07 October 2008

Pin Pon in Shrek?

I don't normally show American movies with Spanish dubbed in, because they're culturally irrelevant and many times beyond my students, both linguistically and in attitude--they assume it's the same as the English and tune out the language. But I found this clip of Shrek 2 on YouTube, the torture scene where the prince is dipping the gingerbread man in milk to try to get him to talk. In the English film, the conversation goes like this:
Prince: "Do you know the muffin man?"
Gingerbread man: "The muffin man?"
Prince: "The muffin man. Do you know the muffin man?"
Gingerbread man: "The one who lives on Drury Lane?"

It's one of the funniest parts of the movie. But think about it--how funny would this be to Spanish-speakers who have no idea what the muffin man is? So, when I watched the scene in Spanish, I found out that they actually dubbed in a conversation involving Pin Pon, a Puerto Rican children's song. Awesome! I can't wait to show it in Spanish 3. Funny, linguistically accessible and relevant, and culturally relevant too!

2 comments:

Parra said...

Pin Pon is a chilean character. Jorge Guerra (the actor who portrayed Pin Pon) died this year on February 6th.

Unknown said...

Correcto. Es completamente chileno. Su fama llegó a toda América latina, incluído Puerto Rico, lo que fue genial y pudo darnos esta divertidísima escena.