Screencap: Jason about to fight Van-Damme the Russian. Image courtesy of Disney?
In John Bryant’s The Fluid Text, the author discusses the ‘fluid text moment” as a moment of “apparent slippage between your text of a literary work and someone else’s….” (p. 64) Basically, it’s the moment when you realize that there is another distinct version of a literary text, with differences that make it a unique variation.. (p. 64-69) I’d say this applies to film texts. That is, there are moments when you recognize that the film you’re watching can actually exist in different versions, distinguished possibly by editing, aspect ratio, screen size, language, etc.
For me, the earliest fluid film text moment I can remember is when I first saw the Russian television broadcast version of No Retreat, No Surrender (1985). You see, this was kinda one of my video favorites as I was growing up, a weird little martial arts movie where the ghost of Bruce Lee (!) decides to teach Jeet Kune Do to an American teenager so he can fight an evil Russian(!!!) played by Jean-Claude Van Damme. It’s a ridiculous film but one that was pretty damn fun and entertaining, especially because a) my brother and I loved Bruce Lee films and b) Van Damme was uncharacteristically playing a bad guy.
I saw it so many times on tape, I could remember almost every scene. So, when it came up on TV in the early 90s, I decided to give it a whirl… yet something was different. On tape the movie started with an image of Bruce Lee before dissolving to Jason practicing Karate in his father’s dojo. Yet on TV there was a whole credit sequence set in the streets of New York before the film arrived at the dojo. Then, there were a LOT of these other scenes that I’d never seen before, like more stuff with Jason’s new friend in Seattle skateboarding and dealing with bullies.
That experience first got me to realize: hey wait, you can put stuff in and take stuff out of movies. I didn’t give it that much attention at the time, but it stayed with me. So, as I watched more movies and learned about censorship, scenes getting cut for commercials, director’s cuts, etc., I would recall that moment I saw NRNS on TV as a kid. It may not be a great movie exactly, but it’s provided a great learning experience about film editing and variation.
Anyway, what about you? What’s your first fluid text moment? In other words, what work made you realize that movies (or TV episodes, games, etc.) can exist in different versions? How did that impact your view of the work? Have you seen the different cuts of NRNS? Sound off in the comments below! Or maybe respond with Notes!
Honestly, I probably became fully aware of this due to anime. An American dub is already a new version of the work -- especially in a community where watching subs vs dubs was a constant war -- but then there were also multiple American dubs of most shows all with various degrees of edits and censoring. I think Yuyu Hakusho really hit home for me. It originally aired in America on the late night Adult Swim block, dubbed but largely uncensored, but it was super popular and got moved to the weekday afternoon Toonami blocked where the violence, language, and sexuality was suddenly all censored. It was jarring. I knew shows were altered due to censorship but that was my first time being able to see both versions of a show for myself.
On a very basic level, my first memor(ies) of variations were seeing the differences between the VHS tapes at my local movie store for movies like Die Hard, Bloodsport, and Falling Down, and their broadcast edits that would appear frequently on TV stations. Not only would the actual audio track have the profanities awkwardly dubbed over or blanked out, but many scenes (sometimes large, sometimes small) would be cut out.
I know that's not quite the same as a different cut of a film done by a director or studio, but it was the first time I remember realizing movies could (and sometimes had to) exist in different forms.
If I understand correctly, you had a video tape (bought where ? In Russia ?) of that film and later watched the Russian version broadcast, right ? Then what's the official version, the one the filmmaker intended ? It's kind of scary for a filmmaker, but it's not something you'll find everywhere. In France (where I live, and used to work in audiovisual labs), rights are different than in USA (and I guess Russia), final cut doesn't ever need to be discussed (although strong suggestions can be made by producers and diffusers), censorship is almost non existent (compared to the moral dictatorship in USA with the MPA for instance - there's still a rating) and films can't be manipulated that much. Only differences you could spot (or have spotted) are logos at the beginning and the aspect ratio (not anymore though). The aspect ratio used to be a peculiar thing before. You probably know that, some filmmakers (including James Cameron) used to check their films (while shooting) in two different aspect ratio, one for cinema and one for TV. So they knew how the film will look in TV, years later, and avoided bad surprises. Anyway, it's an interesting topic !
I'm not sure if I've seen/consumed different versions of media, but I did learn recently that indeed films, trailers, etc. get cut for various markets, like the Middle East, East Asia, (even USA), among others. The hypocrisy of it is that the companies that put out movies with open ideological messages censor them for other markets that frown upon these messages (and even worse punish others for that).
The short answer is probably the 'Han shot first' controversy in Star Wars. I would have been maybe 8-9; I can remember my dad and his monthly SFF group discussing this change in the late 90s. In my own media, it was (as mentioned below) the 90s Sailor Moon dub, which removed all queerness.
