Zzzap

Hello Blogsters - which is a mix between blog and monsters. Today will not be a two part blog, so hopefully it will be a little less cumbersome to read. Today I wanted to talk to you about a show I used to watch called Zzzap.

Now me and my little sister used to watch the show because it was great. It was set up like a comic book page except each square was filled with a different character. The Camera would zoom in on these characters and cut to a short sketch about each. There was a bunch we liked, like 'The Handymen' which where two hands that would make something crafty (which we later realized belonged to the same person) and 'Daisy Dares', where Daisy would get kids off the street and dare them to do things. If they were good at it, the kids would win, if they were bad that round went to Daisy.

One amazing fact that I didn't realize about Zzzap was that the show was designed for deaf kids. Looking back it all makes sense, there used to be little signs that would pop up instead of actual dialogue and the show was based around visual comedy, or art. In fact Niel Buchanan who did Art Attack, played Smart Arty a french painter in the show. When I found this out it got me thinking.

One of my best friends Zina, her mum is actually deaf and she used to take Zina with her to the cinema to see the shows that were subtitled. Something I remember quite vividly is that they used to go very late at night. Now that wasn't all that unsual in their family, in fact it was not uncommon to be eating cake at midnight if you were staying round, but the one time I did ask Zina why they were going so late she explained that they have very few showings of newer movies with subtitles because they think it will distract regular viewers.

Yes, this means that if you are deaf it is especially difficult to go see a film, particularly if it is new. Now being deaf is hard enough, I can't imagine how difficult it must be, especially as a child. But to alienate a whole group of people simply because others might get irritated by seeing subtitles under their film, seems a little selfish.

Zzap managed to be a show that catered to both Deaf and non deaf kids, and I may be a little dim but I'm pretty sure there were others out there like me and my sister that just enjoyed it because it was a good show. The whole thing really got to me so I wrote an e-mail to the customer service at Cinemax venting my concerns, and immediately got told I would recieve a reply within one buisness day, which makes me realize I must be very important to them.

I think I might see if I can do something about this, of course it will take that whole buisness day for me to figure out how exactly I'm going to convince a huge corporation to add subtitles to their premiere events, but hey Michael Moore got Walmart to stop selling ammo so I should at least give it a go.

Big Hugs to everyone

Meryl

PS: to Gustav, sorry I missed you out in the birthday shout outs - but see you get whole individual one to yourself in this blog, please try and be good this year, or don't, your call xx

PPS: If you want to watch Zzzap it's up on you tube click here