One thing that's really nice about silent movies/tv is that it's truely language agnostic. You'd be surprised just how much of the world knows "Mr Bean" for example. It's syndicated just about everywhere in the world and crosses language and culture barriers.
I'm really surprised silent movies/tv isn't more common. Many diverse nations have a need for language agnostic entertainment and it's trivial to syndicate such media throughout the world. Papua New Guinea for example struggles to accomodate all of it's languages. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Papua_New_Guinea . Silent media is helpful there to provide a common point of connection across the nation (they used Mr Bean as a mascott for awareness during covid).
> I'm really surprised silent movies/tv isn't more common.
Interesting comment.
I gave it some thought. One place you can see the dynamics and opportunity for a language agnostic entertainment like you describe is YouTube or TikTok. There are plenty of videos across all kinds of categories that are language free or nearly so.
As an 'intermediate example': Pucca has dialogue, but also very strong visual story-telling that means you can understand what's going on without the dialogue.
> Pucca became popular worldwide because it relies on visual and gag humor rather than language, much like The Pink Panther, the Road Runner and other pantomime cartoons. Though the series has since picked up dialog, translation has worked well enough and the series remains mostly silent. Both show leads, Garu and Pucca, are Heroic Mimes, though they do laugh, sigh and make other sounds.
Because a language barrier isn’t the only barrier and it isn’t even that important of a barrier for mass media: dubbing is cheap.
Yes, people all around the world know Mr Bean, but they know it as something British and foreign. Look at how many British shows get adapted for the American audience despite almost complete absence of a language barrier.
The last point is more controversial and political. But a common language for places like Papua New Guinea is probably far more important than trying to adapt everything for every tiny linguistic community. Even people who speak very common languages of advanced economies such as German or French are at great disadvantage if they don’t know English. It is very unlikely that someone is going to translate a graduate textbook into Ipili, or share a post how they got into YC in that language, or even share a video on YouTube how they fixed their pipe at home.
Making good 'visual storytelling' films requires some real talent, a deep understanding of the strengths of the film as a medium, and a lot of resources. In comparison, a 'talking heads' movie can be made with a few actors sitting in a single room without much regard for cinematography (hell, event a single actor sitting in a car may suffice, like in "Locke"). That's why there has been so few great 'visual storytellers' like Keaton and Chaplin.
I'm really surprised silent movies/tv isn't more common. Many diverse nations have a need for language agnostic entertainment and it's trivial to syndicate such media throughout the world. Papua New Guinea for example struggles to accomodate all of it's languages. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Papua_New_Guinea . Silent media is helpful there to provide a common point of connection across the nation (they used Mr Bean as a mascott for awareness during covid).