http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=381x352It's pretty dead on Skins's island today, so I wandered over to the Deaf-and-Hard-of-Hearing hut, where my fellow alum segregates "those people," to see if anything was happening, which it usually isn't.
liberalhistorian (1000+ posts) Mon Feb-25-08 02:52 PM
Original message
Closed-captioned movie glasses CANNOT COME FAST ENOUGH for me!
I'm 43, with sensorineural hearing loss, and have worn hearing aids since I was twenty. As I'm sure most of you know, with sensorineural loss, it's often not that you can't hear someone, it's that you cannot discriminate their words or have great difficulty in doing so. And that has been my major problem. Of course, with the advent of tinnitus about fifteen years ago, it's just made it worse and I can no longer hear most higher-pitched sounds or words.
Even before I began wearing hearing aids, I had trouble, however, ever since I can remember from the beginning of childhood. TV and movies were especially difficult for me and I just had to try to figure out a lot of what was happening from the action or actor's expressions or reactions of those I was watching with. It was especially frustrating because I could hear them talking, I just couldn't always understand what they were saying.
So the advent of closed captioning in television was an absolute godsend, I cannot begin to describe the difference that has made. I also go back and watch movies on VCR or DVD (ones I previously saw in theaters) with the captioning on the TV, and have been amazed at everything I've missed.
However, movies seen in theaters were, are and remain a MAJOR frustration. I still lose more than half of what's being said, even sitting up close and with my hearing aids. Actually, the aids don't make much difference in movies because they only amplify sound, they don't help me discriminate the actual words. It's almost worse than being totally deaf, because I can hear something's being said and strain to understand it, to no avail.
But this weekend was the straw that broke the camel's back. I love movies, always have, and, consequently, love the Oscars every year. It's always been a family tradition to make a big deal out of the Oscars, one I've tried to continue the past few years of not living at home. I hadn't seen any of the nominated movies yet this year; living in rural areas and less-populated states makes it difficult sometimes, especially when somewhat obscure movies are nominated. But, in the large city eighty miles from me, most were being shown. So I made the trek to the theater on Saturday to at least see a couple of them and managed to see No Country for Old Men and Juno.
Now, I'm used to not being able to understand a lot in movies, as frustrating as it is. But with No Country for Old Men, I could NOT understand one *******ed word. NOT ONE. NOT. ONE. SINGLE. WORD. Yet, I could hear the talking. ARRRGGHHH! I don't know if it was that particular theater's sound system, since I didn't have quite the same trouble in the theater where Juno was being played, but it was unbelievably frustrating. I still have little clue as to what NCFOM was all about and was incredibly frustrated. I almost just got up and left, if I hadn't paid for it I would have done just that.
Now, that may not really be that big of a deal in the grand scheme of real life, frankly. I understand that. But it goes to quality-of-life issues and the assumption that everyone is in the mainstream and can participate freely. My stepgrandmother was nearly deaf and I can well remember her vivid frustration at things like this, especially not being able to accompany her family to movies or plays or watch TV with them (at least we have cc for that now). I don't think people who can hear normally have any real clue what it is like for those of us who don't. If they did, they wouldn't pooh-pooh things like this and call it no big deal.
I have heard that they are working on closed-captioned glasses that can be worn in movie theaters for each movie, that they're in the final stages and should be ready to roll out the first prototype by the end of the year. Then again, they've been working on that for a very long time now, so who knows. It can't come soon enough for me. I hope that this time they're really serious and that they ARE, indeed, close to such a thing. I would gladly pay extra for each movie to be able to have that because it's just getting too frustrating to watch them in theaters anymore.
Sorry to have rambled on like this, just needed to vent to people who will know exactly what I'm talking about and where I'm coming from!
I dunno. Whatever works, fine.
I think the "problem" people have, people who once had good hearing but lost it, is their perception that one can "understand" something only through speech, and speech that is heard.
Given that 80% of all that one absorbs, learns, and perceives, comes from hearing (the other 20% from seeing, smelling, touching, and tasting), I suppose that's a natural conclusion, but a wrong one.
The two best movies--other than
Lawrence of Arabia--I ever saw were
The Seventh Seal and
Hot Spell, old black-and-whites from another era.
They weren't captioned, and of course I can't hear.
I have to say that in the second movie, Anthony Quinn and Shirley Booth should have received Eternal Oscars for their performances; one didn't have to hear any dialogue to know exactly what was going on, they both were so good, so remarkable, so awesome.
This of course was before Shirley Booth cheapened herself as a maid in some half-hour television comedy show; her performance in
Hot Spell was miles and miles better than whatever she did on television.
One doesn't need to "hear," in order to "understand" what's going on, although of course what one understands is, uh, a little bit different from what the hearing world understands.
Anyway.
DavidD (1000+ posts) Mon Feb-25-08 03:16 PM
Response to Original message
1. I'd love that innovation
We have CC turned on at home on our TV, and it's helped enormously.
I've always been against closed-captioning; it doesn't help, it interferes with my understanding of what's being said on television (ESPECIALLY by commentators during televised college football games).
