Genetically modified TV, or the manipulation of US television series in Italy

Although a considerable amount of research has been carried out in the field of global media studies on the ways in which US television and audiovisual products in general travel to different countries, little attention continues to be paid to the cultural and linguistic adaptation that such cross-cultural transfer inevitably requires and to the modifications to which these products become subject in the process. This paper focuses on the adaptation into Italian of a number of recent US television series containing controversial language and potentially disturbing themes, such as references to death, disability, sexuality/homosexuality and drugs. By analysing dubbed, subtitled, and fansubbed versions of such series, this study shows how the dubbed versions of the series tended to be toned down as far as taboo language and subjects are concerned, as opposed to the fansubbed versions and to some extent the official subtitles. In some of the more extreme cases the series seem to have undergone a ‘genetic modification’ of sorts, with Italian viewers watching sometimes radically different shows with respect to their US counterparts.