Carla Johns (Extracts from the biography)

Extracts from

"The Carla Johns Biography:
The Underside of Subtitles"

(First published in New Writing from the North, Issue 3, CAC
Publications, 19 Berryden Road, Aberdeen, Scotland)

Chapter Three: The Genius Emerges

Newly possessed of a degree in English from the prestigious University
of Inverdon, Johns lost no time in employing this weapon in conjunction
with her most effective old one, her 10,000 volt smile (in her prime
described as capable of igniting a swimming pool), and soon landed a
job as a subtitler for Deif-but-nae-sae-Glaikit plc.

Signs of what was later to be recognised as the Johns genius were
detectable even in her earliest works. Harlotry in Harlem, which
otherwise would have been a mediocre (if not boring) filmic bonkbuster,
was elevated to cult status by the deft Johns touch. Take, for example,
the opening scene, where the original script read: "Oh, grunt, grunt,
pant, aaah, grunt, grunt, more! Gasp, pant, mmmmn! Oh yes!
Aaaah!"

Johns elegantly rendered this as "Grunt..."
Other subtitlers might have attempted a more literal transcription but
Johns clearly not only understood the dialogue profoundly, but also
summarised it with brilliance. Indeed, her use of the three dots
("Grunt...") lends the subtitle an extra suggestiveness that a bare
transcription would lack, so encouraging the audience to imagine for
themselves the verbal communication. Johns therefore at once appeals to
and stimulates the intelligence and creativity of her subtitle readers
while nonetheless conveying enough of the original script such that
there is no danger of the plot being lost.

It is worth adding here that the brevity of her subtitling, as well as
freeing the minds of viewers, liberates their eyes to enjoy the superb
method acting...

Chapter Thirty-One: Cookery Kook-ery and the Last Years - Sad Decay or
Glorious Blossoming?

The cookery craze that swept the lands-formerly-known-as-the-UK plc in
the third decade of the 21st century owed at least some of its momentum
to the erratic early manifestations of Johns' controversial "senility"
(or "creativity", "fully matured and liberated from conventionality"-
vide infra.) Animal rights organizations were quick to claim her as one
of their own, but several respected commentators have opined that her
subtitles on recipes requiring the use of bacon and ham, for example,
ostensibly referring to practices in the pig-farming industry,
constituted in reality an ironic veiled condemnation of child labour in
the arms industry, an issue which was a non-starter with any supporter
of neoliberal capitalism (a cause to which all inhabitants of the
lands-formerly-known-as-the-UK plc were compelled to swear allegiance,
or be sent to work cleaning the Blair memorial domes.)

Be that as it may, the sheer poetry of Johns' classic subtitling of the
Grumpyun TV How to boil an egg programme of 1/7/2034 will live forever
in collective consciousness. The original script began: "Take an
egg."

Johns transmuted this to: "Utilise an ovum expropriated from an
enslaved female of the genus Gallus, confined in a cage measuring 18 by
25 by 25 cm, suffering arthritis, a fractured femur and assaults from
its similarly constrained and therefore brutalized cagemate, and denied
access to connubial fulfilment in order to ensure the continued
production of unfertilized ovarian products for the profit of unfeeling
capitalist speculators and the fattening of you lardy lazy materialist
slobs out there! Go on, take an egg then, you cruel co-exploiters, and
much pleasure may it bring you!"

...

No period of Johns' long and productive career was as controversial as
the last five years. Debate still rages as to whether her
unconventional and erratic output was evidence of advancing senility or
of the flourishing of her unrivalled intellect no longer constrained by
the pressures of having to earn her living in a competitive commercial
world.

Others see a sinister third possibility: that far from being
humanitarian in motivation, her apparently righteous haverings were
evidence of her selling out to those very forces which on the surface
she appeared to condemn. This line of thought argues that the shock
value of her titles attracted such vastly increased viewership that
companies were happy to see themselves, their products and their
morality lampooned and savaged; they saw this as a small price to pay
for increased profits as the revelation of the sheer cunning of their
mercenary machinations caused their share prices to soar.

A good example would be when the then prime manager of the
lands-formerly-known-as-the-UK plc was announcing the creation of a new
youth employment scheme. Johns' subtitles for her speech read: "Of
course I am in favour of this scheme because when I retire from the
government I shall receive an extremely lucrative directorship with the
torture baton-manufacturing company which will benefit most from the
tax breaks offered by the government to fund these bogus jobs which
amount to little more than slave labour and which will not be protected
by any trade union rights and will decrease the number of real jobs
available, enormously boost this company's profits and force other
companies to sack workers and reduce their employees' rights under the
pressure of speculation.
"Sell shares in other companies and buy them in this one now and if
you're poor you can go to hell because we have less revenue to help
you. You'll die soon enough anyway and you're too badly educated to
vote or read this even, and you certainly don't have enough money to
bribe me you poor idiots, unlike Lord Thrashem, the Chairman of the
noble torture baton enterprise!"

Indeed, there are some who go so far as to accuse Johns of receiving
covert payment from the business establishment for her attacks on the
business establishment! They point to her retirement to an extremely
expensive luxury resort on St. Lucia as evidence for this theory, as
well as to the 93-year-old's apparently suddenly acquired string of
playboy suitors in their twenties...

The last word was, of course, Johns'. She arranged for the following
subtitles to appear on the televised version of her funeral: "Look on
my works, ye mighty, and scratch yer daft wee heids."