Goddamit Jack!

A man meets his neighbor he hasn't seen in a long time, the neighbor's eyes are vertically aligned, so the man asks him in a worried tone:

-What happened to you Gogi? Did you go to Chernobyl on a holiday?

-No - Gogi answers - it happened to me here, they say it's because of the subtitles, I dunno...

It all happened inconspicuously as they say: first announcers with good Georgian vanished, then nobody could speak proper Georgian on TV, then talk-shows appeared where only guests could speak some Georgian...

Now it's the movies' time.

No, I don't mean Georgian movies. The Georgian used in Georgian movies is so bad it's better to use a foreign language.

Foreign meaning mainly English-language movies about which our mother-Parliament has already passed quite an interesting law.

For those who still don't know - our Parliament really adopted a law, which prohibits dubbing the foreign movies in the Georgian language if those movies are aired by Georgian TV channels.

In other words, if up until now we've been joking about the quality of Georgian-language dubbing; now we don't even have a reason to joke about!

A small remark for MPs, who voted for this law - concept of "democratic media" doesn't only mean inadmissibility of interfering with news programming and editorial policies.

But the most interesting thing was our mother-Parliament's speaker David Bakradze's commentary: "it's all done in order for the future generation and others to be better able to learn the English language"

Let's discuss this statement in a more detailed manner: the fact that our mother-Parliament cares for us is of course very commendable (and if someone doubts that our Parliament really cares for us I can swear by my... mom that it's true); however, Constitution of Georgia (chapter I, article 35) clearly reads:

1. Everyone shall have the right to receive education and the right to free choice of a form of education.

2. The state shall ensure harmonization of the national educational system within the international educational space.

3. Pre-school education shall be guaranteed by the State. Elementary and basic education shall be compulsory. The state shall fully finance basic education as prescribed by law. Citizens shall have the right to receive State-financed vocational and higher education as prescribed by law.

4. The state shall support educational institutions in accordance with the procedure established by law.

In other words Constitution, which is supposed to be the main law of the state (but in order for the main law of the state to work, first one needs to at least have a state), clearly states that right to education is every person's right.

A right! Not an obligation!

I have the right to learn the language I want and in the form I want: if I want I'll have lessons with a school teacher or I'll use Ilona Davidova's express-method and if I want I can get a foreign lover and use the so-called "sleeping dictionary" - that is my right and nobody, including Speaker of Parliament, has the right to limit that right.

Now let's look at this question from a different angle: basic education is compulsory. So logically there are only two options: either Speaker of mother-Parliament Mr. David Bakradze is violating the Constitution or he and the authors of the abovementioned law believe that I and you my dear readers haven't had basic education and therefore they have decided to teach us English.

I say English because that's what Bakradze said, but actually I'd really love to watch a Japanese horror movie in the original sometime.

I wonder how many languages can we learn by watching movies?

We have such a small country that even one man speaking many different languages is pretty enough. Because only that person can speak those languages and the others would voice whatever that one polyglot wants them to voice.

Let's go back to the Constitution - "The state shall ensure harmonization of the national educational system within the international educational space."

I wonder what standard says my mother-Parliament should be the one to decide how I and my family should entertain ourselves? If something like that happened in another state instead of subtitled movies the TV stations of that country would display the photos of authors and adopters of that law with the only caption underneath them saying: Wanted!

However, as I already mentioned, in order for something like that to happen in a state one first of all needs to have a state.

It's clear and everybody knows that quality of Georgian-language dubbing is far from being ideal and sometimes one can hear quite interesting and funny phrases while listening to a movie dubbed in the Georgian language, but is that a reason enough to abolish dubbing altogether?

If a chef in a restaurant can't cook a dish what is the best solution: hiring a new chef, re-training the old one or removing that dish from the menu altogether?

But the problem here is that whoever has an influential "cousin" is always right (not the client) whether he's a chef or even a waiter.

If it was otherwise we would have removed many politicians, chefs and showmen from the menu long time ago; but everything is done backwards in our country.

I know you'll ask why I raised this issue now when that law has already been adopted? My answer is: I wanted to write this article for quite some time now, but my computer was busy: I was downloading foreign movies dubbed in the Georgian language from various sites: I want to show my kids when they grow up that one time, when we were still a post-Soviet country, we had studios where movies (sometimes well and sometimes awfully) were still dubbed in the Georgian language!

See you!