnal jöjjön velem' or 'gyere velem faszfej', it appears so that the whole thing is made up! ;)
bradknowles 7y ago
I recently watched the "extras" that came along with the "Final Cut" version of Blade Runner. The guy in the art department who created all those images talked about his process, and I found it very interesting. Almost as interesting as hearing about EJO's work in creating the spoken version of Cityspeak for his character.
newsbinator 7y ago
I'm going to assume the Chinese graffiti was written by someone in-universe who didn't know Chinese (or at least Chinese writing) very well. Like when someone in our world gets a tattoo of gibberish because they think it looks cool, maybe someone in the world of Blade Runner wanted to graffiti some cool Chinese characters they looked up in a dictionary.

entropicdrifter 7y ago

Probably since it's such a mishmash of languages around, nobody bothers much with proper grammar in a given language. At least that's my guess

kjs3 7y ago
I'm not a linguist, but it's been explained to me that grammar is important to understanding. Even mishmash languages (think Creole) develop their own grammatical conventions over time.

svnpenn 7y ago

Its for an English speaking audience, who largely aren’t going to notice. But now I am, because of you. This is one thing I hate about the internet: if you browse for long enough, someone will ruin something that you cared about.

theli0nheart 7y ago
Oh, come on. I hope you're just kidding. Surely you don't relish living in ignorance as you get older? The fun part about life for me is that the curtain keeps getting pulled back. Nothing is what it initially seems to be.
- dajohnson89 7y ago
  He was being a little facetious.
- svnpenn 7y ago
  Yeah, I like knowing how some things really work, but not movies. When I was younger, I would always watch these "behind the scenes" type shows and was interested how it was all made. Eventually I realized that it was just ruining movies for me. The director and crew work very hard to create a vision, create "magic". Why would you want to destroy that by learning how its all done? Its like a magic trick, most would agree that the interest, the mystique, is in not knowing.
  - shadowgovt 7y ago
    Some of the best magic tricks are the ones where you learn how it's done, and you discover it's actually done the hard way. I can't find the quote right now, but I believe there's a quote from Penn or Teller where they talk about how some of their tricks could be done more easily, but they intentionally do them the hard way because it strengthens the illusion when a cynical audience member imagines the hard way, discounts it as "too hard; there must be some trick," and discovers that, no, it's just done the hard way. I wish I could track down that quote right now.
    - andrewshadura 7y ago
      Even when a trick is done the easy way, for me it is still fascinating that this person has managed to pull it off with a straight face and it fooled me! Knowing how the trick is done often strengthens the illusion.
    - bradknowles 7y ago
      The famous trick they do which I know that they've talked about is "Shadows" -- see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJH9iFOji_A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJH9iFOji_A In the interview I saw, they don't talk about how they actually do it, but they've talked about the ways they could do it, or have done it in the past, but don't anymore -- and why. Good luck finding that interview. I found it extremely interesting, but can't dig it up at the moment.

mc32 7y ago

It depends . You see “amateurish” or anti-balanced typography for Chinese characters. Some people want to write beautifully but some people write it in a very mechanical (non flowing manner). Usually you see it in the less visible parts of a city.

fenomas 7y ago

I think one can overestimate how much care goes into background details like this. I recall there's a scene where an airship flies by, plastered in Japanese advertisements, and a fan figured out that the Japanese text was simply random headlines snipped from a women's magazine. Fake edit: it was a 1981 issue of "Josei Jishin" magazine. Here's the link (JP): https://ameblo.jp/allbr/entry-10038560072.html https://ameblo.jp/allbr/entry-10038560072.html

Isamu 7y ago

>How hard could it have been For me, it's those movies with ancient Egyptian sets with obvious crap glyphs. They can't be bothered even to copy from reference.

js2 7y ago

Having re-watched it last week I was reminded again of some bad choices for corporate logos. Coca-cola we still have. Pan Am and Atari, not so much. Related: https://typesetinthefuture.com/2016/06/19/bladerunner/ https://typesetinthefuture.com/2016/06/19/bladerunner/

ctdonath 7y ago
Those were juggernaut companies which seemed unstoppable at the time; that they would vanish was unthinkable. Keep that in mind when considering Facebook, Google, and others we can’t imagine will ever disappear.

mgbmtl 7y ago

Sometimes it's on purpose: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2015/oct/15/homeland-is-racist-artists-subversive-graffiti-tv-show https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2015/oct/15/homelan...

TheGallopedHigh 7y ago
That was interesting, thanks for the link. Within, street artists from Berlin were asked to add realism to the background of scenes in a Middle East refugee camp by painting Arabic graffiti. The artists painted criticisms of the show and no producers checked what was painted before it aired.

f00zz 7y ago

The neon signs in Japanese are also mostly gibberish. (You can even get a T-shirt with the nonsensical neon signs from this Japanese site: https://www.ttrinity.jp/product/2353750 https://www.ttrinity.jp/product/2353750)

mihaaly 7y ago

Not even the Hungarian part is proper, no one says 'azonnal kövessen engem' in real but more like 'azonnal jöjjön velem' or 'gyere velem faszfej', it appears so that the whole thing is made up! ;)

bradknowles 7y ago

I recently watched the "extras" that came along with the "Final Cut" version of Blade Runner. The guy in the art department who created all those images talked about his process, and I found it very interesting. Almost as interesting as hearing about EJO's work in creating the spoken version of Cityspeak for his character.

newsbinator 7y ago

I'm going to assume the Chinese graffiti was written by someone in-universe who didn't know Chinese (or at least Chinese writing) very well. Like when someone in our world gets a tattoo of gibberish because they think it looks cool, maybe someone in the world of Blade Runner wanted to graffiti some cool Chinese characters they looked up in a dictionary.