Tag Archives: TV

Fun with subtitles

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My hearing is bad, and I don’t hear consonants (21 letters of the alphabet, if you count “y”) as well as an unimpaired person, so when I started to watch the Granada Television Sherlock Holmes series with Jeremy Brett, I was happy to have the subtitle option. How could I have known how much subtitles would amuse me? After seeing countless mismatches between what is spoken and what is shown, I wonder how subtitles are generated — by computers that “hear” very literally and with no powers of comprehension or discretion, or by humans with equally limited powers? (My bet is on computers.)

Here are just a few examples from just a few episodes, with the spoken word or phrase first and its subtitle following:

  • genteel ruffian = Gentile ruffian
  • squalid rooms = scrawled rooms
  • five and tuppence = five crumpets
  • cigar ashes = cigar action (insert Bill Clinton joke)
  • foolscap = fools kept
  • Flaubert = Flabare
  • Jabez Wilson = Jay Beards Wilson
  • Hezekiah = Ethic Guya
  • Da Vinci = De Vinci
  • signature writ large = signature at large
  • trampled underfoot = trouble underfoot
  • place me in the dock = place me in the dark
  • hansom cab = handsome cab
  • period of mourning = period of morning
  • small brougham = small broom (Watson’s transportation to the train station! Perfect for Halloween!)

Not only am I relishing the performances of my favorite actor to portray Sherlock Holmes, Jeremy Brett, but I am gobsmacked by the nonsensical phrases that appear to roll off his tongue and those of the other characters, including the “Gentile ruffian.” Now imagine the deaf who don’t have my ability to hear most of the dialogue and therefore to parse the subtitles. While it seems reasonable to me that the young woman running through the house is shouting frantically for “Alice! Alice! Alice!” surely the deaf must wonder what signifies her calls of “Ours! Ours! Ours!”

Precious Bane (the movie)

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After dinner at Pizzeria Due on a snowy New Year’s Eve, J. and I came home to my place at The Flamingo, where I subjected him to one of my favorite movies — Precious Bane, originally shown on PBS in 1989 and gone missing since. Based on the novel by Mary Webb, Precious Bane is not an ideal holiday movie, but somehow I was in the mood to see it and to share it.

For J., who has not read the book or heard of the movie, it was difficult to follow, partly because of the dialect. He did not understand why the characters believed in witchcraft and curses at such a late date. When Gideon tells Prue, “You’ll never wed,” he seemed to think it might be because the harelip marred her looks, but Gideon meant that no one would marry a woman with so evident a curse upon her.

I remember that I too had difficulty at first following the story when it was new to me; so much of it is alien to contemporary experience. Because it is so well told, however, it soon sweeps you into its world of isolation, ignorance, and superstition.

Underneath the ugliest elements — the superstition and narrowness of the villagers, the brutality of the Sarn men, Gideon’s greed and ironic self-righteousness, Beguildy’s abuse of his perceived powers — Precious Bane is a magnificent love-wish fulfillment story. After surviving all the suffering that life and human frailty create, two odd, deserving people ride off to what we are sure will be a life of love and contentment in each other, for they are kindred spirits. There’s no more satisfying — or unlikely — ending. Even the change of heart among the villagers seems surreal as they egg on the ringleaders, then turn against them. Whether we feel cursed or not (I sometimes do), it’s the denouement to a satisfying drama that anyone could wish for.

What most struck me, then and now, and when I read the book, was Prue’s passion for learning how to read and write. It’s an ability we take for granted because we don’t know what it’s like not to have it. We don’t always understand that the ability to read and write contributes to independence and helps us to stay connected socially and emotionally. For Prue, trapped on her farm by her obligation to her brother, poverty, and superstition, reading and writing are her lifeline to something greater than herself, to a life beyond the narrow one she knows. It is also the only way she has to open her heart, however obliquely, to the one person she knows to be a kindred spirit — the one person who sees past the curse into her blessed heart.

