I note that the FBI investigated “Louie, Louie” for dire lyrics back in the day (as discussed by the Perfect Master; the conclusion of the investigation is summarized here:
In 1963, a rock group named the Kingsmen recorded the song “Louie, Louie.” The popularity of the song and difficulty in discerning the lyrics led some people to suspect the song was obscene. The FBI was asked to investigate whether or not those involved with the song violated laws against the interstate transportation of obscene material. The limited investigation lasted from February to May 1964 and discovered no evidence of obscenity.
I would expect anyone doing a Superbowl Halftime show to “tone down” certainly types of lyrics for the “family audience”. In the past I’ve heard complaints from ardent fans of this or that “edgy” artist complain about watered-down performances for that, but honestly, that’s the only way that’s going to happen.
Remember when the Rolling Stones sang “Let’s Spend Some TIme Together” instead of “Let’s Spend the Night Together” on the Ed Sullivan show?
Toby Keith’s radio version of “Red Solo Cup” where the word “vegetables” is placed as an obvious replacement for “testicles”?
Bowdlerizing lyrics is nothing new, and there’s even an appropriate time and place for such.
I believe some Congress critters who either don’t speak Spanish, are seeking to influence constituents who don’t speak Spanish, or both are attempting to generate some outrage.
I am a hearing person and I always use them. About 25% of watchers use them- YMMV. Accents are hard to understand sometimes, and sometimes people talk very fast. I do have tinnitus, and some issues with high range hearing, but since i read so fast, I prefer CC.
When Lenny Bruce used Yiddish to sneak offensive words into his act, he didn’t do it by performing the whole act in Yiddish; he did it by replacing single English words with Yiddish words. In front of audiences he could count on to be about 90% “in the know,” and the remaining 10% to be 100% without Smart phones in order to Google up the meanings of those words before they forgot them.
The fact of the matter, though, was that there also was a sort of culture of “Shtup? you don’t know the meaning of that, Mr. Congressman? How can someone as educated and well-read as you not have come across that word?” “Oooooh! shtup! I thought you said shtip! which I know for sure is not a word.”
Representatives these days would say something like “If I don’t need it to order steak & potatoes, I don’t know it, so you will have to edumacate me, son.”
Partially. The lyrics to the music were there. The parts where they spoke just got the “(Speaking in Spanish)” treatment. I found that a bit annoying. Surely all of it was scripted and approved. And thus the same process could have been used for those parts.
Not that my somewhat forgotten semester of Spanish in college was enough to really read what was provided.
The nice thing about the Spanish closed captions is they provide a nice official transcript of what he actually said; the words everyone heard and ever Spanish speaker could understand net of mumbles and such.
Any English speaker can run that transcript through Google translate and get at least close to the English equivalent.
If indeed there was all this horrible stuff the RW propaganda people are going on about, this is an excellent way to find it. Or to debunk them as lying liars who lie. Which the FCC just did.
Of course the RW propaganda people have no intention of telling their dupes the truth abut that. They’ll just not mention the FCC finding and continue spewing the lie until their dupes all believe it.
People like the Distinguished Gentleman and a whole bunch of the people butthurt over Benito’s show, and for that matter a million Karens failing to mind their own in the checkout lane at Walmart, start from the premise that those speaking another language are “getting away with” saying something “bad” and especially something bad about them.
But, I’m going to bring up one thing más in this, a speculation that however I find extremely likely:
That this was a case where Latino or Puerto Rican “Christian” conservatives went to various Anglo allies (probably at their request) waving the full original club or album version lyrics sheets of a couple of his older rap/regguetón tracks of which fragments were included in the hits medley. Tracks which, unsurprisingly for a young rapper, in that unedited club version, hell yeah, have some very crude content. Surely expecting the Trump FCC would smite him and the network and the NFL. And the Congressman listened.
And I find this credible because to this day I have some of these people in our socials copying verbatim the inappropriate full versions and complaining “Look at this, THIS is what you’re celebrating!” without any sense of irony that they are posting it on clearnet where kids can read it.
I know there’s a way to translate lyrics, but first, you have to get a copy in Spanish, which I don’t have, and I didn’t have any interest in getting. I actually know a little Spanish and could match what he was singing to the closed captions, even though I didn’t understand it. What irked me was that the closed captioning would appear on my screen a second or two before he sang those lyrics, which meant they knew what he was going to sing in advance, and wrote the closed caption to match it, and also which means they had no intention of translating anything for those of us watching the game who aren’t fluent Spanish speakers. It may have been part of his contract that he didn’t want English translations of his songs, and that’s why they did it that way. I just thought it was stupid, given that I bet the overwhelming majority of the TV audience had no idea what he was singing about.
This has not been true in the past. I specifically remember finding the other CC channels on my TV and finding that (Spanish) translated captions were often provided on other channels.
I also note that the settings in the streaming app did not say “English (for the Hearing Impaired)” or similar, as they usually do, and that the captions only included words, not the other sounds usually indicated in those types of captions.
I do know for sure that even those types of captions are not solely for those who are Deaf, i.e. part of the Deaf community—which are primarily born deaf or severely hard of hearing—but for all who are hearing impaired, or would otherwise not be able to hear clearly.
Based on my experience with streaming, I also expected the song lyrics to be provided in English. I had not heard the scuttlebutt about that not occurring. That is what I encountered repeatedly lately. In fact, when I watched Encanto, the song towards the end that is deliberately in Spanish was translated for me. I remember other cases where I found it an interesting to choice.
To be clear, I am not upset or anything. I was just disappointed. I enjoyed the show less. When I have performed in other languages, translations were always available. I suspect the choice was Bad Bunny’s own. It seems consistent with his general attitude and in particular those lyrics near the end.
Also, while I get not putting the captions the bottom of the screen (over the scoring display), it is annoying that they don’t at least put them at the top, instead of having them cover up people’s heads and obscuring the view so often.
Please do not read the length of my post or the number of thoughts therein as any indication of how important I found any of this.
Eh. The planet has been listening to Bing, Frank, Elvis, the Beatles, the Supremes, Fleetwood Mac, Dolly, Willie, Barry White, the BeeGees, Zep, Springsteen, Styx, Prince, Michael Jackson, Nirvana,'NSync, etc. for going on 90 years with no simultaneous translation. We lived.
They all were enjoyed by non-English speaking publics around the world. Similarly, the public in the US can enjoy a show in a language they do not understand, and a lot of people did. Some people need to lighten up.
It’s been a while, but I believe so. Not the Super Bowl specifically, but I do seem to remember it.
Though to be clear, my point was just to argue against the claim that closed captions exist solely for the Deaf or even otherwise hearing impaired viewers.
I do know that I would not have been surprised at all at a Spanish caption stream or even second audio source for this event. Or, I wouldn’t have except NBCUniversal had their Telemundo station doing its own show, providing for their Spanish viewers. I suspect they did include some translation (of, say, officiating and such), and that they did transcribe the speech during Bad Bunny’s show.
Interesting. I did not see such an option on NBC’s Peacock livestream, and my assumption was that it was because Spanish speaking viewers were expected to watch on Telemundo.
If such was provided, then it would seem very odd not to have Spanish captions for that SAP.
Could well be. I can’t speak for whether a streaming-only channel works any differently from an OTA/cable network feed; all I can say is that the Spanish SAP feed is commonly mentioned at the start of NFL game broadcasts on the traditional networks.
It also wouldn’t surprise me that, for the Super Bowl, NBC had a full Spanish-language announcing crew as part of a full simulcast on Telemundo, to parallel their English-language crew on NBC, but that the SAP feeds for regular-season games aren’t as fully-featured.
