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OThere’s a gunfight on my screen, guns firing as hundreds of bullets fly overhead. Tony Montana (Al Pacino) has just discovered his dead sister on the floor, and there are gunmen waiting on the other side of the door. He takes a grenade launcher and aims at them. And on my screen? The words “Say hello to my little friend.” Some would say that my preference for watching everything with subtitles detracts from my viewing experience. Scarface. But I would argue that it actually improves the situation.
Oh, subtitles… I love them. Knowing for sure what is being said in a movie or TV show is worth the world to me. It’s certainly worth giving up the measly inch of screen space that text takes up at the bottom of my TV – a view that I’ve often been told is an outrage to the “art” of filmmaking. In living rooms around the world, the Great Subtitle War rages on, quietly and passive-aggressively.
According to Netflix, by 2023, 40 percent of global users will have subtitles turned on all the time, while 80 percent will use them at least once a month—a number that far exceeds the number of viewers who need subtitles due to a hearing impairment. I myself fall into this category—someone who doesn’t need subtitles but still wants them (and all the time).
Like many habits, this one was born out of necessity. My mother’s first language is not English, and so subtitles were common in my family growing up. (Indonesian wasn’t usually an option, so we settled for English.) You could say I’ve become dependent on them, and you’d be right – but I’ve also grown accustomed to them and know how to use them “properly” as a non-hearing-impaired person, because while subtitles are indeed useful when you’re in a noisy room or trying not to wake a sleeping baby, I think they also make for a better TV experience and deserve awe rather than derision.
The most common answer I get from subtitle critics is: “But then you are reading TV, not watching!” And yes, that may be true for people who have just started using them (of course, your eyes will be drawn downward at first, and that will be incredibly distracting), but soon enough the brain adapts and the text more or less fades into the background. Think of how people can sleep despite having an alarm clock.
Once you get used to that comfort zone and no longer find subtitles annoying, that’s when their true genius begins to emerge. They’re not meant to be followed meticulously or read word for word. No, subtitles are the equivalent of a life jacket on a boat – you hope you don’t need it, but if you do, it’s there. Missed a word? Look down. Forgot your name? Look down. Didn’t catch the last bit of jargon? Look down. And I mean look – subtitles, when done right, can be taken in in less than a split second. That’s not reading.
I admit that lately I have been reaching for the life jacket more often and looking down more often to fill in the gaps – because there are more gaps to fill in. For example, in demanding TV series with complicated plots, subtitles can help us to follow better, as with the countless rhyming names of House of the Dragon (e.g. Aemond, Daemon, Aegon, Velaryon, Targaryen).
And the shows that are peppered with rapid-fire jargon? Without my trusty subtitles, I don’t stand a chance. How can you get through the financial bro-slang of HBO’s industry without help? Take, for example, this baffling line of dialogue from the first season: “Remember, this is not an IPO – there will be no months-long roadshow to generate interest, no batting an eyelid. We have less than 24 hours to get the book done and then the full position is gone.” Huh? I know as little about the financial world as I do about the street corners of Baltimore that are in TheWire.
You might argue that just because I can read those words doesn’t mean I understand them—to this day I don’t understand what I mean when I say I say “Adios, full position out the door”—but I can at least rest easy (or rather, keep watching) knowing that it wasn’t something more important or anything crucial to the plot. (If it was, I’d Google it.) That’s the main purpose of subtitles for me—to double-check that I’m not missing anything. Ever. Ever.
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This has become especially important in recent years, as directors (ahem, Christopher Nolan) insist on making brilliant films that you can’t hear. A good portion principle was all but inaudible: muffled by oxygen masks, things that go boom, and a sound mix that amplified the squirting of a sunscreen bottle over a crucial line of dialogue. No wonder no one understood the plot.
Nolan himself regularly defended his “adventurous and creative” sound mixes. Regarding principleHe said he was surprised by the complaints, which came not only from fans but also from other filmmakers. “I was a little shocked when I realized how conservative people are when it comes to sound,” he said. “You can make a film that looks like anything, you can shoot on an iPhone, nobody will complain. But if you mix the sound a certain way or use certain sub-frequencies, people will go up in arms.”
I am one of those people, that’s true. Although I am for artistic freedom and experimentation, I even agree that House of the Dragon is practically unbearable considering how horribly dark the scenes are – if I want to know what’s happening, I need to know what’s being said. Dialogue is too crucial to any movie or TV show to just shrug and move on if you miss something.
There are other benefits too – ones that I think the film fans who turn me away because of my penchant for subtitles would greatly appreciate themselves. If you make the effort to study the subtitles, you will likely develop a new appreciation for an actor’s performance. Take The Silence of the Lambs. On paper, a line like “I wish we could chat longer, but I’ve invited an old friend to dinner” reads a little clumsy, but coming from Anthony Hopkins’ mouth, it’s pure perfection. The same goes for screenwriters; it’s a shame to ignore the swear words and Shakespearean barbs of Consequence remain unnoticed.
Growing up with subtitles also encourages openness to foreign language films. Watching a film with subtitles, even if it is in another language, does not feel like such a chore when you do it every day. It has been four years since South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon Ho won his award for parasite and implored the Golden Globes audience to “get over the one-inch barrier of subtitles.” While he was suggesting that you should broaden your horizons by watching films in other languages, I would argue that even films in your native language are enhanced with subtitles. The only exception? Stand-up comedy. Even I have to draw the line somewhere.
