Day 4 - Part 1: #captionTHIS

So, if you're following this blog closely, as I hope that at least some of you are, you'll notice that yesterday I did not post nearly as often as I wanted to. To make up for this, as I write my posts today I'm going to try to cover topics from both yesterday as well as new experiences. 

One thing that I ended up doing yesterday was hanging out with my friend Lauren. Both being big fans of nerdy British sci-fi, we decided to watch some Torchwood and Doctor Who on Netflix. This, we decided, was something we could both do and enjoy, because it didn't require actual communication between the two of us. "Besides," I thought, "I can just put on the captions so that I can watch without needing sound."  This worked for an episode of Torchwood. However, we discovered that for one of the seasons of Doctor Who, that there were no captions available. We decided to watch anyway. I did my best to read the lips of the characters as they spoke. This would have worked had they kept the camera on the person speaking at all times. However, because of modern/popular filmography and artistic choices, this is actually rarely the case. Between the shots of other peoples' reactions to other characters talking, the distance shots, the many important plot-developing sound effects, and the many other random cut-aways, it was nearly impossible for me to follow the plot of the episode. 

This also reminded me, though, of a video I came across a few weeks ago promoting a movement called #captionTHIS in which a group of people was trying to get people to spread the word about the lack of closed captioning on popular media sources. I'll post the link to the video below. I urge all of you to watch it - especially if you don't know anyone in the Deaf community, have never had a language barrier problem, etc. I will give you a fair warning, there will be a point for a few seconds during which you will probably be very frustrated with the video if you are not asl-literate. Although the #captionTHIS movement was mass-spread on June 6th, 2012, I think that it is definitely something that we should all try to keep going. While I supported the movement before, and thought I understood why it was so important, I now empathize with the movers and shakers that started it on a whole different level. 

Here's the link to the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgSrZ-s3MTY

Enjoy!