WTF, Netflix?
A couple years ago, I went to see Born into Brothels at the movie theater with my Dad. Like a lot of movies, I missed much of the dialog, but figured I’d just catch it with captions/subtitles on dvd later on. My plan was foiled when the film’s dvd was released without captions. So much for that.
I love movies- especially the smaller, independent films, because they usually have something to say that you don’t usually find in the mainstream. For example, a number of feminist blogs raved awhile back about a small film called The Education of Shelby Knox, a docudrama about a girl from Texas who fought for comprehensive sex ed in her town. I was excited to see this girl’s transformation from apathy to activism for myself, but when I received a copy from Netflix, I found that it wasn’t captioned. Great.
Born into Brothels… The Education of Shelby Knox… Sherrybaby… 2 Days in Paris… Word Wars… This Film is Not Yet Rated… Iraq in Fragments…
What these films all have in common is that they received wide critical acclaim, press, and advertising dollars. They were all produced by Red Envelope Entertainment, Netflix’s production company. And not a single one of them has English captions/subtitles.*
I’ve written to Netflix asking that they include captioning information with the “Movie Info” pop-up. It’s amazing to me that they’ll include information in this space about a movie’s length, but not whether it’s accessible. I also asked that they correct a listing they had for Daria: The Movie: Is It Fall Yet, since the copy I received did not appear to have captions. The result was a terse letter from one of their customer service reps telling me what I already knew: I could look at the complete record of a movie to find out whether it had captions/subtitles. They didn’t explain the situation with the Daria dvd, and the record still states that it has captioning.
I’m not a lawyer, so I do lack a complete understanding of the American with Disabilities Act and the Telecommunications Act of 1996, but I would imagine that Netflix is able to get away with this because Red Envelope Films is a relatively new production company, which probably makes it exempt from captioning laws for four years. Still, one glance at the sheer number of high-profile films they’ve helped produced in the last couple of years makes me doubt that captioning their films would be an undue economic burden.
Netflix has also come under fire for their past lack of TTY customer service line and the poor development of their “Instant Viewing” feature, which you can read about here, here, and here. The captioning of a/v material on the Internet is definitely a move I want to see happen. I am increasingly frustrated as high-profile blogs and news outlets increasingly substitute text-based stories with videos that generally lack any kind of transcript. Meanwhile, Project ReadOn is an amazing endeavor, and I’m blown away by Bill Creswell’s effort to caption movie trailers and other videos of interest to deaf individuals. But I’d like to see the ADA and Telecommunications Act updated in order to successfully adapt to technology’s constant changes.
By comparison, it seems like such a small request from some of us that companies such as Netflix start with the basics: caption their own films, ensure that their records are consistent and free of errors, and respond appropriately when customers point out such errors. Is that really so much to ask?
*UPDATE: A couple commenters have pointed out that some of these dvds *are* captioned. Here are the films that have been established as having captions/subtitles: 2 Days in Paris and Iraq in Fragments. I’d be interested to know if anyone has a trustworthy source for this data? For my work, I use WorldCat a lot, but am finding that the staff module is easier to use than the basic version I’ve just linked to — but the information on it is pretty sound, as far as language details go.
Update #2: I double-checked Born into Brothels and Sherrybaby - the versions available from Netflix are *not* captioned, nor do they have subtitles (more about this here).
Banjo said,
March 9, 2008 at 2:11 pm
Born Into Brothels, This Film Is Not Yet Rated, The Education Of Shelby Knox, Word Wars are all not subtitled or captioned like you mentioned.
However, Sherrybaby, Two Days in Paris and Iraq in Fragments are all captioned/subtitled on DVD.
Since you mentioned Daria, I should mention that MTV is notorious for not providing subtitles or captions on their DVD releases. Their releases are not handled by Paramount, only distributed.
It appears that Netflix is not responsible for any of these releases you mentioned. All of these movies are distributed by different studios. Word Wars is distributed by Anchor Bay. The distributor is a hit and miss when it comes to captioning. Some of their releases are captioned, some aren’t. The Education of Shelby Knox is distributed by New Video, they rarely caption or subtitle their DVD releases.
