A few days ago, my visiting Mom mentioned that she saw Interstellar on the plane, but couldn’t understand the dialog because the volume wasn’t loud enough to overcome both her poor hearing and the background noise from the jet engines.
Tonight she brought it up again, and I asked if it had subtitles. She said it had not. I asked if she’d like to watch it again with subtitles, and she said maybe, but it wouldn’t make any difference. I was all
because she usually is able to keep up even with weird goings-on, like Inception and Mission Impossible series, etc.
Me: “Why wouldn’t it make a difference?”
Mom: “Because I couldn’t understand the dialog!”
Me: “Well, if there were subtitles, why would you not understand the dialog? You usually watch TV with subtitles.”
Mom: “I watch shows with Closed Captions. With subtitles it’d be in a different language!”
Me:
“It’d be English subtitles if we watch.”
Mom: “Those are Closed Captions.”
Me:
“They’re the same thing. They’re both putting text on the bottom of the screen so you can understand what’s being said.”
Mom: “Well, that seems important to you.”
Me: “I’m just trying to figure out why you didn’t understand the dialog. Was it because you couldn’t hear the movie, or because the dialog, which you could either hear or read, didn’t make sense?”
Mom: “Let’s talk about this when I’m not tired.”
Me:
Be 47-years-old and nearly get in an argument over technically-niggling semantics with your near-luddite mother. The self-inflicted L is real, brehs.
