Esperanto in popular culture
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References to Esperanto, a constructed language, have been made in a number of films and novels. Typically, this is done either to add the exoticness of a foreign language without representing any particular ethnicity, or to avoid going to the trouble of inventing a new language. In science fiction, Esperanto is often used to represent a future in which there is a more universally spoken language than exists today.
[edit] In English-language media
In Charlie Chaplin's 1940 film The Great Dictator, the signs, posters, and so forth in the ghetto are in Esperanto. [1] Similarly, the movie Blade: Trinity (2004) is set in a generic city which writer/director David S. Goyer nevertheless wanted to represent as bilingual (as many cities are worldwide), so the second language spoken in this nameless city, and visible on most of its signage, is Esperanto. In addition, a character in Blade is seen watching Esperanto-language film Incubus.
In the 1997 movie Gattaca, announcements within the Gattaca building are given in Esperanto.
In Nickelodeon's cartoon Danny Phantom, the ghost dog Wulf is a character who speaks only Esperanto, however fractured and grammatically incorrect, in the episode. The character Tucker explains to the other main characters what Esperanto is and where it came from, but said that (presumably reflecting its reputation as obscure) nowadays it is mainly "a way for geeks to communicate with other geeks."
On the British television program Red Dwarf, Esperanto is officially an international language, and all signs on the walls of the ship are written in both English and Esperanto (for example, "Level 147/Nivelo 147"). People are expected to be reasonably fluent in Esperanto; while characters Kryten and Lister appear to be able to speak it (or at least understand it), Rimmer has been trying to learn it for eight years and is still "utterly useless" at it. While this part of the show was prominent in the first two series, it was dropped from series 3 onwards.
Another British comedy, The Last Salute, about the Automobile Association, or 'AA in the 1960's showed the unit supervisor as dreaming of the new post-war Great Britain and Europe as being a Worker's Paradise of sorts, with Esperanto as the universal language. Despite there being no evidence of this outside of his own aspirations, he persisted in speaking the language to his long-suffering team at briefing sessions, and to the point of conducting lessons.
The Stainless Steel Rat novels by Harry Harrison (an Esperanto speaker) also postulate a future where Esperanto is spoken, and a small fraction of the dialogue is in Esperanto. The language is also used in the setting of Philip José Farmer's Riverworld novels, as well as in stories by Poul Anderson, Mack Reynolds, John Brunner, John Barnes, and other science fiction writers (Harlow 1996).
The introductory video for the video game Final Fantasy XI features choral music with lyrics in Esperanto. According to its composer, Nobuo Uematsu, the choice of language was meant to symbolize the developers' hope that their online game could contribute to cross-cultural communication and cooperation. Unlike many similar massively-multiplayer games which dedicate individual "copies" of their virtual worlds to players of a specific area or primary language, FFXI is deliberately designed to force players in all regions to share worlds.
American composer Lou Harrison, who incorporated styles and instruments from many world cultures in his music, used Esperanto titles and/or texts in several of his works.
[edit] References
- Harlow, Don. The Esperanto Book. Self-published on the web (1995-96).
- Brownell, Ginamme. "Speaking up for Esperanto". Newsweek, Aug. 11, 2003. p52.