This Film Is Not Yet Rated is distributed through Genius Products. It is a home video branch owned by The Weinstein Company, Inc. The same founders of Miramax and Dimension Films. I have found that some of their DVD releases lack accessibility for the deaf and hard of hearing.
Think Film Company is the distributor for the documentary, Born Into Brothels. They do caption a number of their DVD releases. However, not this one. It seems like some of these studios believe that these types of movies would not appeal to us. It’s a real shame that they can be this ignorant sometimes.
Sherrybaby is distributed through Universal Studios, it is subtitled in both English and Spanish. 2 Days in Paris is both closed captioned and subtitled in English, it is distributed by 20th Century Fox. Iraq in Fragments is subtitled in several languages according to their website. It looks like they re-issued a DVD release with more subtitles for this one. I imagine it is subtitled in English on the first edition since it’s in Kurdish and Arabic. Otherwise, no one here would buy them. I’m not sure, but I think the documentary is distributed by Arab Film.
http://www.arabfilm.com/item/417/
Just had to say a few things. Hope you appreciate it.
kate said,
March 9, 2008 at 2:17 pm
Banjo,
Thanks- I do appreciate it- but now I wonder if I’m missing something. I’ve had most of these dvds in my possession at one point or another. Speaking specifically of Sherrybaby and 2 days in Paris: could not find the subtitles via the dvd’s main menu, nor by using the “change subtitle” option on the remote, nor was the captioning picked up my the decoder. Is there a fourth way of checking for captions/subtitles?
Thanks!
kate said,
March 9, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Okay, I had some time to kill, waiting for a friend to come over, so I pulled 2 days in paris out of its little red envelope and tested the dvd on my roommate’s tv. Banjo’s right, the captioning showed up. So I retract 2 days in Paris and possibly Sherrybaby from the aforementioned list of movies.
I’m still perplexed as to why it won’t show up on my laptop’s dvd player, but I am seriously happy to be wrong.
yaaay. I get to watch Julie Delpy and Adam Goldberg tonight.
Banjo said,
March 9, 2008 at 4:11 pm
Glad you are able to enjoy these movies now.
What software is used to play the DVD movies on your laptop? Maybe there are some known issues. In general, subtitles should be found on the sub-menu, Languages.
kate said,
March 9, 2008 at 6:24 pm
I use the Dolby DVD player version 4.0 that was already installed on my iBook when I bought it a couple years ago. I’ll try to dig around a bit to see if other people have experienced similar problems. Gah. So many things to look up, so little time.
Banjo said,
March 9, 2008 at 8:54 pm
On your iBook? OS X 10.3 and above support CC on the Apple DVD player. Just thought I’ll mention that.
Hmm.
kate said,
March 9, 2008 at 9:13 pm
This is funny, I’ve never had tech support embedded into a blog before.
Yes, the captioning works for most other dvds, but not for the ones I singled out in this entry. It’s bizarre.
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/03/06/funny-tech-support-t.html
Aaron R. said,
March 9, 2008 at 11:37 pm
I swear I’ve seen Born into Brothels captioned. I remember renting it from Blockbuster just over a year ago. I rented it along with quite a few other documentaries, and I checked to see if it was captioned or subtitled.
I found the movie very powerful and sad at the same time. I only wonder whether there’s different versions of the movies out on DVD for me to have seen it captioned and not for you.
kate said,
March 9, 2008 at 11:45 pm
This is weird. Born into Brothels is not a dvd that I’ve tried to rent. I took a look at Netflix’s page for it, which says that it’s captioned. Amazon’s page for it doesn’t mention any captioning information. For a non-commercial source, I’ve just checked worldcat.org, which says that it *is* captioned.
MAN. I need to not write blog posts after I’ve stayed up late with friends!
Et Tu, Hulu? The Epitome of Betrayal « Deaf Soup said,
March 14, 2008 at 3:45 pm
[...] is not the first time that a large company with deep pockets filled with cash has dropped the ball. Arbofo recently discussed the failure of several studios to caption or subtitle it’s offerings, for [...]
Netflix, revisited « arbofo said,
March 17, 2008 at 12:01 am
[...] am (deaf) (captioning, closed captions, consumer, deaf, movies, netflix, subtitles, videos) I recently blogged about captioning woes with Netflix. After receiving a couple comments expressing different [...]