Dubbing vs Subtitles, part three

Kevin Drum

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I have one more quick point I’d like to make about the great subtitle war. (My fuller response is here.) A great deal of the pushback I got went something like this: Anyone who knows anything about cinema prefers subtitles to dubbing. Only idiots who can’t read would choose a dubbed movie instead.

It’s true that movie buffs around the world prefer subtitles. But the reason that you and I and nearly all cinema sophisticates prefer subtitles is because we can read quickly and easily. For us, subtitles don’t interfere much with the rest of the movie.

But for some people this isn’t true. You don’t have to be simpleminded for subtitles to be a big distraction. You just have to be a fairly normal person who reads a little more slowly than the highly verbal, highly educated folks who read this blog. In other words, you have to be like the large majority of moviegoers.

Are these people idiots? To hear the Twitter response I got from an awful lot of lefties, you’d think so. And then we wonder why the white working class has soured on us. Such a mystery.

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PLEASE—BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things it doesn’t like—which is most things that are true.

We’ll say it loud and clear: At Mother Jones, no one gets to tell us what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please do your part and help us reach our $150,000 membership goal by May 31.

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