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You can see video here: https://www.instagram.com/p/BTq9szcjZJD/
Hollywood actor Chris Pratt has apologized for offending the deaf and hearing-impaired community after he asked his fans to turn up the volume on an Instagram video.
The controversy arose after the video featuring Pratt was posted to Marvel’s Facebook page promoting his latest movie, Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 2.”C’mon seriously dude,” the Hollywood star said in the video and asked people to ignore the subtitles in the clip. “You’d rather read those than hear me?”
The latter remark in particular offended some people on social media, claiming it offends the deaf and hearing-impaired people. The video was deleted shortly and Pratt took to Instagram to apologize for causing offense, Entertainment Weeklyreported.
In a video now seen by more than 4 million people, the actor apologized to the deaf and hearing-impaired community in sign language and a written apology was added as a comment.
“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,” Pratt wrote.
“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.”
He also urged Instagram to add “some kind of technology” that would automatically add subtitles to videos. “Why doesn’t Instagram have some kind of technology to automatically add subtitles to its videos? Or at least the option.”
This isn’t the first time Pratt came under fire for causing offense to someone. Recently, he was forced to apologize over a suggestion that “the voice of the average, blue-collar American” isn’t represented in movies and TV shows.
“I don’t see personal stories that necessarily resonate with me, because they’re not my stories,” he told Men’s Fitness. “I think there’s room for me to tell mine, and probably an audience that would be hungry for them. The voice of the average, blue-collar American isn’t necessarily represented in Hollywood.”
He later issued an apology following social media outrage, saying “That was actually a pretty stupid thing to say. I’ll own that. There’s a ton of movies about blue collar America.”