Episode 98 – Back-Room Boy part 1
Dumped by his girlfriend, civil servant Arthur Pilbeam (Arthur Askey) asks to be transferred far away from women, but when he reaches a spooky Scottish lighthouse, females are not far behind. 1942.
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Original movie from Internet Archive (contains brief nudity)
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Origin of “back-room boy”
Greenwich Time Signal @Wikipedia
December 22nd, 2010 at 8:02 pm
The annotation indicates that there is “brief nudity,” but you’d never know it from the narration. Exactly where did this “brief nudity” occur and what do we see? What blind people do not need is yet another descriptive service that suddenly becomes much less descriptive when it comes to sex/nudity.
December 22nd, 2010 at 9:55 pm
The sequence containing the reference begins at about 21:25 in the episode. In the script, it goes like this:
He steps around it to a fireplace with a Victorian woman’s bathing picture hanging beside it. “Women.” He turns it over to find a topless picture! “Oh!” Taking it down, he puts it in the fireplace and wipes his hands.
I thought the phrase “topless picture” would evoke well enough in less than a second of time that a) the other picture was of a woman, since the first picture was; and b) she was bare-breasted (meaning visible breasts with nipples). “Topless” was the quickest, most efficient way to say that; and I only bothered because while the glimpse is very brief and from medium-distance, it was noticable enough when I first watched it that I thought anyone else sighted could notice it. That made it relevant.
Since so far, the podcast has not had any episodes which could be listed as “explicit,” I haven’t had much experience with advisories. So I decided that if there was something that would have merited an advisory on North American network television for sighted people, I would do the same here. The image was brief but definitely “topless”, so the advisory went in.
There was nothing held back in the description of the image. I used a term that I felt would most concisely suggest exactly what was being seen. I’m sure there will be films done here in the future which will allow for more description, and I’ll do my best on it. Likely then, the greater issues of subjectivity in description will come up. So be it.
Thanks for your comment.
December 23rd, 2010 at 4:11 pm
Thanks for your thoughtful response. As an adventitiously blind man, I approach audio-description from a specific perspective. First, having seen in detail, I like as much description as possible – not just a vague generality like WGBH/DVS and others use, (e.g., she removes her bra), but as concrete a description as possible (e.g., she removes her bra to reveal her large rose-tipped breasts – if time permits, of course). Second, in a similar vain, description can be much more vivid and enriching with the addition of a few well-placed words (e.g., instead of “she wears bra and panties,” one could say, “she wears black lace bra and panties,” or, instead of, “she places her foot on his chest,” one could say, “she places her slender bare foot on his chest”). Third, after going blind, I have encountered a consistent anti-sexual bias in the blind industry wherein sexually-related materials in accessible formats have been scant and/or censored into innocuousness. Fourth, I have crusaded for increasing the visual literacy among blind people – giving blind people detailed descriptions of things, people, places, et al, that sighted people access on a daily basis and incorporate into their visual lexicon as a matter of course – and sexual/erotic images are a legitimate aspect of this visual literacy. Fifth, I have encouraged those in the blind industry to treat blind people like “normal” adults who are actually interested in sexual/erotic materials/activities and not like children who must be protected from grown-up images. Thank you for your hard work!