Today, when most of us can read and write, how do we use this powerful ability? Parents and teachers are thrilled that children read the Harry Potter books, because otherwise they might not read at all on their own. We send e-mails and messages that fulfill certain obligations but that do not communicate much beyond facts — certainly not feelings. “Thanks for your e-mail. School starts on the 10th. We’re not ready for it yet. Suzy outgrew another pair of shoes.” Expressing genuine emotion, which provide so much relief to Prue and took away the power of the curse forever (“No more sad talk! I’ve chosen my bit of Paradise. ‘Tis on your breast, my dear acquaintance!”) seems to be unacceptable, even vaguely subversive, now that we have the means to do it easily, even beautifully. To do so is to take a risk, that of revealing too much and of embarrassing ourselves in an irrevocable way. Even expressing gratitude to a persona who helped to shape our live and our perspective, is a terrible risk. What if they don’t remember us or don’t care?

I’m willing to take that risk.

I will write it.

But I don’t have to send it . . .

Too late. I did.

Edits: I didn’t receive a response, but for some reason I didn’t quite expect one. As a child, I would have been hurt. Now it doesn’t really matter.

Here’s a wonderful entry, with photos, about the Shropshire of Precious Bane.

Entertainment story of the year

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Although I don’t watch television often or keep up with popular entertainment, even I, through the Internet community, have heard of Paul Potts and Terry Fator. Potts, winner of Britain’s Got Talent for his operatic singing, and Fator, winner of America’s Got Talent for his unusual ventriloquism-singer impersonation act, are, to me, the entertainment story of 2007.

Beyond their previously unrecognized talents, Potts and Fator appeal to us because otherwise they are so ordinary, so like the rest of us. Neither would stand out for good looks or charisma. Yet when given the opportunity to perform before judges, a studio audience, and TV viewers, both came through like pros — and won over their respective crowds instantly.

How many Potts and Fators are out there — talented but doomed to obscurity for lack of opportunity? While the entertainment industry courts beautiful people with a modicum of talent (for example, Spears), people like Potts and Fator are rarely seen by a broader audience. The same may be true for non-performing artists, too — how many gifted artists and writers never get past the industry barriers that filter out talent and creativity in favor of the known and proven formulas?

I thought of this as J. and I watched part of a biography of Judy Garland on American Masters. Garland’s singing, dancing, and acting talents were recognized early in her life, and she is, of course, a Hollywood legend. Even so, many of those at the executive level in the industry never seemed to forgive Garland for her lack of conventional beauty (with comparisons to Lana Turner) and her alleged weight problem (“105 pounds!” she exclaimed in a voiceover). As we watched Garland, with her lustrous eyes and trembling lips, sing her heart and soul, it was hard to imagine that she spent most of her life lacking confidence in herself, her evident and unique beauty, and her incredible musical and dramatic abilities. I wondered what Garland’s life would have been like if there had not been studios and moguls to influence her and to come between her and the audiences who didn’t care that she wasn’t an emaciated blonde with a perfect nose, who loved her for who she was and for that voice.

Potts and Fator are fortunate to have been discovered directly by the millions rather than by the businessmen who control most of what we see and hear. Judy Garland was made to have her teeth capped and her every pound monitored. For Paul Potts, it is up to him whether he wants to have his teeth fixed or to lose weight. Whether he does or not, like Judy he will still have a talent that amazes and moves us, and we will still want to watch and listen and marvel and applaud. Perhaps Potts will build the self-confidence that Judy Garland was stripped of at every turn and for lack of which she died young and tragically.

Let us hope.

Reality TV

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Tell me that I’m not the last person left in the United States who has not seen a so-called “reality” TV show.

Recently, I saw that one of the actors from The Jeffersons sitcom had died. This set me to thinking about television of the 1960s and 1970s. I don’t remember much of the 1960s directly, but later I watched reruns of comedy programs like The Dick Van Dyke Show and dramas such as The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

In the 1970s, TV programming ranged from the tacky and tasteless (game shows like The Gong Show, the safe yet funny (The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Rhoda); the not quite edgy (M*A*S*H); the sweetly nostalgic for times-that-never-were (The Waltons, Little House on the Prairie); and the ubiquitous police/detective/doctor/hospital shows (Starsky and Hutch, Baretta, Police Woman, Hooker, Barney Miller, Emergency) to the politically incorrect Lear oeuvre (All in the Family, The Jeffersons, Maude). Most are dated, but some still have a following today.

