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Forums - General Discussion - Why is German pop culture less popular worldwide than American, British and Japanese?

Because german language sounds bad, german womans too ugly, germans too stressfull!

 

 

User moderated - Bristow9091

Last edited by Bristow9091 - on 14 December 2017

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fuallmofus said:
Because german language sounds bad, german womans too ugly, germans too stressfull!

Agree on the first point but I object to the latter. Try taking the train in summer around here. You'd have to take anti-viagra to not rip your pants.



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Because Germany didn't make any relevant or good pop since the prime days of the Scorpions. Avantasia en Xandria are great, but Metal isn't that popular. Same to a lesser extend on the great part goes to Ramstein. Cobra 11 was pretty funny though.



Please excuse my (probally) poor grammar

German pop culture is pretty much non-existant. The most popular stuff around here comes straight from the US. And even the popular german stuff is just a rip-off of american things most of the time.



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Germany always came off like Japan but with none of the fun. Weird, good imports, but just kind of dour.



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I listen to Deutschrap quite often.



Ka-pi96 said:
SuperNova said:

Everything else gets remade, rather than dubbed, we don't get japanese TV shows airing straight up and most of the time we don't even get dubbed japanese movies. Even blockbusters like 'the ring' had to first be remade for western audiences before stuff like 'Uzumaki' could come over subbed.

Firstly, you're German? :O

Secondly, on this bit I don't think it's the case that movies like The Ring "had" to be remade. I think it's more hollywood being imperialistic and selfish about things, ie. if they make their own ripoff version of it then don't have to pay anywhere near as much in royalties (if any) to the original producers. They can steal the credit for something and take the lion's share of the money at the same time.

It's definitely much harder for non-English language films to do well in English speaking countries than the reverse, but I don't think it's so difficult that it necessitates them being remade to see success.

I do wonder if this is something that could change in the future though. Particularly with TV shows. You said we don't get things like Japanese TV shows airing which is very much true on network TV. I've noticed quite a few foreign TV shows have been picked up by Netflix though. They might start finding an audience now that it's actually possible to easily and legally view them.

XD Yeah, I am. I lived in the UK until recently though.

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love that we are slowly getting more foreign films and shows crossing over. And in the case of japanese film and TV that is a path that has been carved out largely by Anime.

And I think you're right about the motivations of Hollywood studios for remakes rather than dubs too, but I think it's a mixture of wanting to maximize profits and wanting to minimize cultural dissonance. All those 'woolsey' dubs were done for a reason. Calling Onigiri 'Burgers' or 'Cookies' and dropping honorifics goes beyond just smoothing out the translation and letting the dialog flow better, those are cultural 'translations' to make the foreign thing more digestable to a diffrent audience.

Were those neccessary? Probably not, but the attitude in the late 80's early 90's was definitely that cultural translation was needed to make Anime more accessible to western Audiences. Then, I'd argue with the advent of internet piracy, we discovered that a lot of the translations we'd been seeing were incorrect, or at least inaccurate and that's when more accurate translations started entering the mainstream. With that came a better understanding of japanense culture in general, making japanese film and TV more feasable.

That being said, today we definitely don't need those reboots anymore (if we ever needed them). No one needed that dreadful Netflix Death Note 'reimagining'....



The Germans are in pop culture, granted it's not what they can be proud of but even if it's not the Nazi's, most Germans in Hollywood movies are the villains cause when they speak English. I don't know sounds villainese XD



 

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These things come in cycles. German classical music is hugely significant and their movies were hugely popular in the early 20th century before sound. I've always liked Kraftwerk and Alphaville although Alphaville is often not seen as German because they always sing in English as far as I can tell. I've talked to a couple of people who didn't realise they were German.

I think in current times Germany is recognised for its engineering excellence and in this regard the German economy is hugely successful with a large trade surplus. It does seem though that many German goods are reprocessed Chinese manufactured goods, tools, bicycles etc and then given 'a made in germany' sticker at an inflated price and German car reliability that was once great and equal to japanese cars now seems very poor.

This car reliability site which has absolutely no bias purely based on warranty insurance claims has german cars as the worst overall for frequency of repairs and repair costs. However people's perception of reliability and quality takes many years to change. I had a mark 1 Golf which was fantastic and it took me a while to realise/accept that most German cars are best avoided nowadays.

http://www.reliabilityindex.com/manufacturer

It's funny how marketing can skew people's perception. Often people blame the dealer rather than the cars so when they buy an unreliable German car which they perceive themselves to be reliable they blame the dealer for the problems. Hence German car dealerships are also rated very low. I don't think anyone would believe that just being a German car dealership would attract more unhelpful staff.

http://www.carbuyer.co.uk/news/150051/driver-power-survey-dealership-results

The point I'm making is how a country is perceived if often more important than the actual reality and music sells not just on the music itself but how you perceive the artist and how much you connect with them emotionally.

Also if I hear music that I really like, just a snippet I have to seek it out myself if it isn't mainstream but big US artists are pushed everywhere. While watching youtube often I would watch 80s music videos and youtube would put adverts on for american artists in between the videos. Those adverts were intrusive and it was music that I felt was very poor and nothing like the music I listened to by choice. In the end I had to use a advert blocker so I could use youtube without such adverts. I didn't want to do this but often I was saturated with such adverts and with skip often removed. A lot of the big car magazine's sold in the UK are part of large German media companies and often are selective about what they print. A car's quality will often be focused on the dashboard, interior etc with little focus on high running costs and general known poor reliability. The UK is a particularly strong market for german luxury cars.

Controlling the media and what people see is a bit part of the selling process and overall perception.



Why would it even have to be when Japan already covers everything?



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