Reading On-Screen Words to the Audience

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SnowWhite92

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Is it just me, or have too many cartoons nowadays given in to reading any on-screen text to the audience? For example, on The Simpsons, if Homer has to read something, instead of just having the camera focused on the text (say, if he's reading out of a book), he'll read it aloud as well. More specifically, the episode "Homer and Ned's Hail Mary Pass" features a scene where Tom Brady drives onto the field with a sign that says "Everyone sucks but me". That's fine and all, but then he has to go and say "Everyone sucks but me!", like we are stupid and have to have everything read to us.

Some anime series do this, too. The title appears, and one of the main characters reads it to us. Yeah thanks, I got it when I read it in one second.

Maybe I'm just being uptight and oversensitive about this, but does anyone else feel insulted by this practice? I don't need text read to me like I'm illiterate. Furthermore, it makes those kind of written gags feel dumbed down, and doesn't let them speak for themselves. Imagine if Bugs Bunny held up one of his "Monotonous, isn't it?" (or any variant) signs and read it aloud to the audience- it loses some of its appeal.
 
Not so much insulted but annoyed. I mean consider one moment in Little Britain where...
Somebody brings a gigantic arrow sign with the word "****" over it and points it toward 10 Downing Street. No mention of the word, just Tom Baker's off-colour commentary droning while the officer tries to get it out of the way, but can't leave his post
Oh come now, I like it for its aesthetic appeal. It punctuates the mood, most especially in shows like One Piece where something happens at the start and then, BOOM, title.
 
I absolutely agree in this example, especially if applied to the Wile E. Coyote cartoons.

Really, the whole reading aloud thing can be hit and miss. It depends on how the character says it and when. However, it can often be very annoying, and showing text for a couple of seconds so that you can easily read it and then reading it aloud woukd definetly end up sounding stupid and not help at all. There really should be just text or just dialogue.
 
Agreed. It's like pop culture is being dumbed down in that way.

With The Simpsons, though, it's even worse than this thread describes. Remember in the long long ago when not only was this not the case, but there were also little EXTRA things you could catch and laugh at if you were quick enough? For example, maybe the sign "SPRINGFIELD RETIREMENT HOME" outside on the lawn, plus a sign with smaller text underneeth it saying something like, "only 3 escapes today."
 
I think it's because there is an increasingly large number of people in this nation who can't read, or at least can't do it well enough to make a difference. Not to mention all the immigrants, legal and otherwise, who learn spoken English long before they can read it. Network television often panders to the lowest common denominator.
 
Where have you been. Most animes I know of have someone reading the title card. Mainly in the original japanese version. Dragon Ball does it all the time. I gotta admit, I kinda like it.
 
It's almost like a form of Exposistion, which is bad. Most of the animes I can't watch is because they spend most of their time explaining to the audiance what they are doing instead of just showing us what's happening. When an anime does this it just looks real cheap on the animators part. (We spent all our budjet on this huge mechanical worrior who's only going to be seem moving in five different ways for 30 seconds so we have to cut alot of the characters movement in the episode.) Part of art is to let the audiance think about what is happening and be surpised with the outcome.

Courage the Cowardly Dog (and any other show that doesn't reply too much on verbal humor) is a great excample of art direction. The story is told through the actions and expressions of the character and it's minimal use of dialog and exposision leads to the shock of the outcome later. Not saying the show isn't guilty of having "text read back to the audiance", the computer Courage checks out will read back what it is saying. Part of that is because the computer sounds so funny when it talks, it has such a snark attitude that it's ok. Courage himself will awften say outloud what he is typing, manly because it's cheaper to have his arms and fingers swinging about then to mundanly have text spelled out for us across the screen.

Simpsons I belive is one of those shows that routinly has ADRs after the show (One of the most annoying things I notice them doing is that that lips will move to a set of words then someone had them come back in and redub the voice with a different saying, which turns out to be less funny then what it looks like they were originally going to say). Additional Digital Recording sessions is when the show is done animated and the voice actors come back in and add things or redub things to fit with the animation better. The Simspsons VAs were known best for thier adlibbing and alot of jokes have come to be because the VA just started spewing madness into the mike. It's a good chance that if Dan said that line in a funny way, it was why they desided to let him say it. That like "Everyone sucks but me." also pays homage to Granpa Simpsons' line "Every genereation sucks but ours!" who was voiced by the same guy.

It could come down to the fact that most people just don't like reading, and if you want your show to be brodcasted in other countries, it's better to have the voice actor read it for you. It might have to do with money, if the VAs contract says that they are paid by the word (they wish) they are going to get every oppertunity to start saying random things.
 
LOL, it is pretty sad that people don't like reading. I was watching that Gym Partner Monkey show and there was a book that one of the characters was given that had a weird title, and seeing it alone would make you laugh out loud, but they had to actually read it aloud.
 
Actually it's called ADR.

The worst ADR I've ever heard on the Simpsons was the "Don't forgot Ken Star!" line in season 10's Treehouse episode. They even mention how lame it was on the commerntary.
 
I remember "Rocko's Modern Life" did this all the time. But at least they were satirical about it - they'd usually have the characters read the signs really slowly, as if they were grade school kids giving a recital or something; sort of a knock at the idea that the kids in the audience are dumb enough to need everything on screen actually said out loud for them.
 
I think a lot of it's probably done because a lot of people do something else while watching TV. They want to make sure that people can still follow the story and jokes even if they've got one eye on the computer, the ironing board, or their dinner.
 
Well, with Animes, they usually need to stretch out the manga so they don't get ahead of it. That's why stuff like Naruto and One Piece have boring filler story in between exciting story arcs. They explain a lot in the manga too, but they're usually just a one or two pannel explaination. Takes a couple minutes to read, but that's because they have space restrictions, not time restrictions. Sometimes it gets bothersome. This is why I hate Yugioh. That's the worst offender.


I hate when they add in lines that needn't be there, and the characters don't move their mouths. it's terrible.

I'm starting to think reading signs and stuff out loud is translation proof. I've seen a lot of Spanish cartoons in which a random low pitched voice reads a sign or something.
 
The "reading stuff on any and all signs" thing in cartoons dates back to the earliest Hanna-Barbera cartoons, where whenever a sign appeared, Huck, Yogi or Fred would wind up reading it; this stretched even to Scooby Doo 's time era.

I always wondered why they had the characters reading such signs; my wild guesses:

- Early TV animation was A) limited and B) akin to illustrated radio at times, and thus, maybe they had some sort of radio play-writing mentality (where everything must be spelled out in an audio-only medium)?

- A heavier emphasis on dialogue in early TV cartoons over the visual aspects, given the limited animation?

If anyone has an answer, I'd like to hear it...

-B.
 
Perhaps they were concerned that people might not be able to read the signs on-screen, due to the picture quality not being as good back then. Maybe not, it's just a guess. I suspect your "hang-over from radio days" theory might be true.
 
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