Monday, July 31, 2017
Deaf No More
Welcome to the OldSchool Flashback Blog.
Here we will look into the history of Entertainment Media, covering Books, Movies, Music, Video Games and more. The uniqueness of this blog is the fact that I am deaf. Not completely deaf but severely deaf, with my hearing range going into the Profound range on both ends of the spectrum. To barely hear, i mean where the loudest songs and movies were just whispers into my hears, my headphones had to be turned up all the way. Even then I would usually use my fingers to attempt to push the earphones deep into my ear canal in an attempt to bring the speaker closer to my ear drum.
A little over a month ago I received my first hearing aids in 20+ years and began to enjoy life as I had forgotten it could be. I am now able to communicate with other people, listen to the sounds of animals, the roar of the ocean waves, and those noisy things we call automobiles.
I never expected that I would be so drawn into entertainment media. I seriously had to tell myself to turn it off when I discovered that I too, could binge watch....
That being said, the day after I got my hearing aids I found myself in the movie theater with my family watching Boss Baby. It was the first movie in the theater I had ever watched with hearing aids.
I found myself with tears running the length of my cheeks. I laughed at myself thinking "This movie shouldn't be effecting me this way". Movie theaters have become a much more deaf friendly environment since they developed first the head phone sets and then later for people like myself with severe or profound hearing losses, the captions glasses.
As a child I saw three movies in the theater, The Rescuers, ET and The Return of the Jedi. Three movies, that is it. I also didn't watch TV or play video games as a child, because I always wanted to turn the TV up so I could "kinda" hear it. My parents were pretty quick to send me outside to play. I found myself in love with books, Comic Books. When other kids were watching Star Wars, Indiana Jones, or Star Trek in the theaters I was reading the comic books while sitting in the shade under an apple tree, crunching away on my latest pick. Where their experience was over in a couple hours, mine carried on for months as the movies were broken down into four to twelve part chapters. Others like Star Wars continued on after the initial story was done. I never heard the roar of Chewy, the beeps of Artoo, or the magical sounds the weapons made.
Later in life I saw these on video, but without captions most movies were lost to me, unless I had read the story and knew what was happening. I found myself making up stories to fill in the gaps, sometimes close to the actual plot line sometimes very far off.
Then came captions, captions are a marvelous thing, filling in the blanks as the story unfolds. But even captions are inadequate as most sound effects are left out, and "somber music" or "intense music" given to explain the score playing silently in another realm of existence that I never experienced.
Most people don't realize how difficult hearing aids are for people to acquire. Most governmental assistance programs and even insurance companies refuse to cover them. A decent pair can easily start into the thousands of dollars and good ones can top ten thousand dollars. So personally I waited over twenty years to acquire a new pair after my last pair was lost.
After watching Boss Baby I decided that it was time to experience entertainment the way it is supposed to be watched. Hence this blog is born. It is a two front experience in its self. There is the words written on the page, then there is the video aspect of it too. Feel free to check out both sides of the story. And feel free to follow me on Facebook and Twitter (Nozombiefood) as I walk though these new steps rediscovering what the artists and actors were trying to portray.
Jim
Here we will look into the history of Entertainment Media, covering Books, Movies, Music, Video Games and more. The uniqueness of this blog is the fact that I am deaf. Not completely deaf but severely deaf, with my hearing range going into the Profound range on both ends of the spectrum. To barely hear, i mean where the loudest songs and movies were just whispers into my hears, my headphones had to be turned up all the way. Even then I would usually use my fingers to attempt to push the earphones deep into my ear canal in an attempt to bring the speaker closer to my ear drum.
A little over a month ago I received my first hearing aids in 20+ years and began to enjoy life as I had forgotten it could be. I am now able to communicate with other people, listen to the sounds of animals, the roar of the ocean waves, and those noisy things we call automobiles.
I never expected that I would be so drawn into entertainment media. I seriously had to tell myself to turn it off when I discovered that I too, could binge watch....
That being said, the day after I got my hearing aids I found myself in the movie theater with my family watching Boss Baby. It was the first movie in the theater I had ever watched with hearing aids.
I found myself with tears running the length of my cheeks. I laughed at myself thinking "This movie shouldn't be effecting me this way". Movie theaters have become a much more deaf friendly environment since they developed first the head phone sets and then later for people like myself with severe or profound hearing losses, the captions glasses.
As a child I saw three movies in the theater, The Rescuers, ET and The Return of the Jedi. Three movies, that is it. I also didn't watch TV or play video games as a child, because I always wanted to turn the TV up so I could "kinda" hear it. My parents were pretty quick to send me outside to play. I found myself in love with books, Comic Books. When other kids were watching Star Wars, Indiana Jones, or Star Trek in the theaters I was reading the comic books while sitting in the shade under an apple tree, crunching away on my latest pick. Where their experience was over in a couple hours, mine carried on for months as the movies were broken down into four to twelve part chapters. Others like Star Wars continued on after the initial story was done. I never heard the roar of Chewy, the beeps of Artoo, or the magical sounds the weapons made.
Later in life I saw these on video, but without captions most movies were lost to me, unless I had read the story and knew what was happening. I found myself making up stories to fill in the gaps, sometimes close to the actual plot line sometimes very far off.
Then came captions, captions are a marvelous thing, filling in the blanks as the story unfolds. But even captions are inadequate as most sound effects are left out, and "somber music" or "intense music" given to explain the score playing silently in another realm of existence that I never experienced.
Most people don't realize how difficult hearing aids are for people to acquire. Most governmental assistance programs and even insurance companies refuse to cover them. A decent pair can easily start into the thousands of dollars and good ones can top ten thousand dollars. So personally I waited over twenty years to acquire a new pair after my last pair was lost.
After watching Boss Baby I decided that it was time to experience entertainment the way it is supposed to be watched. Hence this blog is born. It is a two front experience in its self. There is the words written on the page, then there is the video aspect of it too. Feel free to check out both sides of the story. And feel free to follow me on Facebook and Twitter (Nozombiefood) as I walk though these new steps rediscovering what the artists and actors were trying to portray.
Jim
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