TV News: big news. Disney officially cancelled The Acolyte, which so many of their shows just get these vague “maybe” endings where you might see something out of them later, but they don’t typically close the door on too many Star Wars or Marvel content. Yes, The Bad Batch now has a definitive ending, but even though The Mandalorian is transferring to its own film, there’s no specific determination that no more episodic versions of that could be in its long term future.
TV Shows Watched: The Ark: S2E4 (Peacock) with audio description and unstable: S2E9 (Netflix) with audio description.
Podcasts: My days are starting to roll into one. I only remember Pivot (with guest host Mike Birbiglia), but I know I listened to a few.
YouTube: None
Movies: None.
the Ark is going to get talked about at some point. It just demands it. But, i now have to expand upon what I wrote yesterday. I was pleased as punch to see someone actually share my article, and after a long day, that post already had comments. there was one that I always feel like shuts down the conversation. So I didn’t respond.
I think we have to be careful of too much gatekeeping. I think about this a lot, and what that means to me even existentially outside of just audio description. in my young and formative years, there really were only two paths for me I ever truly considered. I really loved performing, but, I also really enjoyed the idea of film criticism. I grew up in an era where there wasn’t the online onslaught there is today. Most people just wanted to know if Siskel and Ebert gave the film two thumbs up. It was long before a tomato ever became overly ripe, and how the internet really put all those critics into one place. most people read the critics available to them, whether it was someone on television, like Gene Shalit, or if it was their newspaper subscriptions, or magazine subscriptions. But the internet not only took every critic from every platform and put them into an aggregator, it also gave people who were previously denied opportunities to join the film criticism game to jump on board. Ain’t It Cool News really is kind of a big and early example of almost the critical counter culture, but it was a conversation that started and really opened up a world of cinephiles who were able to congregate and find out that secretly they all widely respect a film that perhaps their favorite critic rejected.
New film classics were born. suddenly, people who had long been developing their love for a movie like The Shining, saw that other people had those opinions, and those people started writing about it. it brought the temperature down to a more moderate tone, and destroyed the elitism of film criticism. There’s an argument to be made that now, we have almost too many, because between blogs like this, and social media platforms, there is no lack of film criticism anymore.
Along with this though we’ve seen a lot of deeply specific paths open up, things that were niche before now were proudly out in the open. Some critics only cover horror movies, which they do owe to early websites like Bloody Disgusting, and also a magazine like Fangoria. but, what’s different now are the choices people have. instead of just waiting to see if Siskel and Ebert liked your film, you can actually check out the voices that speak to you. I may not speak to you. But, with so many voices, it is very likely that there is a critic out there somewhere who believes that Runaway Bride is the better Julia Roberts/Richard Gere movie, doesn’t understand the hype around Shawshank Redemption, and thinks Hitchcock’s best film is the Birds. That person is going to align a lot more with your own personal system of thumbs up or down, or the new format of rotten or fresh.
now, as someone who jumped into the criticism game in middle school, as an actual published critic, and went to school for film criticism, I’m trying to bring something fresh to my perspective on now also being blind, and what that audio description is like. I think we can and should do better. But, it is so hard to tilt at windmills. It would be like me having a real conversation about film criticism with Roger Ebert. Even if I point out the new way people consume opinions, and the sites that help push more and more voices into the conversation, I’m sure his opinion would always be the same, and he would stand behind his initial thoughts on many films now revered as classics. And that’s fine. Because, he was always just one opinion. He was just one opinion that was conflated into idolatry. Not only was he a print critic, but he had a TV show. He must be “the guy”.
I’m always looking for other blind film critics, people who have an understanding of film beyond a surface level, and who also use accessibility. I pretty much talk to anyone and everyone about Alex Howard and lee Pugsley of The Dark room for that very reason, because gatekeeping is dangerous. It leads to this idea that a singular persons voice, simply because they were early in the game, or have the profile, is the preeminent voice on all things in that field. but, we know that’s not true. As time evolves, opinions change, and what was once standard, becomes outdated or irrrelevant. One day, I’ll be the old man who is out of date or irrelevant, but I an trying to combat that a lot by listening to other voices and not mansplaining to them why my way is the only way simply because I’ve had some doors opened to me before other people.
