2007-04-24 - 5:51 a.m.

The other night I woke up on the couch at 4.30am. Mine eyes gradually focused on the TV and I realised with dawning horror that I was witness to a Razorlight show from some festival or other. The guy from Razorlight was yelping some drivel about taking him to a house he can live in. It must be very hard trying to find a suitable home when you’re a millionaire rockstar. So far so mundane. The thing is, though, there was a sign language woman in the bottom left of the screen. This flummoxed me. Now, I would have thought that one of the compensations of being deaf was that one no longer had to hear Razorlight and their ilk. However, it borders on the absurd to be slung a deefy and yet still choose to watch Razorlight. Insult to injury, m’lud? Events took a turn for the surreal when Iggy Pop and the Stooges then took to the stage. I watched with a bizarre fascination how the sign language bird attempted to mime ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’ for the audioless audience. Seriously, she had to act out Iggy’s woofs and snarls. It was downright weird.

I’m sorry The Deaf, but one of the things you have to let go is music. It’s, like, a condition of your handicap. Trust me, you’re not missing much. It’s just not worth staying up ‘till 4am to get a sign language version of a Razorlight song. Seriously, it’s bad enough actually listening to the fucker. I wake up to bands like this and it’s as if I’ve entered into a nu age of stylised mountebanks trying to sell me bogus guitar scratchings and wallchart angst. It’s as if Shed Seven died on the cross for nothing. These sign language fucks, though, man… they piss me off almost as much as all these shitty new bands infecting the airwaves. Why, just tonight a sign language cuntwad tried to ruin a film for me. The Gods were having a chuckle as there was an unprecedented 4 – four – films on at the same time that I wanted to watch. I turned down Once Upon a Time in the Midlands, O Lucky Man and The Cook the Thief His Wife and Her Lover, in favour of Factotum. Now, I’m not really a big Bukowski fan, but what the heck, it was starting at a time agreeable to my Tuesday evening TV binge, and I was just in the mood for watching a flick about a drunken writer. So I’m all settled in with the washing up done and a cold Polish beer in hand, the credits are rolling, my happiness is pervading, and then disaster strikes. This histrionic homunculus pops up in the bottom corner of the screen, determined that I pay attention to him rather than the film. Stupid little fag with his neat hair and brown shirt. I despise him. How dare he graffiti himself over someone else’s art? I’d been looking forward to watching this film for about an hour and now there’s this moron waving his arms in front of my face. Cunt.

What bothers me is that sign language is utterly redundant where film is concerned. Subtitles I can just about cope with – they’re a necessary evil if you insist on getting the most out of foreign films. Isn’t it supposed to be a visual medium, though? That’s what some wanky academics would tell you. If that was the case, though, then silent films wouldn’t have died out, and cool dialogue – ‘you talkin’ to me’ etc - wouldn’t have entered popular discourse. No, the script is important. When I was watching Factotum, I couldn’t help keeping one eye on the sign language cunt. It was unavoidable, but I’m sure the director would not have been happy for this imposition. For one thing, I missed out on a lot of the picture. It’s like getting a blurry photograph. I took a childish delight whenever the hand-waving halfwit faded out and the sounds of puking and coughing went unsigned on the soundtrack – ha! A nuance you’ll never hear, you deaf fucks!

On the rare occasions that I torture myself by watching a foreign film with subtitles I’m always aware that by getting a translation I’m missing out on a lot of the subtleties and tricks of the tongue. So how the fuck is sign language an adequate substitution for dialogue that was the baby of some overlooked writer? Auteur my ass – the scriptwriter is just as important, just as lyrics are equally as important as the music. Although I tried to cover him up with kitchen towel, I couldn’t help looking at the sign language prick. He displayed no emotion throughout the film – at least, not with his face. He had to stay poker-faced when there was some pretty funny stuff going on. Why can’t he laugh at the jokes? Loser! I’m pretty sure his hand-jives were missing at least some of the meaning behind their flailing. Aren’t these spastic mimes an insult not just to the films’s director, scriptwriter and actors, but the viewer as well? Who does this puppet show benefit? The Deaf should be grateful enough that they’re not exposed to barking dogs, roadworks, mobile phones and Razorlight without ruining TV for those unfortunate not to share their affliction.

previous - next