The Passion of the Hypocrites
All right, I’ve sat on this for a couple of weeks and now it is finally time to call bullshit on certain deaf people and certain other blind people who appear to have rather less of a commitment to accessibility than we noncrips do.
On the MoPix notification mailing list, suddenly we started seeing notations like the following:
- February 13–19: “We’ve been contacted by numerous movie fans and MoPix users who are blind and visually-impaired regarding the soon-to-be-released film, The Passion of the Christ, directed by Mel Brooks [Gibson, shurely?! – later fixed]. Folks want to know if this film will be described. We are working with the film’s distributor now on this issue, and further information will be provided to folks via this list as soon as we have it. Note, the film will be subtitled, and so will not have Rear Window Captions.”
- February 20–26: “This film is currently being described in the Media Access Group’s Los Angeles office. Our current estimate is that the description for the film will be available a few days after the film debuts in theaters. We’ll pass along further information about where and when this film will play with descriptive narration as soon as we have it. Note, the film will not have closed captions, as it will be subtitled.”
- E-mail: “I believe they have only heard about the description piece from consumers, and so that is their priority as a first-time MoPix participant. You can understand why much of the world would think that the subtitles are enough; as a matter of fact, we haven’t heard from anyone in the deaf/HoH community expressing disappointment that the film will not be captioned. ”
Shall we recap, friends?
Some Hollywood studios are such cheap bastards that they only caption and do not describe their first-run pictures. The number of these films is pushing a hundred at this point:
- 32 “large-format” pictures (mostly Imax), though do please note that Space Station and Imax NASCAR were indeed described, contrary to WGBH’s misinformation
- 60 Hollywood pictures
For Austin Powers in Goldmember, which was only MoPixed because I persuaded my generous colleague at Alliance Atlantis to pay for it, costs were estimated as follows for a two-hour runtime:
- Rear Window captioning: US$2,000 ($16.66/minute)
- DVS Theatrical narration: $12,000 ($100/minute)
- MoPix disc engineering and replication: $7,500
- Total: $21,500
The movie actually ran 94 minutes, so costs were lower, on the order of $18,500. WGBH description is six times as expensive as WGBH captioning. Nonetheless, the entire cost is trivial.
Thus began the rash of captions-only movies.
- It’s so much cheaper!
- We know about “clozecaption”; we’ve heard of that before. It’s subtitles, right? We know that.
- This DVS… I dunno. I just don’t see a lot of blind people going to a movie theatre.
- Besides, we can reuse the files. We have to caption the thing for home video anyway, so this way we can pretty much do a 2-for-1.
(They can’t actually “reuse” the files unless WGBH captions for home video, which happens from time to time, as in one version of Solaris I’ve seen.)
I accused deaf people of hypocrisy for letting this happen. I know from decades of experience that grassroots deaf people, who don’t even consider themselves disabled except when legally or politically expedient, aren’t really concerned with accessibility. They just want their needs met. If they even bother to think about it at all, here’s what they think: “Accessibility is for disabled people. I don’t need accessibility.”
Some deaf organizations understand the need for universal access. I assume there are scattered deaf individuals who understand the principles at stake. But many grassroots deaf people don’t give a damn. “Give us captioning and you’re done” is the entirety of their attitude.
Now, are blind people any better?
We have, in The Passion of the Christ, the third known theatrical showing of a picture with descriptions only, the others being My Left Foot and Stardom. Perhaps our dear British friends have given that concept a whirl, though they hardly matter, given their capacity to do so very much wrong.
I have done the usual searching (I am rather good at that, you know) and have found no evidence whatsoever that blind groups or individuals have made the following points:
- It’s just grand you made the film accessible to us, but we’re not the only ones who need accessible films.
- You seem to think subtitles are captions. Have you ever tried understanding a movie with subtitles and no soundtrack? (What is happening to Beatrix in Kill Bill Vol. 2 as she’s loaded onto the bed of that pickup truck? All I see is black screen.)
- You’re aware, are you not, that subtitled films are captioned all the time? In fact, Kill Bill has both, if you’d like to have a look.
I need deaf people to publish a logically defensible argument why movies should be captioning-only. I also need blind people to write a similar argument demonstrating that movies should be descriptions-only. I would also entertain a third argument that subtitles are captions. I expect all those arguments to be easily refuted, and would elicit a great torrent of laughter here.
Next I’ll need the same arguments as articulated by service providers, particularly WGBH. I wouldn’t be chuckling at those, I’d wager.
While we’re waiting, I will point out that the only people who seem to give a shit about accessibility for both disability groups are people with no sensory disabilities. Like me.
I’m not going to stop working in a field I’ve devoted half my life to merely because some of the beneficiaries of my work are hypocrites. What I also won’t stop doing is calling them hypocrites. I’ll quit when you do: If you want me to stop calling you hypocrites, quit being hypocritical.
It’s a yes-or-no proposition: Do you support accessible cinema? Movies with captions only or descriptions only aren’t accessible. What, then, are you going to do about it?