Where it became something I actually thought about more seriously was probably in the realm of video games. I played and loved Final Fantasy X when I was about 12, but then I learned about the 'International Version.' Before video game patching and DLC (something worth thinking about, as video games are now always being re-versioned at a much faster pace than, I think, any other medium - FF XV was released effectively with an entire chunk of story missing, never mind cases like Cyperpunk 2077), they were just fully releasing (rare) new cuts of a game, on new discs, with commentary and extra bosses. Could I find a copy? Did I want to replay it just for a few new elements?
And then came the never-ending stream of remasters and remakes, some just to port content to new systems, and which, don't get me wrong, I absolutely adore. I have probably 4-5 versions of FFX. But there are entire Discourses about what is a real definitive version. Next year's Persona 3 Remake is coming off of four versions of the original - the base game on PS2, the PS2 version with an epilogue, the PlayStation Pocket version with an entirely new set of paths to take with a female MC (but which, for the handheld, had to make the game effectively a point and click adventure), and the recent remaster on PS4/PS5. A definitive version would ideally contain everything - the PSP content, the PS2 epilogue - but the remake is just a remade base game. Why!? Who wants that!? Ack lol.
And then finally on TV, it was probably David Simon's essay on the bluray version of The Wire. It made me think way more about directing in TV (since, until then, for me, TV had been such a writerly medium compared to film).
Honestly, I probably became fully aware of this due to anime. An American dub is already a new version of the work -- especially in a community where watching subs vs dubs was a constant war -- but then there were also multiple American dubs of most shows all with various degrees of edits and censoring. I think Yuyu Hakusho really hit home for me. It originally aired in America on the late night Adult Swim block, dubbed but largely uncensored, but it was super popular and got moved to the weekday afternoon Toonami blocked where the violence, language, and sexuality was suddenly all censored. It was jarring. I knew shows were altered due to censorship but that was my first time being able to see both versions of a show for myself.
On a very basic level, my first memor(ies) of variations were seeing the differences between the VHS tapes at my local movie store for movies like Die Hard, Bloodsport, and Falling Down, and their broadcast edits that would appear frequently on TV stations. Not only would the actual audio track have the profanities awkwardly dubbed over or blanked out, but many scenes (sometimes large, sometimes small) would be cut out.
I know that's not quite the same as a different cut of a film done by a director or studio, but it was the first time I remember realizing movies could (and sometimes had to) exist in different forms.
If I understand correctly, you had a video tape (bought where ? In Russia ?) of that film and later watched the Russian version broadcast, right ? Then what's the official version, the one the filmmaker intended ? It's kind of scary for a filmmaker, but it's not something you'll find everywhere. In France (where I live, and used to work in audiovisual labs), rights are different than in USA (and I guess Russia), final cut doesn't ever need to be discussed (although strong suggestions can be made by producers and diffusers), censorship is almost non existent (compared to the moral dictatorship in USA with the MPA for instance - there's still a rating) and films can't be manipulated that much. Only differences you could spot (or have spotted) are logos at the beginning and the aspect ratio (not anymore though). The aspect ratio used to be a peculiar thing before. You probably know that, some filmmakers (including James Cameron) used to check their films (while shooting) in two different aspect ratio, one for cinema and one for TV. So they knew how the film will look in TV, years later, and avoided bad surprises. Anyway, it's an interesting topic !
I'm not sure if I've seen/consumed different versions of media, but I did learn recently that indeed films, trailers, etc. get cut for various markets, like the Middle East, East Asia, (even USA), among others. The hypocrisy of it is that the companies that put out movies with open ideological messages censor them for other markets that frown upon these messages (and even worse punish others for that).
The short answer is probably the 'Han shot first' controversy in Star Wars. I would have been maybe 8-9; I can remember my dad and his monthly SFF group discussing this change in the late 90s. In my own media, it was (as mentioned below) the 90s Sailor Moon dub, which removed all queerness.
Where it became something I actually thought about more seriously was probably in the realm of video games. I played and loved Final Fantasy X when I was about 12, but then I learned about the 'International Version.' Before video game patching and DLC (something worth thinking about, as video games are now always being re-versioned at a much faster pace than, I think, any other medium - FF XV was released effectively with an entire chunk of story missing, never mind cases like Cyperpunk 2077), they were just fully releasing (rare) new cuts of a game, on new discs, with commentary and extra bosses. Could I find a copy? Did I want to replay it just for a few new elements?
And then came the never-ending stream of remasters and remakes, some just to port content to new systems, and which, don't get me wrong, I absolutely adore. I have probably 4-5 versions of FFX. But there are entire Discourses about what is a real definitive version. Next year's Persona 3 Remake is coming off of four versions of the original - the base game on PS2, the PS2 version with an epilogue, the PlayStation Pocket version with an entirely new set of paths to take with a female MC (but which, for the handheld, had to make the game effectively a point and click adventure), and the recent remaster on PS4/PS5. A definitive version would ideally contain everything - the PSP content, the PS2 epilogue - but the remake is just a remade base game. Why!? Who wants that!? Ack lol.
And then finally on TV, it was probably David Simon's essay on the bluray version of The Wire. It made me think way more about directing in TV (since, until then, for me, TV had been such a writerly medium compared to film).