Sign Language Guy (stupid dickface)
	Late at night, in the early hours of the morning, some channels decide to help the deaf of those among us. Clearly many important surveys have been conducted leading to the discovery that deaf people typically watch tv between two and five in the morning. As such, in the corner of the screen a guy can be seen translating the dialguge into sign language for these unfortunate people. Well I say fuck that little punk. What the hell is he doing there, anyway? He takes up about a fucking fifth of the screen and is a complete distraction, often getting in the way of key events and obscurring some characters completely in certain scenes. I have gone over and over this in my head, and I have come up with no kind of rational explanation for this ridiculous behavior what-so-ever. Okay, let's look at the facts. Deaf people cannot hear. Okay, fine. Why do you want to watch a film then? Nevermind, you're welcome to. You see, through the magical use of the invention know as subtitles, you can read the dialogue as it is being spoken. I imagine that those few deaf people who want to be rebelious and watch tv say, in the afternoon, would use the subtitles provided by their teletext. If they don't have teletext, tough shit. But, given that they can't hear anything, one would think they would want to see as much of the screen as possible. Now, I haven't spoken to any deaf people about this, and frankly if I did I don't think it would do a lot of good, but I'm sure they hate this motherfucker stood there waving his arms about like a little bitch. Surely they too would prefer the much better-suited subtitles. Furthermore, surely it must actually be cheaper to use subtitles instead of having this guy stand still for a couple of hours and use sign language. Not only would this be of enormous benefit to those of us who aren't deaf, but the deaf people themselves would also appreciate it and enjoy the film a whole lot more. Receently I watched Heaven and Earth at a ridiculous hour, and there was enough black space above and below the screen to fit in several lines of dialogue without ever over-lapping the picture. It is true you get used to it after a while, but the first fifteen minutes of the film is spent making death threats to the sign language guy. Worse, BBC1 actually re-size the entire screen, making it smaller so that the sign language guy has a nice blank background to stand in front of. The whole thing is just completely obscene and frankly offensive on a disturbing level.
				21/4/06