My Trip to Hearing Again

That’s right, my gentle reader. 21st century, the United States of America, country with a GDP of $13 trillion, origin of many human rights instruments, takes pride in its civil liberties, home to a deaf woman who has no access to the new Indiana Jones flick.

This past Friday I could not find a captioned showtime. Last night Anton and I found a theater with rear-window captions on the 9:55p screening. Anton called to confirm. Did I mention this movie theater is in another state? Yup, it’s the Cinema de Lux in White Plains, New York! So at about 9:15 we loaded into our (fuel efficient) Honda, persistently broke the speed limit and at 9:45 were buying tickets. We asked the adolescent employee for a window for the captions. His eyebrows furrowed. He made a call. The window will be with the manager down the hall, he said. Down the hall was only an empty desk. We still caught some employee by the sleeve and asked for the window. He had no idea what we are talking about and anyway, the 9:55 isn’t captioned! He called another employee who had a similar response. Anton was ready to punch someone.

The manager finally joined the show and informed us the captioned showtime was switched around because they had technical issues. Haaa? They just switched?! At this point I took the scene with an angry diatribe on the availability of captions in the state and on my prolonged attempts to enjoy the simple pleasure of seeing a movie. I finished in tears. Anton took on and mentioned the ADA and the attorney for the district. And the manager was sorry and I think, realized his mistake (and he better remember that realization!) and offered to caption a later show. But, my mood was ruined and I still had to get up at 6am. So we said no and got our money back. And some complimentary tickets.

I am not letting this be. Still, I have a feeling lots of hard of hearing and deaf people let it be. Look, even if a movie theater around here has the necessary technology, they are not ready to use it and they don’t really understand how it serves the hard of hearing and deaf audiences.

I am so disappointed. Where I grew up, a sorry little country, I was constantly reminded I am a second class citizen. Nothing was available to me. But here, in the US, I see all these things that are for me and I can use them. My expectations go waaay up and I fall hard when I don’t get what I was promised.

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I am livid. I want to see a movie. But I can’t.

Movie theaters in Fairfield county (between New Haven and New York) closest to out town do not caption movies. They just plainly do not. A few, 20 to 45 minutes away, caption one movie at a time, but only at selected screenings, usually at dead times in the morning and at noon. And there is one 50 minutes away which has rear-window captioning.

This past Friday evening Anton and I, like millions of Americans, decided to see the new Indiana Jones flick and we did not want to drive very far for it.  Since all the captioned screenings for the day had passed, Anton decided to call the Stratford theater and ask that they, pretty please, turn on the captions for me at the 9p screening.

The answer was a stubborn no. The corporate office of the Regal Stratford Stadium does not allow unannounced captions, because, as a rule, more people complain about the captions being on. But we were informed that’s all ADA compliant. So, deaf lady, you get to watch whenever we don’t have many customers (12:45p and 10:45p on a workday, 4p on a weekend) or you don’t watch at all. It was degrading. We didn’t go to a movie. But I decided to take action!

I would like to raise up a stink to make local movie theaters get rear-window captions which suits both the deafies and the ridiculously ridiculous people who complain about the captions (I mean really, how spoiled and self-centered do you have to be to complain about somebody else’s accommodation?).

I emailed the local chapter of the Hearing Loss Association of America asking if anything has been done about this situation before and whether it is as frustrating for the local HoH flock as it is for me. So far no response. I hope I will not have to hunt one from the headquarters, because the local chapter is snoozing. Please, hard of hearing folks of SW Connecticut, do not disappoint me!

Filed under: captioning in movie theaters, Problems | 3 Comments »