What Did He Say?

We know we've lost some of our hearing, particularly beginning sounds of words. That's okay when we're having a conversation. We can usually pick up the context without asking for a repeat. Constantly asking someone to repeat what they just said can be annoying.

But what is particularly annoying is when actors in movies or on TV shows mumble so indistinctly we don't have a chance to understand them. That's one of the reasons I record almost every show we watch on TV. True, it's mostly to skip through the commercials but it does help when we need a repeat.

I often playback a segment and turn up the sound to try to figure out what's been said. Case in point: we love the PBS Mystery series but half the time we have trouble with the accents as well as the mumbling. So we just follow the action and fill in the dialogue as best we can. Of course you can't do that in a movie house so mostly our complaints are about TV offerings.

I wonder if movie producers and directors encourage their actors to slur their words or deliberately speak indistinctly. Is this sort of speech considered an art form? Not here.

So add mumbling to my list of modern manifestations we have to muddle through.