Earlier this week, we reported on a failed subtitled screening of Star Wars at an Odeon cinema in Brighton, which led to our viral petition to improve access to subtitled cinema (it’s now nearly at 14,000 signatures in four days, sign it here).
Now, a new story has emerged which, if true, shows the disrespectful and worryingly casual attitude of cinemas towards subtitled screenings and the welfare of their deaf audiences.
It has been reported by Wokingham Today that a group with two deaf teenagers at Vue cinema in Reading were allegedly told that the subtitles had been removed from a subtitled screening of Star Wars “because it was popular.”
The paper’s story says:
The youngster had booked for one of Vue Cinema’s special subtitled showings of The Last Jedi, and had an e-ticket that confirmed this arrangement. But when the movie started there were no subtitles.
Her friend queried this with the Reading cinema staff who are alleged to have told them that Star Wars had been such a box office smash that the captions were removed.
The mother of one of the deaf teens is quoted in the article, saying:
My friend quickly got up out of her seat and went and spoke to a member of staff, who explained ‘Star Wars has been popular so we changed it’.”
Disappointingly, the cinema’s statement described “confusion” over the screening, apologising only for any “disappointment” she experienced.
Read the full story here: https://www.wokinghampaper.com/cinema-listens-unsubtitled-star-wars/amp/
By Charlie Swinbourne, Editor
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Mrs. Claus
December 22, 2017
Quote Charlie: Right now, it’s time for me to enjoy Christmas and new year with my family, but I’ll be returning to this subject in January, so keep your eyes peeled for new developments.unquote.
Our Ed is passionate!
Editor
December 22, 2017
Haha… good points there. Well, this has to be highlighted I think. I’m sickened by stories like this, it makes me feel that deaf people are treated as being less important or worthy than hearing people. In cinemas at least. The industry needs to look at itself very carefully indeed.
Hartmut Teuber
December 23, 2017
Since a subtitled version exists, but intentionally not employed at the showing, couldn’t you sue the cinema for not showing it. Do you Brits have an applicable law to base your suit on?
Roger Hankey
December 23, 2017
I use subtitles on my tv all the time. my family and visitors do not complain that they are distracting.
If a screening is advertised as subtitled and is shown without surely that is false advertising.
Anonymous
December 29, 2017
Traveling over the holidays this weekend, I found that a cane provided far more access to assistance than my hearing aids coupled with requests for my need to, ah, hear things . . … I learned that i could say hard of hearing until forever and no one would pay attention, but that every single person, every single assistant was immediately attentive to the fact that I had a cane and wanted to help me. I was amazed Staff virtually begged for me to ask how they could help me, but when I said I couldn’t hear the train stop announcements, no one knew to tell me when the train stop was coming. So be it. My son hates closed captioning when I use it and so we argue about it. It’s some kind of human brain hiccup that doesn’t accept the logical, only the popular, after all “everyone likes it this way.” I guess everybody likes canes.
L
January 4, 2018
We attended an advertised subtitled showing of Star Wars at a Vue cinema on Tuesday evening. The film started without subtitles. There 3 or 4 groups of people in the cinema and it was evident we all included a deaf person as someone got up from each group to go and speak to the staff.
The manager came in after 5 minutes and announced they would restart the film with the subtitles.
So it was good that they fixed it but they should be ensuring that the film plays out correctly in the first place through checklists/programming. This shouldn’t be too difficult to do as cinemas have lots of different types of showings these days (4K, HDR, HFR, 3D, AD, different sound systems) so they’re failing to turn on subtitles, they’re probably not getting other showings correct 100% of the time either.