This chapter reconceives audio description (AD) as an ethically charged form of mediation. Through the comparative analysis of selected excerpts from the Netflix Originals Bridgerton (2020–) and Baby Reindeer (2024), it explores how scenes of sexual violence are described in English and Spanish AD tracks, and how each version negotiates the tension between Netflix’s neutrality mandate—inferred from its AD style guide’s emphasis on minimizing interpretive intervention and avoiding the censorship of sensitive material—and the ethical challenge of verbalizing the depicted assault. Situating AD within wider debates on the mediatization of sexuality (De Ridder 2017; Saunders 2020) and drawing on the concept of carnal sociology (Wacquant 2004, 2005), the chapter argues that when streaming platforms such as Netflix distribute sexual content, including depictions of sexual violence, they participate in the mediatization of sexuality while also mediating its moral framing through infrastructural modalities such as AD. Drawing on translation ethics (Spivak 2000; Tymoczko 2006; Venuti 2008) and disability studies (Kleege 2016; Thompson 2017), the analysis shows that “neutrality” operates as an institutional ideology that materializes unevenly across Netflix’s accessibility workflows and localization pipelines, producing divergent AD tracks in English and Spanish for the same coercive sex scenes. This comparison points to a structural paradox within Subscription Video-On-Demand (SVOD) platforms: a standard intended to ensure consistent accessibility may, in practice, produce uneven access across linguistic markets.

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Beyond Accessibility: Ethical Reflections on the Mediation and Mediatization of Sex in Audio Description

  • Alexandra J. Sanchez

摘要

This chapter reconceives audio description (AD) as an ethically charged form of mediation. Through the comparative analysis of selected excerpts from the Netflix Originals Bridgerton (2020–) and Baby Reindeer (2024), it explores how scenes of sexual violence are described in English and Spanish AD tracks, and how each version negotiates the tension between Netflix’s neutrality mandate—inferred from its AD style guide’s emphasis on minimizing interpretive intervention and avoiding the censorship of sensitive material—and the ethical challenge of verbalizing the depicted assault. Situating AD within wider debates on the mediatization of sexuality (De Ridder 2017; Saunders 2020) and drawing on the concept of carnal sociology (Wacquant 2004, 2005), the chapter argues that when streaming platforms such as Netflix distribute sexual content, including depictions of sexual violence, they participate in the mediatization of sexuality while also mediating its moral framing through infrastructural modalities such as AD. Drawing on translation ethics (Spivak 2000; Tymoczko 2006; Venuti 2008) and disability studies (Kleege 2016; Thompson 2017), the analysis shows that “neutrality” operates as an institutional ideology that materializes unevenly across Netflix’s accessibility workflows and localization pipelines, producing divergent AD tracks in English and Spanish for the same coercive sex scenes. This comparison points to a structural paradox within Subscription Video-On-Demand (SVOD) platforms: a standard intended to ensure consistent accessibility may, in practice, produce uneven access across linguistic markets.