According to a 2022 Preply survey, 50% of Americans watch TV with subtitles “most of the time.” 78% of respondents said that they have trouble hearing dialogue due to loud background music. 62% also said they were more likely to turn on closed captioning when watching a streaming service than while watching live TV. I fall into all of these categories. Mr. Rosie and I started using subtitles for almost everything after we cut cable 12 years ago. I have to actively adjust my brain to focus on dialogue whenever I’m not using them. We always joke that it’s a sign of age.

As it turns out, it’s not our hearing that’s going bad. According to a Vox interview with dialogue editor Austin Olivia Kendrick, modern-day technological improvements on microphones and TVs are the real culprits. There’s also a silver lining to using subtitles. They can help children learn to read. Here’s more from Upworthy:

Why modern mics actually made things worse:
They first explained that way back when movies were first moving from silent film to spoken dialogue, actors had to enunciate and project loudly while speaking directly into a large microphone. If they spoke and moved like actors do today, it would sound almost as if someone were giving a drive-by soliloquy while circling the block. You’d only hear every other sentence or two. But with today’s technology, microphones are so small they can be strapped just about anywhere on an actor. This allows the actor to move about the set freely and speak at a normal volume without worrying that their words won’t be picked up.

“A lot of people will ask, ‘Why don’t you just turn the dialogue up?’ Like, ‘Just turn it up.’ And…if only it were that simple,” Kendrick said before explaining, “If you have your dialogue that’s going to be at the same volume as an explosion that immediately follows it, the explosion is not going to feel as big. You need that contrast in volume in order to give your ear a sense of scale.”

So why does the music drown everything out?
Sure, you may be thinking, well that kinda explains it, but why do the music and other cinematic noises sound like they’re beating on your eardrum while the dialogue sounds like the actors are whispering every line? That doesn’t seem very balanced. There’s more to it, and again, it falls back onto technology.

In the video, they explain how our televisions are too thin to hold large speakers facing in the correct direction, and until this video, it didn’t dawn on me that the speakers to my television are indeed in the back. No wonder we can’t hear. The actors are quite literally talking to our walls.

Subtitles might actually be good for your kids:
[S]ome experts like the World Literacy Foundation note that watching television and movies with subtitles is especially beneficial for children. Research has suggested that putting on subtitles can help improve literacy for kids, and many actors support the practice. This is good news for those worried about the literacy crisis in America.

[From Upworthy]

While the speaker placement thing makes sense, I’ve never considered newer microphones being a problem. I always assumed that someone didn’t properly mix the dialogue and music. You would think that technology would keep up in that regard. Mr. Rosie bought a soundbar during a Prime Day sale several years ago. It helps, but it sucks that we needed new speakers just to hear the television. At least closed captioning technology has improved over the years. Companies like Netflix and Disney+ let viewers customize subtitle size and color. Upworthy also linked to a video with tips to help viewers hear dialogue better.

I love the hidden benefit of subtitles helping kids learn to read, though. My mom is a teacher, and when I was younger, she’d tape index cards to items with their names written on them. Subtitles are a life hack for the digital era.

Here’s the interview that Upworthy reported on: