Call them by their names: Sexuality, homoeroticism, and audiovisual translation

Abstract

In this article, I explore the translation of male homoeroticism through dubbing, starting from the premise that contemporary telefiction incorporates various dimensions of sexuality into its narratives and character development. The study case is Looking, a dramady series produced by HBO and broadcast initially from 2014 to 2016. HBO’s Looking serves as a key example to explore how the interplay between visual and linguistic semiotic resources is crucial for televisual storytelling. The aim of the study is twofold: to identify the semiotic interactions between visual modes and the linguistic code in scenes involving sex talk or intimacy between male characters in Looking; and to contrast how the translations for dubbing into neutral Spanish (for Latin America) and Peninsular Spanish contributed to or transformed the representation of intermale desire. The findings are analyzed within the context of gender and queer translation studies, as well as affect theory. A general argument derived from the study is that neutrality and taboo carry prescriptive components that need to be challenged to understand how sexual imaginaries are currently circulating through media and translation.