I haven’t watched much TV since the mid to late 1980s. Most shows seem claustrophobic, having been videotaped on tiny, over-lit sets that look like nothing I’ve ever seen in a home. Those series that included an outdoor setting are invariably set in Los Angeles, which is alien and uninteresting to me. Worst, most dramas (and many comedies) seem formulaic to me. While this could make them comforting, like other things that stay the same in a changing world, it could also make them boring and tedious., if there was nothing to set them apart.

I suppose it’s the nature of episodic television; there’s only so much time to produce so many episodes, which does not allow for creativity or originality, which the audience may not even desire. The main reason to keep watching would be if you liked a character or characters, or the actors who played them. How many people watched Happy Days because they liked Ron Howard’s Richie Cunningham or Henry Winkler’s The Fonz?

I liked the Star Trek series because the characters were interesting and well developed, and their growing relationships were well drawn and explored; the acting was generally good; and the plots were often thought provoking, such as “The Measure of a Man” and “The Drumhead.” Occasionally, a bad main or subplot would sink an entire episode, but then loyal viewers could at least enjoy the performances. Babylon 5 had its own momentum, with its focus on a five-year plot line rather than on unrelated episodes.

Somewhere along the line, I gave up watching television. The new series never appealed to me, and the actors even less so. As I got older, there seemed to be less time and better ways to spend it. Part of it may have been a symptom of my unnoticed hearing loss; perhaps I subconsciously tuned out television because I could no longer hear it very well.

So now I don’t watch TV except for an occasional BBC sitcom or an episode of a favorite old series like The Avengers. I don’t listen to popular music, either. My disconnection from the people and the world around me seems nearly complete. Without popular entertainment to connect us, what is there to debate and to discuss? That seems to be the way of life now.

So I find myself in meetings with coworkers listening to what seems to me the unreality of reality TV. What is real about reality TV? The talk is nearly always about how badly, unbelievably the subject behaved. They were silly, boorish, greedy, whiny, defensive, shallow. In every way, the people watching deride the people performing. Reality TV gives them someone who is as two dimensional as any fictional character, someone upon whom they can look down, someone to whom they can feel superior, someone who is willing to be bullied remotely, from a distance. The new entertainment requires no plot, only drama and comedy without substance, without resolution, without depth, without meaning. For college-educated professionals across the country, there no issues to discuss, such as a program like Law and Order might raise; there is only, “She said that?” “He did what?” “Why’d she dump him?” “Why’d he pick her?” “It was so stupid.”

It was so stupid, but millions of people plan their lives around reality TV and watch it and talk about it every week. Is this all there is to life — work and reality TV, TV that proves to us that we are not as silly, boorish, greedy, whiny, defensive, and shallow as the show’s participants, participants who are liked or despised, depending on how the viewer’s perception has been been manipulated, participants who are (supposedly) people just like us? Is this the best use we can make of our too-short lives?

A producer of some of the best-known of these shows will appear this year at an international communications conference, where he will speak and be honored by the communications profession. The conference’s promotional material states that “reality television has revolutionized the entertainment industry and raised the bar for audience expectations and participation in television programming.” Raised the bar? Or lowered it even further?

Reality TV is not new; it’s been around since Candid Camera and This Is Your Life. And it is still a low, voyeuristic form of entertainment that appeals to our sense of superiority — the very sense that proves we are not as superior as we think.

I find myself wondering why it appeals to so many, so much so that an international organization of corporate communicators is bypassing surely more worthy candidates so that it can honor a reality TV producer. I find myself torn between a couple of old ideas — that the inmates have taken over the asylum (and the popularity of reality TV is proof), or, looking to the always dependable bard, that “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” What is my role? Where is my script? And why am I so poor at playing this role of human being, of interacting with the other players? And is that why I am in the chorus, where I observe the performance of the principals, but feel very little stake in it?

I think I will go back to watching Star Trek. Reality TV as I wish it were.