It is 1995. Toy Story has just come out in theaters. I am seven years old. My mother and father take me to the film in the hopes that the visuals will be interesting enough.
But there are no captions. My parents try to translate the film for me, but the characters talk too fast for them to keep up and it is tiring to glance back and forth between the screen and my parents.
So, even though the big screen is fun to look at, I have no idea what is going on.
-~-~-~
In 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed. It mandates that businesses provide “reasonable accommodations” for disabled people.
Even though captioning is, in my opinion, a “reasonable accommodation,” movie theaters have historically refused to caption their films. Nearly all theaters will provide the viewer with headphones, but this is roughly the equivalent of giving a kaleidoscope to somebody and telling him to enjoy the show instead of letting him into the theater.
When movie theaters do caption their films, the captioned film is usually screened several weeks – even months – after the film’s opening weekend. To add to this heaping pile of insults, the film is usually captioned during a low-traffic time such as the Wednesday matinee.
Claims that I have heard in the past include: “it is too expensive,” “nobody wants to read a movie,” and even “deaf people make too much noise and will disturb our regular patrons.”
All of this sends a very clear message to me: “We do not care about you because you are a deaf person. Sure, you love movies, but you are not allowed in our club because your very existence is distracting. We will not waste money on a simple technology that will allow you to understand the movies. Now go away.”
-~-~-~
It is 2001. Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring has just premiered. I am glumly sitting in the homeroom of my middle school while all of my friends chatter on and on about Frodo this and Legolas that.
Over the course of the next several weeks, I try to calculate how long I will have to wait for it to come out on DVD so that I can watch it with captions. After all, even the most gorgeously shot epic quickly becomes dull if one can’t understand more than ten words during the three hour runtime.
The math is not skewed to my favor: the more popular a movie is, the longer its theater run will be. And this movie is extremely popular. According to imdb.com, the opening weekend in the United States alone nets $66,114,741.
Therefore, it is about a year before I am able to watch Fellowship of the Ring with captions.
Viewed on a small screen in a context removed from the original excitement of the premiere, watching The Fellowship of the Ring is an incredibly bittersweet experience.
-~-~-~
Fast-forward to today.
Web 2.0 has changed the world. Many people download movies instead of watching them in theaters. A large segment of pop culture now originates from the Internet. Previously unimaginable concepts are now commonplace: imageboards, vlogs, cloud-based computing.
In so many ways, the world has changed dramatically over the past twenty years.
And yet, nothing has changed at all: Movie theater owners still refuse to provide subtitles for most English-language movies.
Nowadays, I mostly watch foreign films or older English-language films. If you asked me what was playing at the local theater, I would have no idea.
But I keep thinking about the deaf child that is surely, even now, glumly sitting in homeroom while her hearing friends chatter incessantly about the latest blockbuster that they have downloaded and wondering when the .srt file will be available so that she can watch it with captions.
Even now, after being desensitized, I just can’t wrap my mind around the whole situation. It is discrimination, no matter how much you try to beat around the bush and claim this and that.
What is the harm of providing subtitles?
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