Meet "The Osburnes"

January 27, 2002 10:14 PM

Meet "The Osburnes" NYT article on a new MTV show starting March 5 that spends three months with Ozzy Osburne and his family. Best line: "The (press) session became heated when a reporter asked MTV's president of programming if Mr. Osburne's often-slurred, heavy British accent would be accompanied by subtitles."
posted by zinegurl (4 comments total)

Sadly, a double post.

After seeing their "Cribs" tho, I have to admit I'm excited for this.
posted by malphigian at 10:19 PM on January 27, 2002

Gentlemen... start your TiVos!!!
posted by Dirjy at 12:09 AM on January 28, 2002

You have slaughtered a great British sounding name.

Osbourne. Don't fear the 'o'. We don't have Osburns in the UK.

sheesh.
posted by Frasermoo at 12:46 AM on January 28, 2002

Well, if anyone wants a substantive analysis of the issue:

1. Within-language subtitling (which straddles the border between subtitling and captioning) is rare but not unheard-of. “Foreigners” with accents are often subtitle-captioned on American newscasts. The Acid House subtitled Scottish into Queen's English (as happened in Trainspotting, for that matter).
2. There is a general condescension involved in intra-language subtitling-captioning, and I generally disapprove of it. If you need access to the same language as the dialogue, use captioning.
3. There's no reason why the show shouldn't be closed-captioned. I expect it will be. Back in 1989, I wrote an editorial for Billboard essentially authorizing the concept of captioned music videos, and captioning on U.S. MTV has increased steadily since then. Big shows are generally captioned. This sounds like a big show.

I know this was intended as a jokey post, but that's not the only way to look at it.
posted by joeclark at 7:41 AM on January 28, 2002