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You might have first noticed the problem 20 years ago watching The Wire. Everyone was yelling and talking at once in their thick accents while guns were going off all around them. If only there were subtitles with this show, you might have wondered.
Although closed captions were first used 50 years ago, subtitles as standard have only become standard issue since the advent of streaming and other technology.
Fortunately, it got here in time for Succession, which among its other achievements set benchmarks for the number of people talking indistinguishably and at speed.
“Subtitles On” is for many people the standard viewing option. Netflix which, like its shows, lives and dies on research, says that 40% of viewers have subtitles on all the time and 80% have them on some of the time.
And it’s not just because streaming audiences can’t hear the words. There are many practical reasons why so many people are reading their TV shows.
Firstly, there is the original reason – hearing impairment. Subtitles opened up TV to anyone who had hearing difficulties. But that is only a tiny percentage of that 40%.
Some of these issues didn’t arise when the only way you could enjoy filmed entertainment was on a box that stayed in one place in your living room. But, as has long been recognised, technology doesn’t just meet needs, it creates them.
Subtitles suit our modern domestic arrangements, where homes are likely to include an open-plan kitchen-dining-living area at the heart of family life. With so much activity taking place, subtitles mean the TV can be on and someone wanting to watch it can do so while the hubbub of family life goes on around them.
They also circumvent difficulty in hearing caused by environmental sounds outside your control, such as your neighbour’s power tools or the energetic discussions taking place next door.
Subtitles can also be relationship savers, allowing one partner to watch their programme of choice while the other listens to Spotify – music being one activity for which a subtitling option has not yet been devised.
Captions are also recommended for commuters who want to watch video on their phones but don’t want to wear earphones or annoy their fellow passengers by making them listen to their TikToks. Apparently, such commuters exist.
Perhaps the main reason viewers are resorting to subtitles is simply that they can’t hear what people are saying, and for this there are many reasons.
Actors’ diction, regrettably, is just not what it used to be. In fact, it’s so bad there’s a genre - mumblecore - predicated on people not enunciating. Devotees insist this is more realistic and has greater dramatic impact. It may indeed bring its messages home more forcefully, but that’s not much use if you can’t hear what those messages are.
Ironically, this is a problem caused by technology. Where sound used to be recorded by boom mikes hovering above performers heads, their lines are now picked up by small microphones attached to their bodies. These don’t work as well.
The massive demand for content created by streaming services and binge-watching also plays a part. Technicians responsible for making the sound just right complain they no longer have the time to do their jobs properly.
With people able to adjust the sound settings on their TVs, it’s no longer incumbent on pro-gramme makers to get things right. Where once they might have rushed through something during a shoot on the basis that, “We’ll fix it in post” now, as avclub.com notes, producers can increasingly say “They’ll fix it at home”.
And between the production’s set to your TV set, bad things can happen. To make programme files that can be streamed easily via the magic of the internet, they are compressed. “The only way [streamers] can get the bandwidth they need for you to see image and sound in sync is to compress everything,” explains Ben Pearson on slashfilm.com. And when you compress something, quality suffers.
But home sound has its own problems. TV speakers are no longer in the front of the set, where they always used to be. Flat screens mean the speakers are at the back of your device. It’s as though you are watching a play where all the actors keep their backs to the audience.
Finally, it’s worth noting the difference between subtitles and closed captions, either of which option can usually be chosen in your settings. The former transcribes what is said; the latter describes every sound that is heard, so you will be told “car door closes” or “tap running”.
