Remote Choices
My dad was an electrician, a very good one. As he mastered the intricacies of alternating and direct current, he developed certain beliefs that he held with an almost religious conviction. One of these strongly held tenets postulated that it was sinful to pay over $150 for a black and white television when a good electrician can restore a slightly damaged device for peanuts. Growing up I watched Texaco Star Theater and Howdy Doody on a variety of television sets in various states of repair. I might be listening to a show using the Cenfonix set (voice, no picture) while watching the same show on the Admiral (picture, no voice). While neighbors enjoyed watching the Philco Television Playhouse or Ramar of the Jungle on their color RCA televisions (the hedonists!), I turned the dial on the Philco or Teletone set and struggled to bring into focus Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts (the fifties version of American Idol). Sometimes this involved attaching a wire to the antenna and stretching it out the window of our apartment in the Bronx, often adding one of my mother’s gravy pans to the terminus to get an adequate picture.
All of my children, and their spouses, were raised in an entirely different video culture. When six, my daughter Christie asked me, “Did you have cable when you were a kid?” It is difficult to explain to an on-demand society that we actually had to wait for those exact moments when entertainment was delivered. If we missed Gillette’s Calvacade of Sports, well, the experience was lost to the ages. I once tried to explain this mindset to one of my classes. “Imagine Mozart is your favorite musician. The only time you could hear his music in the late 1700’s was if you went to a live concert. The rest of the time you were music-less.” I paused for effect. Finally a female voice from the back of the room chimed in, apparently expressing what most of her classmates were thinking. “They must have been stupid back then.”
Modern television watching has its own hiccoughs. When I got home from the hospital, normalcy, some form of it, was the prime directive. What better return to the familiar than the resumption of a tv series we had been following before my hospital stay? We settled on continuing Narcos, the drama about the Columbian drug lord Pablo Escobar. How is the warfare between Pablo’s minions and the gang of Los Pepes going? So we fire up the Hudson River Popstick, click on Narcos (somehow it remembers the last episode we watched) and sit back to watch the Machiavellian machinations. Five minutes go by. They are speaking Spanish….naturally, they are in Columbia. But the last time we watched they provided subtitles in English. Not this time.
There is about ten minutes of very important exposition between the sexy female correspondent and Pablo, none of which Polley or I are understanding. This is serious, my return to normalcy hitting an unexpected roadbump. I search the Hudson River Popstick to find a button that will turn on captions.
Oops. Not this button which returns me to the Hudson River Popstick main menu. I have to work my way through several menus to choose Narcos again, only this time it brings me to the first season which we already saw. We are somewhere in the second season…..we try episode five. Ooops. Ten minutes in, with no English subtitles, we discover we have already viewed this episode. We try episode six. Five minutes in we recognize the gunfight in the hotel. Ooops. I press the home button again. Back to the main menu. There is an array of viewing choices on my screen. Prime Television, Prime Movies, Netflix, Hudson River Original Showings, Hulu, Starz…..I suffer a brain freeze. What was Narcos on? Oh yeah, Hudson River Original Showings. Work my way down through the nested menu to second season, episode seven. This looks right. Music cued in, credits, snapshots of dollar bills and cocaine bundles. Then a conversation between Pablo and Quica. They are planning a big operation, but Polley and I have no idea what they are planning. We regret not taking Spanish in high school. My studies of Pascal and Montaigne and Rabelais in their original tongue, I find relatively useless now. So is Polley’s study of German. I find a button that takes me to “subtitles.” There is suddenly hope. I press the subtitles button, and I am given more choices. “Captions Off,” (which they are), English subtitles, French subtitles, German subtitles, and I think there was an option for Serbo-Croatian subtitles, but I am not certain.
I click on “Captions Off,” hoping to toggle the “Captions On” feature. Nope. Still just Spanish. Quica and Pablo stuff revolvers in the back of their pants and walk out to meet destiny…or they are going out for ice cream. We have no idea. We are lost. Back to subtitles menu, “Captions Off” is still on, scroll down and click on English subtitles. Nope, the president of Columbia is conducting a high level strategy meeting in his native tongue, and I am trying to read lips which is rather stupid since I know no Spanish. I inadvertently press the “Back” button which brings me to the main nested menu. Twenty minutes later I am back on episode seven of Narcos, second season. Nothing I press under subtitles gives me the English captions I so desperately need. I scroll down some more and find an option, “English subtitles with description.” I click on that option.
My entire viewing experience is changed. I now have subtitles for Spanish and English plus a woman in a steady, pleasant voice describing what I am seeing.
Woman’s Voice Over:“Pablo and Verencia meet and shake hands. They sit down, Verencia first.”
Woman’s Voice Over: “Pablo—‘How have you been?’”
Woman’s Voice Over: “Verencia—‘I am worried about you.’”
Woman’s Voice Over: “Verencia stands up. She is wearing a sexy tight knee high skirt with a matching maroon jacket. ‘I cannot stay long. What message do you want me to give your wife Tata?’”
Woman’s Voice Over:”The scene switches to the two American DEA agents.”
Woman’s Voice Over: “Murphy and Pena are seated at their office desk. [I see that] Murphy—‘We are closing in on Pablo.’”
Woman’s Voice Over: “Pena—-‘Only a matter of time.’ “ [I find myself reading the subtitles even though I am fairly proficient in understanding English.]
This description feature rather spoils one. Worse, I am becoming addicted to it. I envision myself watching an old Law and Order episode.
Woman’s Voice Over: “Green—-‘Lennie, the victim is a twenty year old shop lifter.’
Lennie bends down over the blanketed corpse. He is wearing a frayed sport jacket and a tie with a mustard stain from a half-eaten Sabrett’s hot dog. He lifts a corner of the blanket and studies the girl’s face. ‘Well, she won’t be doing any heavy lifting soon.’”
Do I really need this option? Telling me what I am seeing? Polley and I return the next night to watch episode 8. I twist and fondle the Hudson River Popstick, trying to summon the courage to try once again to turn off the description and just have subtitles for the dialogue in Spanish. Twenty minutes later I surrender. The Woman’s Voice Over continues to describe what I am already seeing.
I admit that my ability to choose what I wish to watch has improved dramatically since my childhood when I tried to dial in Kukla, Fran and Ollie on one of my father’s restorative projects. I have more choices, but having more choices means more decisions to master. I also have to master control of the three remotes perched on my end table, each of which is governed by its own internal logic, each of which has to be turned on in a certain sequence, and each of which requires an investment of time to master.
Woman’s Voice Over: “Ralph typing last sentence of blog, moves mouse to save document and close program. ‘I think I will go downstairs, turn on the tv, and try to find reruns of Star Trek: The Next Generation.’”