Reading television: The cognitive experience of closed-captioned TV
We watch TV with subtitles a lot these days. It’s like reading television.[rustling leaves]
Actually, we watch a lot of closed captioned (CC) TV. In addition to the already-subtitled productions (translating non-English films) we started by turning on closed-captioning for those highly-accented British period pieces or procedurals (where you know it’s English but just can’t get in the rhythm).[footsteps approaching]
Intended for the hearing challenged (which, increasingly, we are becoming!) the optional closed captions (as opposed to open captions, which are automatically visible) add audio track descriptions in addition to dialog; they classify soundtrack music (which are not even close to running out of adjectives, see [dramatic musical sting]* below) and pick up distance noise, or off screen sounds, turning it all into words. In italics.
[dog barking in distance]
CC’s are one way for couples to avoid a life of DVR/Streaming rewinds because one or the other didn’t catch something. It’s better than both wearing headphones, which is a bit more isolation than any of us need at the moment. There are now, in cinemas (but soon at home?) closed caption glasses! Words in green float in front of the wearer (at an adjustable distance!) to narrate the action and dialog.
[clapping]
Half of what we watch is already subtitled, which can lead to a funny competition downscreen between the CC’s and subtitles; like alternative fact sets, or quarreling kids describing the same misbehavior to a parent, or an Altman film (and now I really need to see how captions handle a room of people all talking at the same time).
[indistinct chatter]
We hear actor’s voices and, independently, read their words; but these two streams of data operate as if on different frequencies. Magically, in one’s memory actor and words rejoin; it feels like it was all in English (even when it wasn’t), seamlessly merged and comprehensible. But it was born of a deconstructed viewing, reassembled by one’s brain…
