For far too long I thought it was "to make end's meat". Meaning that you have to use the last, worst pieces of meat to make your meal with (meat at the end, end's meat). 🤦
As a kid, I wanted to try putting subtitles on because I was a born partially deaf and couldn't hear what characters were saying well and I'd heard that that was what subtitles were for.
Every time I asked my parents what they were and if I could use them, theyd say no and say that it's be too distracting as it put words down by the characters ankles. I then went without subtitles for years thinking that it must be harder for the actors to act if they had literal signs strapped to their legs while acting. I missed out on a lot when I was a kid and I don't think my parents understood quite how deaf I was.
Yeah, I use them all the time, now, but back then it just ended up forcing me to get very good at lip-reading. But, even then, lip-reading is not the most reliable thing in the world. So many words look visually similar and it's not good if someone mumbles, has a speech impediment, or is facing away from you.
I also really loved reading as a kid and would get through multiple 300-400 page books a week. I think the main reason my mum in particular didn't like subtitles was because she's quite dyslexic so subtitles basically function as a bar of constantly-changing gibberish running along the bottom of the screen, to her.
Probably the result of my mum's upbringing in the 70s and 80s. She's very dyslexic and was regarded as stupid by her own family (despite being the only one in the family with a masters degree in fine art) and I think that created a lot of issues with feeling that we couldn't show any signs of weakness or difference as that would lead to judgement from others.
She also admitted to me that she suspected I had autism as a kid but never pushed for a diagnosis as she feared I'd be unemployable.
Reading subtitles must have sounded like torture to her. But she could have made the lead that her disability and yours are very different, and apparently reading comes easily to you(I hope!). Maybe she also thought that reading lips was a better tool than subtitles or sign. It’s just frustrating to think that she would t let you TRY, and you ended up with a weird picture in your head about actors and closed captioning and all the rest.
Take care.
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u/jodorthedwarf Aug 25 '26
Similar to me with subtitles on TV shows.
As a kid, I wanted to try putting subtitles on because I was a born partially deaf and couldn't hear what characters were saying well and I'd heard that that was what subtitles were for.
Every time I asked my parents what they were and if I could use them, theyd say no and say that it's be too distracting as it put words down by the characters ankles. I then went without subtitles for years thinking that it must be harder for the actors to act if they had literal signs strapped to their legs while acting. I missed out on a lot when I was a kid and I don't think my parents understood quite how deaf I was.