TV Shows Watched: Where’s Wanda?: S1E8 (Apple Plus) with audio description, High Potential: S1E7 (Hulu) no audio description, American Sports Story: S1E10 (Hulu) with audio description, Bad Sisters: S1E5 (Apple Plus) with audio description, and St. Dennis Medical: S1E1 (Peacock) with audio description.
podcasts: The Dead Meat Podcast (Review: It’s What’s inside)
YouTube: Sydney Vulpe (Review: Gladiator 2)
Movies: Emilia Perez (Netflix) no English Audio Description, and larger Than life: Reign of The Boy Bands (Paramount Plus) with audio description
There’s a lot to cover today. So, let’s get to it. Kicking it off with at least one elephant in the room, Yes, I did watch High potential yet again, and with the problems Hulu has had uploading next day with audio description, you would think High Potential aired live. I think of the 7 episodes for the first half of the season (as High Potential goes on winter break), I’ve heard audio description twice? That’s a really shitty record, considering High Potential comes from Disney owned ABC. Part of the whole reason I’ve stuck with American Sports Story is to show the contrast. That show hails from Disney-owned FX, shares a time slot with High Potential, and it has managed to land audio description consistently every time for “next day viewing”. This is all just Disney passing things around internally. Disney owns Hulu. it is fully integrated into Disney Plus. If you subscribe to both, you could also just click on Disney plus to watch High potential and American Sports Story. yet, somehow, the audio description coming out of ABC seems to fail to reach Hulu, while the audio description from FX does, and both shows air against each other in terms of linear viewing. It is really quite an interesting case of incompetency somewhere along the line. Someone has not found their stapler.
Also, peacock launched St. Dennis Medical, a new sitcom. So I do have thoughts on that audio description. there are many different formats for TV sitcoms, but one of the more popular ones right now is to break the fourth wall every since Ricky Gervais first gave us the Uk version of the Office. Like, everyone is being followed by a documentary crew now. It is the same method of delivery employed by ABC’s Abbott Elementary, and FX’s What We Do in The Shadows.This uses that format, and at least in the pilot episode, I do expect the audio description to find a way to address that. Not everyone watches the amount of media I do, and people shouldn’t have to wonder who someone is talking to. I think this is separate from just distinguishing between a single-cam and a multi-cam, but rather this is a format that won’t change no matter how long the show runs. That documentary crew will always be there. It is also a pilot, and it is the first time we meet all these characters. And, it is unfortunately, a sitcom. There isn’t a ton of time to give us description on these characters, but the description we did get was really underwhelming. In all, while there is description, and I wouldn’t say it was a complete fail, it was the kind of audio description that works in Season 3 episode 8, but not Season 1, Episode 1. We need to have a serious discussion on pilots, character introductions, and specifics regarding fourth wall breaking shows. You have one episode to mention those things. many people don’t watch past a pilot. I have a feeling this show is funny enough to get an audience, but then again, I was also a fan of American Auto, which never found its audience.
AThat leads me to Where’s Wanda, which will lead me to my last point. In Where’s Wanda, a German show that Apple has dubbed and then provided audio description for, they reached a moment (quite helpful and timely), where singing happened, and they let a character sing the song from the original German track. The song was not sung by the voice cast providing the dub, but they flipped the dub off and instead threw it to the audio description team, who spoke (and perfectly balanced, I might add) the lyrics while the original German actor sang. So, that is one way of providing audio description for musicc. that leads me to…
Emilia Perez. I normally don’t mention films here, but Netflix has failed to provide English Audio Description for this title, a trend I thought they were breaking with JA Bayona’s Society Of The Snow from last year, an International title submitted for awards consideration featuring a Latinx cast that actually had audio description. Previously, Netflix has had other Oscar nominees featuring talent from below the Rio Grande, and not provided English Audio Description, or even English dubbing. in fact, some of these films aren’t translated at all, which is rare to find in Netflix’s broad reach of international titles, things that only have their original language. but, Alfonso cuaron’s best picture nominated Roma is only available in Spanish, so if you are blind and speak any other language, you are intentionally being denied access. Emilia Perez has the same setup. One language.
I’ve watched multiple shows from Netflix I knew nothing about to try and create a metric for people using English Audio Description on International shows and movies. From TV shows like Parasite The Grey and Last nights On Tremore Beach, to films like Divorce and nice Girls, I have been creating a metric for randomly selected titles of no note.
Here, Netflix is fully aware of what they have. This is not an in-house production. Netflix acquired it after its bombastic debut at Caanes, and they have owned this since that festival in May. They have continued to push it for awards consideration, sending it to as many festivals as possible. It features in its cast two actresses far more known for their English language content, Zoe Saldana and Selena Gomez. Marketable actresses to American audiences. Netflix, they know what they’re doing.
But, as some blind people who are far too complicit in the bread crumbs of accessibility, have pointed out that Spanish Audio Description is the logical choice, as if there can be only one. But, is that actually true? think about this film, which is primarily in Spanish, but does actually feature a chunk in English, and is actually considered a French film. Yes, this is French. Believe it or not, this is France’s submission for the International Oscar this year, not Mexico or Spain’s or any other predominantly Spanish speaking country. This is a French director. Germany is doing a similar thing by submitting Neon’s Iranian Seed of The Sacred Fig.
So, the path to Oscar lies with France, but it also doesn’t have French dub, or French audio description. And it isn’t that Netflix is incapable of doing audio description or dubbing for musicals. I shouldn’t have to say that, because obviously Disney figured out a long time ago how to send their movies overseas, but Netflix has had several original musicals. both Jingle Jangle and Tick Tick Boom are uniquely American, and fully in English, yet Netflix dubbed them each into a handful of languages. Granted, each of those only has English Audio Description. However, Matilda: The musical and leo have four available audio description tracks with dubbing available, in English, French, German, and Spanish. So, they *CAN* dub a musical. They are just choosing not to.
Which is so problematic for many reasons. it reinforces the odd connection between Latinx led films like Roma, Bardo, and El conde, which all were nominated for Oscars without English Audio Description, and all featured Latinx talent, and very prominent directors. “but John, those movies were in Spanish. They had Spanish audio description.” Again, Emilia Perez does have English, and features a song entirely in English about gender affirmation surgery. So, if we were to look at it from a bilingual perspective, where the characters speak more than one language, than shouldn’t it be treated a bit more like Past Lives? I mean, there’s a lot of Korean in that, but there’s also quite a bit of English. Bilingual TV shows and Films exist, and in those regards, shouldn’t both languages be represented? Isn’t that the beauty of being a melting pot?
the real tragedy here is that a film everyone likely should experience, which is about acceptance, has been left exclusionary by Netflix. In a year where the concept of transgenderness was weaponized and the people in this community face a very uncertain future, we kind of need a movie like Emilia Perez, which features at its center a character seeking gender affirmation surgery, and who tells the world “Aquí Estoy!”, featuring an actress who could break a very important barrier this year by becoming the first openly transgender actress to land a leading Actress nomination at the Oscars. Hell, some people think this could win. What an answer to everything from 2024, to give an Oscar to a movie featuring talent people are seemingly trying to deport, and a leading actress people believe shouldn’t exist.
Emilia Perez isn’t just any film, it is likely the film. It is probably Netflix’s best chance at Oscar glory, and it is an important benchmark in LGBTQ cinema. And as a gay blind film critic, I should absolutely be able to sing its praises up and down, but after sitting through the 2 hour, 12 minute film, it was basically impossible to follow. It may be getting submitted for your consideration, but it certainly isn’t seeking mine.
