"I have people in my life who are hearing-impaired, and the last thing in the world I would want to do is offend them."
Chris Pratt has apologised for being “incredibly insensitive” to deaf and hearing-impaired people.
In a Facebook video that has since been taken down – reportedly from the Marvel Facebook page – the Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol 2 star encouraged viewers to “turn up the volume and not just ‘read the subtitles'”.
Posting a new video to his own Instagram, Pratt made a formal apology in American Sign Language, while writing in a comment that his wording was “incredibly insensitive to the many folks out there who depend on subtitles”.
He added: “I want to apologize. I have people in my life who are hearing-impaired, and the last thing in the world I would want to do is offend them or anybody who suffers from hearing loss or any other disability… In the future I’ll try to be a little less ignorant about it.”
Pratt also used the opportunity to encourage Instagram to add a subtitling feature to the app: “GET ON IT INSTAGRAM!!!” he wrote. “Put closed captioning on your app. #CCinstaNow“. See the full post below:
) So when I made a video recently with subtitles, and requested that people turn up the volume and not just "read the subtitles" it was so people wouldn't scroll past the video on mute, thus watching and digesting the information in the video. HOWEVER, I realize now doing so was incredibly insensitive to the many folks out there who depend on subtitles. More than 38 million Americans live with some sort of hearing disability. So I want to apologize. I have people in my life who are hearing-impaired, and the last thing in the world I would want to do is offend them or anybody who suffers from hearing loss or any other disability. So truly from the bottom of my heart I apologize. Thanks for pointing this out to me. In the future I'll try to be a little less ignorant about it. Now… I know some of you are going to say, "Hey! Chris only apologized because his publicist made him!" Well. That is not the case. As always I control my social media. Nobody else. And I am doing this because I'm actually really sorry. Apologies are powerful. I don't dole them out Willy-Nilly. This is one of those moments where I screwed up and here's me begging your pardon. I hope you accept my apology. And on that note. Why doesn't Instagram have some kind of technology to automatically add subtitles to its videos? Or at least the option. I did a little exploring and it seems lacking in that area. Shouldn't there be an option for closed captioning or something? I've made them lord knows how much money with my videos and pictures. Essentially sharing myself for free. I know they profit. So… GET ON IT INSTAGRAM!!! Put closed captioning on your app. #CCinstaNow
Pratt recently explained where he thought DC’s Suicide Squad went wrong. Speaking to io9, Pratt said: “I really like all the Warner Bros. movies. I think they’re really cool and I’m not a real tough critic on those movies.”
However, he added: “But one of the flaws might have been they were introducing too many characters in Suicide Squad. They spent 10 minutes telling us why should we care about these characters, rather than creating trilogies for each character and convincing us to care about the characters.”
The post Chris Pratt apologises for ‘incredibly insensitive’ comments appeared first on NME.
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