TV is better with subtitles – whether you need them or not ...Middle East

I can’t remember when I started watching television with subtitles. I couldn’t even really tell you why I do it – I don’t have impaired hearing or any other accessibility needs. But what I do know is that subtitles have made my TV watching richer – I concentrate more, I am rarely distracted by my phone, I understand (almost) every plot point. I am, as the youth say, “locked in”.

Which is why I was worried when my colleagues suggested I attempt to spend a whole weekend without them. I had a whole couple of days of good TV-watching planned – not only was there a new Louis Theroux documentary about the occupied West Bank, but I also wanted to watch a couple of upcoming episodes of zombie apocalypse drama The Last of Us (perks of the job). The former would feature interviewees with accents I might find hard to understand, while the latter’s main character, Ellie (played by the fantastic Bella Ramsey), is a bit of a mumbler. This, I thought, was going to be awful.

I’m not alone in watching TV with subtitles. A 2023 YouGov survey found that 23 per cent of respondents watched television in their native language with subtitles on. That number jumps to 31 per cent in my age range of 25 to 49-year-olds, and to 61 per cent for the younger 18 to 24 age group. Gen Z has a bad reputation for not paying attention to their TV and “multiscreening” – being on their phone at the same time, but these figures suggest otherwise. Surely you can’t read subtitles and watch TikTok at the same time?

Netflix has noticed the trend, too: a recent press release from the streamer reported that nearly half of all viewing hours on US Netflix happen with subtitles on. In response, the streamer has created a new type of subtitles, which only shows the text that corresponds to actual dialogue. There’ll be no more “[phone buzzing]”, “[tense music]” or – in the infamous case of Stranger Things – “[tentacles wetly squelching]”. These are subtitles for those who don’t need them for accessibility reasons, but, like me, simply like them.

Of course, I couldn’t give them a try over the weekend. I had vowed to give up my subtitles in the name of journalism and I was determined to give it a proper go. Until I got 15 minutes into my first episode of The Last of Us and realised that I accidentally still had the subtitles turned on from when I last watched it – they’re so ingrained into my watching experience that I didn’t even notice I was reading them.

After turning them off, I noticed something unexpected. I was paying much more attention to what Ellie and her pals were actually saying. I thought reading subtitles improved my comprehension, but is that just a fallacy? Without the text to help me, I found myself worried I’d miss something – and so paid more attention.

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Louis Theroux’s documentary was a different experience. My boyfriend was born deaf, and while he can hear well thirty-something years later, he finds subtitles more useful than most. I felt mean turning them off for our Sunday night viewing of The Settlers and dutifully turned up the television to compensate. It was loud. And that still didn’t solve the problem of fully understanding the strong Israeli accents of the nationalist settlers Theroux was interviewing. This time, my viewing experience was definitely diminished thanks to the lack of subtitles. I’ll have to watch it again.

I can’t say my experiment has made me want to ditch subtitles for good. Quite the opposite. Yes, I might have concentrated more on dialogue, but it was purely driven by a paranoia that I would miss something important. I certainly enjoyed myself much less; watching TV without subtitles felt like much more work.

For now, my subtitles are firmly turned back on. I pity those who find them distracting or that they ruin comedic or dramatic timing (ridiculous: there are mere milliseconds between the end of a joke and reading the corresponding subtitles).

With realism and “mumblecore” – a subgenre characterised by naturalistic acting and hard-to-hear dialogue – becoming more and more popular, watching with subtitles is the only way to enjoy television properly, whether you need them or not. In other words, I’m watching TV better than you.

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