Why Italy?

Back at it again with my anime-related blog posts. (Sorry. Shakespeare references just keep popping up when I'm actively not thinking about him.) This time, I wanna talk to you guys a bit about a little show called Jojo’s Bizzare Adventure: Golden Wind. It’s the fifth part of a series that’s been running since 2012. Each part takes place in a different time and setting, and Golden Wind just so happens to take place in Italy.  

One of the titular bizarre adventures takes our protagonist and his group of gangsters to Venice. Now, I watched the episode where they got to Venice two weeks before we started reading The Merchant of Venice in class, so the play wasn’t on my mind at all. The protagonists were running from a fairly psycho antagonist – who shares a voice actor with My Hero Academia’s Katsuki Bakugou, so it was kind of fitting – and the man starts going on a crazy rant that practically came out of nowhere: 

“You know Paris, France? In English, they pronounce it ‘Paris,’ but everyone else pronounces it without the ‘s’ sound, like the French do. But with Venezia, everyone pronounces it the English way, ‘Venice.’ Like the Merchant of Venice and Death in Venice... Why, though?! Why isn’t the title Death in Venezia... It takes place in Italy, so use the Italian work, dammit” (Episode 18, 17:10). 

The speech was made on the roof of a car in the middle of a gang war, so I don’t know why any of that was relevant. But it did make me think about localizations, and how the United States and other countries borrow words and phrases from other languages and change them to better suit the environment. I had no idea “Venice” was actually “Venezia” until watching that episode. 

I bring this up mostly because we had a discussion in class about how Shakespeare wasn’t actually the most geographically accurate when it came to the settings in his plays. He never actually left England, so the “Italy” he sometimes used in his works was more a product of his own imagination. I have to wonder what native Italians think when they read works like Romeo and Juliet or The Merchant of Venice. I would imagine that most probably don’t care too much, but the character from Jojo’s certainly did; although, he’s more of a Japanese caricature of an Italian man, and I would hesitate to call his attitude accurate.  

I know that when I write, I try to be as accurate as possible; if I write a story that takes place outside of the Unites States, I try to look up as much as I can in regards to the geography and culture of the place I’m writing about. Of course, it’s a lot easier to do this as a writer in the 21^st century than it was during Shakespeare’s time. He had an excuse of limited information and resources – although what was stopping him from just taking a vacation? - so I’m willing to give him a pass.  

I guess my question is, should we consider it a problem when authors appropriate other places and cultures without being completely factual? Maybe I’m straying into the weeds. Maybe this question doesn’t really matter at all, and I’m just super anal about details. And this isn’t to say that writers should only use a setting they’re most familiar with when they write. Golden Wind didn’t need to take place in Italy, just as Romeo and Juliet didn’t have to take place in Italy. It could’ve easily been set in England and been just as stupid (I’m sorry, Will.) And The Merchant of Venice could’ve been The Merchant of Manchester, I don’t know. Shakespeare didn’t have to set his plays in places he knew little about, so why did he? Why do any of us?

I think I’ll come back to this topic once I’ve thought about it a little more. I thought this would end as a stream-of-consciousness post, but I was 100% wrong. I need an answer. 

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