[S]ubtitles can be worse when they get it right, especially during a sex scene. No one wants to be sucking peppermints with their Aunty Pam when the words, “Yes! Yes! Harder!” and “Is that good for you, baby?” pop up on screen. Descriptions of sound effects can be quite appalling, such as “[groans of pleasure]”. Or just “[squelching]”. In Stranger Things there was once a caption reading “tentacles undulate moistly”, though I don’t think it was describing sex, mercifully....
Mayo 20, 2026
Squelching, Part 2.
Having already written a blog post called "Squelching" this morning, I feel compelled to show you this London Times article: "Mumbling, [squelching] and the danger of badly captioned TV subtitles/Half of the nation like to watch with words appearing on screen. For most people, it’s not that they can’t hear":
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The only time I've used squelch is on an old military radio set. AN/PRC-77 to be exact.
Ick. "Moist" is one of those trigger words for my wife. It came up yesterday in the course of discussion about a comedy show in which the host insisted comics not do any "moist" jokes (regarding bodily functions).
If you are embarrassed that someone may find out what you are watching you might think about what you are watching.
For Yanks watching Brit shows, subtitles are good to assist in English-to-English translation. Whenever I take a break from EastEnders and get back into it, some of the characters' accents are initially impenetrable.
Then there's the whole sound-level thing that's part of technological enshittification. Turn the volume down for a commercial or some action scene, and then the regular conversation is almost silent. The captions tell you what they said before you could get to the remote. CC, JSM
One of the reasons I liked Wolf Hall, especially the first season, is that it used natural light but you could still see what was happening. And it had a lot of silences, and really hardly any loud bits, so you could leave the volume at one level. CC, JSM
I know many women who flat out do not like the word "moist."
Then there's the whole sound-level thing that's part of technological enshittification. Turn the volume down for a commercial or some action scene, and then the regular conversation is almost silent.
I find that many newer shows and movies deliberately record the dialog as indecipherable mumbles. Not sure why, but it seems to be the trend to do so.
It's better than having your elderly deaf aunt ask you, "WHAT'D she say?"
"She said, 'pound me harder, big guy!'"
"She found WHAT in her eye?"
"'POUND ME HARDER, BIG GUY!"
"Oh, that's nice. I used to say things like that with Nelson Rockefeller."
In radio there is such a thing as squelch, and usually squelch has a tail, which is audible.
[S]ubtitles can be worse when they get it right, especially during a sex scene. No one wants to be sucking peppermints with their Aunty Pam when the words, “Yes! Yes! Harder!” and “Is that good for you, baby?” pop up on screen.
who is watching sex scenes while sucking on peppermints with their aunt Pam? Seriously, I think that line is more evocative than moist tentacles undulating.
Second, I don't watch shows that have detailed sex scenes depicted (whether verbally or visually), leave that for the porn shows.
Finally, if there was a sex scene, I would rather read the words than hear them. Who thinks having them on screen is more disturbing than hearing them? At least with text, I can skip reading, hard to drown out panting exclamations.
None of this make sense to me. and get off my lawn.
I know many women who flat out do not like the word "moist."
There's a meme that must be ten or fifteen years old now but still pops up as a reply to cringey sexual content. It is veteran news reporter (and shameless left-wing propagandist) Helen Thomas at her oldest and least attractive-- which is saying something-- with a leering smile and too much lipstick, and the single word "MOIST". It is highly disturbing, and will probably cause the extinction of the word in the English language.
“I know many women who flat out do not like the word "moist."”
And yet they spend billions on moisturizer every year. Go figure.
A lot of good series coming out of Australia these days, but subtitles are very helpful if you’re not fluent in Strine.
As for squelching, it seems to have gotten a lot more prevalent in SF/horror as CGI has made monsters/dismemberments gooier. Subtitles don’t really convey the full effect there, of course.
None of this make sense to me. and get off my lawn.
Brother from another mother!
Back when we were young and it was Morning In America, did you ever think things would turn out this way?
Whenever I take a break from EastEnders and get back into it, some of the characters' accents are initially impenetrable.
The Cockneys of the East End are practically Sir David Attenborough compared to the Geordies of Newcastle or the working-class lads of Glasgow.
Video subtitle technology has really gotten bad. First there there was a clash between the playback device doing it and the TV doing it. Then they stopped supporting the old standard so that modern playback devices can't decode older subtitles anymore. Then we entered this weird area where the subtitles often didn't match what was being said on the screen at all because they had been uploaded from obsolete scripts that had been revised before video recording and editing. Now we're stuck with subtitles that listen to the dialogue and immediately generate text, but so much of that is messed up because the computer keeps guessing at the wrong words. Perhaps AI will fix this, but modern subtitles are a disaster. (At least with film subtitles, the text was correct. The only problem was visibility based on the type of subtitles and what the image backgrounds were.)
My wife has moderate hearing loss. I have some loss as well in the higher frequency range. Subtitles make it much easier for us to understand what is being said, especially when there is background noise in a scene. Just as too many cinematographers think scenes should be so dark that it's hard to see what's happening, too many of those in charge of audio levels think having loud music or noise mixed with speech is an artistic preference. Live programming probably uses AI to generate the closed captioning, so there are a lot of mistakes. Still, I can generally follow what's being said (or sang) better than without the captions.
I think I was approaching 9 years old when I asked my parents for a set of walkie talkies as a birthday present. What I got was a pair of rather nice 5-watt CB units. (Dad always did his research.) As I recall, each one had a rotary control labeled Squelch which reduced annoying static. These days popular culture produces nothing but annoying static. Where's the damned squelch button on my existence?
The Saturday Evening Post had a regular feature called The Perfect Squelch, which would recount some devastating retort.
There are many articles devoted to trying to explain why dialog understandability has deteriorated the last 20 or so years. I hate subtitles. Hate them. If I can't get the dialog I put on a pair of headphones.
Matter of fact, I started watching a movie (I Think We're Alone Now, Peter Dinklage and Elle Fanning) and could barely understand half of what they were saying, and just quit watching maybe halfway through. Then I discovered the headphone strategy and watched it all again. Most of it was good.
Well if they lowered the boom mike for Dinklage, it would be in the shot. CC, JSM
If you want another film with Dinklage, try "Tiptoes." Gary Oldman plays Dinklage's twin brother, while acting on his knees.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiptoes
"Oh baby, you just turned my squelch knob to... eleven!"
Another cool movie with Dinklage is “Three Christs” with Richard Gere. Dinklage plays one of the Jesuses (Jesus’s? Jesi?)
"Three of them say they're Jesus, one of them must be wrong."
Jean: Why, Helen this cake is wonderfully moist.
Helen (to her hubby): Get that disgusting bitch out of my house.
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