According to Actress Kristin Scott Thomas, the ubiquity of text messaging means that subtitled movies could gain acceptance. Granted, this is an extrapolation of one throwaway comment in a New York Times interview, but it does make an interesting point.

People will now go to films with subtitles, you know. They’re not afraid of them. It’s one of the upsides of text-messaging and e-mail. Maybe the only good thing to come of it.

People read a lot of on-screen text. You’re doing it now. I read thousands of words a day to bring these posts to you. We all read messages on tiny telephone screens. So our brains are trained for it. But does this translate to subtitles? After all, the actual reading isn’t the problem, it’s the stigma that foreign films are somehow arty, in the English speaking world, at least. Subtitled movies are always foreign movies, and therefore not mainstream.

Elsewhere, things are different. US blockbusters shown in Spain are either dubbed (and the same voice actors always play the same real actors, which leads to an odd kind of invisible celebrity) or they are subtitled. These are labeled VO, or versión original. Discerning punters always go for VO, and even some multiplexes show them. And of course, foreigners like me hit the VO showings so we can actually understand the dialog.

Read the complete article at WIRED