And anyone who has ever watched Jr. from Vermont, the one-time "socialist" congressman and now "socialist" senator, would agree that closed-captioning distracts from his fury and flurry of righteous pompous indignation, as he spitters and sputters forth.
liberalhistorian (1000+ posts) Mon Feb-25-08 03:36 PM
Response to Reply #1
2. You'd think they'd have realized how many more people would go to the movies and how much more money they could make long before now, and that they would have been on the ball with that a long time ago.
I realize there are probably plenty of wrinkles to iron out with such a thing, as there was with closed captioning tv. But, from what I hear, most of the wrinkles now do not involve the actual technology, but concern legalities, paperwork and turf wars between the movie studios, the captioning companies and the technology companies. In that case, I don't care what has to be done or signed or who has to be given what credit, JUST GET IT DONE. NOW.
tblue37 (1000+ posts) Sat Mar-01-08 08:58 PM
Response to Original message
3. I never even bother any more. I just wait until movies come out on DVD and I can watch them with closed captioning.
BTW, doesn't the fact that background music swells loudly over key dialogue also drive you batty?
liberalhistorian (1000+ posts) Sat Mar-01-08 10:00 PM
Response to Reply #3
4. See, the problem with that is that I love the experience of going to movie theaters, I often don't like to wait until they come out on DVD, which could be a long time. Why should I and millions of others have to wait, and not be able to enjoy going to theaters with friends and families, just because we can't hear the way "normal" people do?
And yes, I know exactly what you mean about the music coming over the dialogue. I love music, and it can really add to a movie, but not when you're already straining to hear and understand what's being said.
tblue37 (1000+ posts) Sun Mar-02-08 12:08 PM
Response to Reply #4
5. LH, I absolutely agree. I love movies, and I love the theater exerience. In general we have lost the experience of public theatrical performance in our society. Oh, sure, we have plays, but they are not the same sort of transcendent, virtually religious experience that live drama once was. (Don't forget, live drama had its start in ancient Greece in religious ceremony, and then again in the religious performances of biblical stories in Medieval Europe.)
When the lights go down in the movie theater, the place is framed, set part from everyday life, and the shared experience of the larger-than-life drama on the screen is "other," in a way that watching a movie on your home TV never can be. In fact, many people, so accustomed to the experience of watching movies at home, can't be in that "other" space in the movie theater, and they ruin it for everyone else.
But I cherish that experience. The only time I ever have it now, though, is when I go to watch a sweeping action film, like Lord of the Rings, which really must be seen on a big screen to be appreciated. But I go knowing I won't udnerstand the words and planning to attach the vvast imagery tot he words mnths later, when I view the thing on DVD. I have an incredible memory, so I can do that. Also, many such movies are based on texts I know well--like Lord of the Rings. I also view live Shakespeare performances the same way. I teach college English. I know my SHakespeare inside out and backwards. Thus I can watch a performance of a Shakespeare play and not fret when I can't hear the words, since I know them so well already.
But though I want the movie theater experience, I have accepted the fact that I can't ahve it, just as I have accepted the fact that I no longer can attend the wonderful live lectures at my university. They bring in such fascinating speakers--and I can't go, because I can't understand a single word.
One course I teach is Intro to Poetry. A couple of years I decided to try to go to the live poetry reading given by the US Poet Laureate during his visit. I didn't understand a single word.
One problem with live speakers is that Americans (including poets who give live readings) seem not to have a clue any longer about public speaking.
I have Meniere's disease, and I have the same sort of problem you have--I can usually hear that someone is speaking (though not always), but I can't understand the words. It is a stream of undifferentiated mumbling. BUT some people (like my best friend) speak so clearly that I can actually understand them without my hearing aids in, while others mumble and swallow their words to the point that, even if they are using a microphone and I have my aids in, I can't understand a word they are saying. I read lips incredibly well, and I strain and work hard to understand, but some people just do not try to speak clearly at all (the Poet Laureate of that particular year is one of those, by the way).
Ironically, I live within 30 minutes of Olathe, KS, where a school for the deaf is located. Because of that school, Olathe has a movie theater that is close-captioned. But I can't manage to get there to see movies, because I am always so busy.
BTW, you might enjoy my deaf/HoH website (I have 10 websites where I post my articles on many different subjects). It's called I'm Listening as Hard as I Can!:
http://www.deafnotdumb.homestead.com/index.html
I write about coping with deafness in a society where people consider us nuisances and become impatient and even rude when we can't understand them. Most, though not all, of my articles are humorous. My readers tell me that I seem to be describing their lives to a T.
I dunno about this blue primitive, although her web-site was interesting, and well worth reading if one is "into" this issue.
I've had a whole lifetime of experiences; experiences demonstrating with harsh bluntness that a deaf person isn't considered a nuisance, making one impatient, if the hearing person is some working guy with callouses on his hands, some "fundie" middle-aged woman, a non-speaker of English, or those of the Republican or conservative preference.
On the other hand, I've been treated, uh, rather rudely by those who imagine themselves "open-minded" and "tolerant" and mindful of "diversity" and morally-superior. And we all know who those sorts of people are.