The best way to combat the industries lean toward TTS/Ai audio description is to use performative narration. And I agree with the fact that the narration isn’t meant to pull focus away from the topic at hand, but I can think of so many instances where the wrong narrator on a film just is more distracting at a core level, regardless of how performative it is.
i often comment on the choice of narrator in every single one of my reviews, because sometimes it is brilliant, and other times not. Some voices are matched perfectly, other people find the perfect nuance to add, and some are just oddly miscast. Not to drag Wes Haas, but I really enjoy him as the narrator for both hacks and Tales Of The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. but I stand by the fact that whoever offered him immaculate was on crack. Wes is so good for certain projects, but a religious horror film is not one of them.
To expand on this, and tilt a little more at windmills here, I would equate it to the same thing as having a bad actor doing bad line readings in films. If we look at audio description as a job, and someone is filling that job, there are still variations to that job. Just like how not every athlete has the exact same skill set, not every actor is right for every part, and a bad actor within a film is often really noticeable when it’s not the whole cast. even shoddy filmmaking for visual audiences. Perhaps even my blind readers heard of the notorious upper lip incident of Henry Cavill for the theatrical release of Justice League. He was shooting mission Impossible at the time, and his character in that film had a moustache that he legally could not shave when called back for brief reshoots for Justice League. The result? Very fucking noticeable.
Perhaps when a sighted ally and a sighted director have a conversation about the concept of audio description, it becomes a little like “I don’t know what this is.”, and even the best sighted ally can explain it, but they can’t really communicate what it really means. It’s not as simple as defining the medium of audio description, but rather the soul crushing daily defeat of realizing that something you want to see doesn’t have it, trying to watch it anyway, and then realizing you can’t follow the thing you were looking forward to. or, something having audio description, but it not being good enough so after the film you are still left with questions, or the conversations with your sighted friends and family are so different because the audio description failed you.
It’s that feeling of finally getting in a theatre, and thinking this is going to work, and it doesn’t. Or, the equipment works, but the writer left something out of the narration, so you don’t know why everyone around you is laughing, or screaming. There are so many truly tangible downstream things that can only be experienced by actually not being able to see shit. that’s why the voices in the room should be blind. I don’t mind sighted allies as well, but the idea that this movement is being led by tose with the best intentions, especially buy the one who wrote a book, is problematic now that we’ve started to open that door. i feel like he’s trying to hold that door closed, and I don’t like it.
I may not be right all the time, and for some people I’ll be wrong all of the time, but what I’m saying will resonate. I try to have as many conversations with other blind people as well, so I know where their heads are at. It is one of the reasons that damn Percy Jackson nomination threw me. I keep hearing “we want representation in audio description’, but then a show with no representation is a top five show. That had me floored.
I appreciate the companies that go the extra mile, and have blind QC as part of their system. Not even so much blind writers or narrators, but just asking a blind person’s opinion on the narration before setting it free upon the world. Especially if that blind QC is someone who is well versed in film, and not just “i read a book written by a guy.”
this may seem incendiary, but I honestly last night felt like “Well, God just spoke. So what do I say?” So I said nothing. And then I thought about what that did. What that means. And why that is incredibly problematic for one person to feel like they are the literal final word on accessibility for the blind, when I’ve been told that person isn’t even blind themselves. I appreciate all the work people like that have done, but I’d like to bring the conversation back down so that instead of him feeling like he’s the Roger Ebert of the world, we’re on a more rotten Tomatoes level, and there’s more than one way to skin a cat. That, also, is not an endorsement for skinning cats. I love cats. But, theoretically speaking, there probably is more than one way. But don’t do it. Stop thinking about it.
Not to be political, but I heard something recently that deeply resonated with me as a gay blind film critic that just finally is getting into critics guilds, and getting this concept of being a blind film critic out there to the world. Kamala Harris’s mother apparently said something like “you may be the first through the door, but make sure you aren’t the last.” I’m humbled anyone reads what I write, and many of you know that I keep pointing to the Dark Room boys and their podcast. Please subscribe to them. I do not want to be the first and last blind film critic, and we need more blind cinephiles in this conversation on what audio description is and can be.
