Wednesday, May 3, 2017

Warning: Graphic Content

Have a look at this video by the Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft, on the rationality of belief in God. It was made as part of a series called Prager U, a venture of Denis Prager, an American conservative intellectual.

It's not the content of the video that I want to talk about (or complain about, rather). It's the presentation. It follows an all-too-popular style whereby matchstick men and other graphics slide across the screen, and captions appear word-by-word in order to emphasize the most important things the speaker is saying.

This video from the Iona Institute, making the case for traditional marriage, does the same thing.

Michael Voris's Vortex videos aren't so bad, but they still go in for on-screen captions-- as though the viewer was in danger of missing the point.

I find these conventions maddening. Indeed, they render the videos unwatchable for me. The cumbersomeness of the captions is like walking behind someone who is dawdling. And they're so patronizing. Why? Why? Why?

I like Youtube videos  where the person is just talking to camera. I like to see somebody's face.

(Denis Prager came to my rescue when I was wretchedly sick, earlier this year. I wasn't up for anything except lying in bed listening to Youtube videos, and I needed a long-play one because I wasn't up to changing them, either. I found a five hour long interview with him which was just stimulating enough to stop me from dying of boredom. He's too much of a libertarian for my taste, but I like his voice.)

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