James Bond has done Her Majesty some service, not least by promoting her realm’s pluck and resourcefulness in 24 films. Now, his latest big-screen adventure has dealt her a further favour. It is a crushing victory for the Queen’s English over its upstart colonial rival.
For weeks, billboards, posters and buses in countries throughout the world – including the US – have blazoned a single word: Spectre. Not, you may have noticed, Specter, though the word denotes a Hollywood product, and the -er for -re suffix has been one of the mainstays of American spelling since the 1940s. The Color Purple, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Your Friends and Neighbors, Pearl Harbor, The Time Traveler’s Wife: there has been scant respite for filmgoers over the years. This time though, it’s different.
Of course, you’re about to point out that, for Ian Fleming, Spectre meant Special Executive for Terrorism, Revolution and Espionage. (Counter-intelligence, revenge and extortion were later revisions.) So, you might have thought, the producers’ hands were tied. Yet in the current film, there is no suggestion that the name is an acronym, nor would the original definition(s) match the information-age ambitions of the present-day organisation.
The title’s purpose is only to add an eerie aura to the fraternity that turns out to be haunting 007, alongside the film’s Day of the Dead opening sequence. The Hungarian title makes this explicit: it’s 007 Spectre: A Fantom visszatér (“the phantom returns”).
Even if the acronym idea had been retained, the last two words could have been reversed. Such a version would actually have scanned better than the original. Specter would thus have been a perfectly viable spelling, and it seems likely that in days of yore it would have been adopted.
In 2009, the Guardian asked the distributors of The Time Traveler’s Wife why they hadn’t changed the spelling for the film’s British posters. They said they couldn’t be bothered to revise the artwork. This time around, you might have expected Columbia Pictures to at least shield Americans from limey lingo. It is possible to spell a film title differently on opposite sides of the Atlantic. This was the route taken with Ridley Scott’s The Counselor (as it was known in the US) in 2013. In the UK and Ireland it became The Counsellor (though not in Australia, to the disgruntlement of some).
On occasion, Hollywood has gone much further than this to accommodate linguistic diversity. Harry Potter’s first big-screen excursion was entitled (like the book) Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone for UK audiences. Doubts about American children’s familiarity with alchemy and enthusiasm for abstract thought led to the replacement of “Philosopher’s” with “Sorcerer’s” in the US. Unfortunately, the eponymous stone turned up in the script as well as the title, so every scene in which it was mentioned had to be filmed twice or redubbed.
Yet in the current case, Hollywood has both indulged non-American filmgoers and inflicted alien spelling on domestic audiences. Nor is Spectre the only US-made blockbuster released this year to use British spelling in all markets. January brought us the cinematisation of EL James’s Fifty Shades of Grey, not Gray. Admittedly the author’s play on the relevant word left little room for a Counsellor-style compromise, such was her hero’s insistence on branding his corporate assets.
If lexical submission is indeed occurring, why might that be? A newfound respect for artistic integrity would be a possible explanation. JK Rowling has said she regrets the violation of her Philosopher’s Stone, but at the time she felt in no position to argue. James might have put up more of a fight. Perhaps the reason she didn’t have to is that Hollywood has mellowed.
It’s a nice thought, but studio bosses don’t usually do nice. If a change of tack is under way, it is more likely to be profit-driven. Once, American films were made for the home market; any overseas earnings were seen merely as a bonus. No longer. By last week, Spectre had taken $179m (£119m) in North America, but $573m in the rest of the world. If the film industry is being globalised, it is only to be expected that its spelling must follow suit, which is bad news for American exceptionalism.
Outside the US, it is the British version of English that dominates the world. The Commonwealth is home to more than 2 billion people, America roughly 318 million. Understandably, speakers of other languages tend to be more familiar with British English than with its younger counterpart, except in places like the Philippines, where American influence has held sway. Against this background, the spelling of Spectre’s title looks less surprising. Stateside film fans, suck it up.
The Americanisation of English began as a revolutionary act. The lexicographer Noah Webster wrote The American Spelling Book partly to seize control of the language from the former imperial power. It became his country’s most popular publication, selling 100m copies by 1900. In our own age, many assumed that America’s ever-growing cultural heft would wipe out British English in due course. Alongside incidents like the galling baptism of Toronto’s Centerpoint Mall in 1990, vibrant cinema posters flaunting Stateside spelling seemed a grim portent of inescapable doom.
Yet empires have a habit of striking back, sometimes in unexpected ways. James, what took you so long ?
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