We turned the subtitles on with no discussion or debate.
When my wife, son, future daughter-in-law and I sat down the other day to stream “In the Heights,” the cinematic adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s exuberant Broadway musical, we toggled the option to show all the dialogue and lyrics along with some descriptions of the sound effects in white typeface across the bottom of the screen.
Some consider this an artistic betrayal, a violation of the director’s carefully wrought creation that most certainly didn’t involve the eyes of the audience straying from the action and reading what’s happening instead of simply absorbing it.
Directors can intend for mumbled exchanges to be partially indistinct and open to interpretation, as they are in real life. They can employ the sound of a heated, overlapping argument to convey a feeling that would be spoiled by a close textual analysis. And they often realize that words to even wonderful songs can come off trite and inane when written out.
Understood. And those who therefore prefer such atmospherics to subtitles — more accurately known as closed captions when the viewer can turn them on or off — are free not to use them.
Such people simply will not be welcome in our living room.
My eyes were opened, so to speak, to the virtues of subtitles last summer when Disney+ began streaming a filmed version of “Hamilton,” Miranda’s sensationally popular historical musical.
I’d seen “Hamilton” on stage during its three-year run in Chicago and enjoyed it immensely. But it wasn’t until I re-watched it with the subtitles on that I realized how much I’d missed — how many jokes, asides, callbacks, insults, clever internal rhymes and plot nuggets had escaped me as the rapid-fire lyrics, often rapped, echoed in the theater.
And, just to be clear, my hearing is excellent.
What else had I been missing? My wife and I began turning on the closed captions for other shows — non-musicals, often even those whose actors have American accents and speak clearly. And while I can’t say the captions are as revelatory or useful as they were for “Hamilton,” they do frequently help clarify exactly what’s being said and by whom.
They reveal the sometimes portentous lyrics to songs playing in the background. They sort out relevant background chatter from the meaningless ambient buzz. They provide reminders of the names of secondary characters. They offer a second crack at appreciating the subtleties of the scriptwriters’ craft.
I used to associate subtitles with foreign films only, and to think of closed captions as aids for the hearing-impaired and tools for use when you needed to keep the sound off. There even seemed to be something a little fuddy-duddy about turning on the captions for “Hamilton,” as though it marked me as a tragically unhip older person who can’t understand the rap music kids listen to these days.
But when I learned my younger son and his fiancee are heavy users of captions, I conquered the last of my subtitle shame.
I posted on this topic to Facebook recently, and nearly all of more than 100 commenters were with me.
Steve Pulaski — “I’ve gotten to the point where I elect to put subtitles on every movie I watch.”
Rebecca Houston — “One hundred percent. All the time. Love them.”
Carolyn Tomecek — “I enjoy not missing a single word of dialogue, and I don’t find it detracts at all from the viewing experience, only enhances.”
But Tamara Kerrill Field offered a negative take. “I never turn on subtitles,” she wrote. “If I can’t puzzle out a word or line phonetically, I let it go and enjoy the rhythm of the language and watch faces …. the beauty of the body and face work is not worth corrupting with same-language subtitles.”
And Janine Junttila Orrico took note of the timing problem — when words of dialogue or descriptions of sound effects appear on the screen before they happen in a way that puts the viewer out of sync and can spoil big reveals. “I tend to read the joke right as it’s landing, which does take away from the experience,” she wrote.
A long-tail advantage of the acceptance and even embrace of captioning seems likely to be a greater openness to foreign films among American moviegoers.
“The vast American public will not accept films with subtitles,” said actor Helen Mirren in 2014. Then “Parasite,” a subtitled Korean language movie, won the Academy Award for best picture of 2019.
We found “In the Heights,” which streams on HBO Max through July 10, to be a rich experience with the titles turned on. Miranda’s lyrical genius was already evident in this show, which predated “Hamilton,” and you can catch every bit of that when it’s spelled out for you.
It’s also showing in theaters uncaptioned (except for some of the dialogue in Spanish), where some tell me that the immersive spectacle of the big screen more than makes up for a few misheard or unheard words here or there.
So. Your choice. But (Columnist: My choice is clear) my choice is clear.
Twitter @EricZorn
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