‘Funny Fictions’: Francoist Translation Censorship of Two Billy Wilder Films

The article examines Francoist translation censorship of Billy Wilder’s film comedies ‘The Apartment’ and ‘Some Like It Hot’. It is argued that the concept of superiority deserves more attention in humour studies: when it comes to explaining the Francoist reception and translation of comedy, superiority is a more powerful concept than the more generally applied notion of pure incongruity. The different reception of Wilder’s films by Francoist and Hollywood censorship confirms that humour is a matter of interpretation, clearly not of text-immanent features alone. More specifically, the interpretation of humour as innocently incongruous or tendentiously subversive depends on cultural and historical factors. A semiotics of incongruity and superiority is applied in order to explain Francoist reception and translation. Francoist censorship boards regulate the importation of comedy according to their own standards of humour. In translation, apparently small but constant textual changes in humour reshape characters and plot, and work to streamline identification processes. Some sectors of film studies in Spain may not be aware of the impact that Francoist dubbing had and still has on the perception and reception of foreign films.