Deaf Culture in Hollywood: American on Screen

Abbey Marra

University of Rochester Department of Visual and Cultural Studies

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Prior to 1965, the elusive term, “Deaf culture” was primarily recognized within Deaf communities. The majority of the hearing world viewed deafness simply as the condition of hearing loss and wondered how a group who did not claim any particular geographical space, religion, literature, or cuisine could be called “cultural.” Carol Padden and Tom Humphries sought to define “Deaf culture” in their book, Deaf in America: Voices from a Culture (1988). They used the lowercase deaf when referring to the audiological condition of hearing loss and the capital Deaf when referring to a particular group of Deaf people who have a shared history, set of beliefs, practices, and most importantly, a common language— (ASL). Deaf characters have been portrayed on screen since the silent film era, but representations of them in Hollywood are routinely misguided and/or pushed to the margins. Directors regularly cast hearing actors in Deaf roles, with the assumption that a performer must only learn basic signs to properly convey the Deaf experience. This recurring practice can be seen as recently as 2017, with the casting of Julianne Moore in a prominent Deaf role in Todd Haynes’s Wonderstruck. Randa Haines’s film adaptation of the Broadway play, Children of a Lesser God (1986) achieved wide critical acclaim after featuring Deaf actor Marlee Matlin in the leading role, for which she went on to win an Academy Award. But while ASL features prominently in the film, its presence is significantly diminished by the fact that a hearing character is responsible for the telling of a Deaf protagonist’s story. In contrast, during the second season of Aziz Ansari’s Master of None (2017), a Deaf storyline is filmed in total silence using only ASL, featuring Deaf actors in Deaf roles. Until the entertainment industry recognizes that Deaf identity is comprised of more than hearing loss, Deaf culture will continue to be misrepresented in the primary medium in which it can be fully expressed. One of the most popular misconceptions about Deaf individuals remains that deafness is merely the absence of hearing. Richard Senghas and Leila Monaghan point out that “an estimated 6.2 million people currently living are prelingually deaf, and many have formed Deaf communities, often with distinct languages and cultural practices” (70).

Furthermore, studies involving Deaf people “reveal issues of general anthropological significance,” even to those who might not have a particular interest in issues of deafness (71). Senghas and Monaghan list organization, identity, culture, ideology, and sociolinguistic variation as examples of issues that permeate studies of linguistic communities. They argue that deafness is, at least in part, a social construction, and that “understanding the complex nature of communities with Deaf members requires attending to how people use and think about language” (70). American Sign Language in particular plays a significant role in sociocultural studies of Deaf communities, and it is imperative that those in the hearing majority actively seek ways in which to better understand the culture of ASL. Until the 1970s, members of the Deaf population referred to their language as simply, “the sign language.” With the advent of scientific studies on sign language varieties, as well as ’s publication of a sign language dictionary, it soon acquired the name, “American Sign Language” (Padden 54). This new terminology placed ASL in the class of human languages, while also commanding a different view of its history. The redefinition also made it clear that an abundance of sign languages existed throughout the world, each with its own history and grammatical structure, from to Ukrainian sign language. (59) American Sign Language is mainly practiced in the United States and some parts of Canada, and is distinct from other English-based sign languages, including . In Inside Deaf Culture, Padden and Humphries reframe the practices of Deaf communities as a “Deaf culture,” with the idea of “culture” giving them a useful construct for describing the varied lives of Deaf people in and around the United States (Padden and Humphries 67). Adam Kuper observes that the word “culture” should be “defined in opposition to something else,” and the new term allowed the previous description of Deaf people—that their behaviors were the consequence of them not being able to hear—to begin to fade away (67). Padden and Humphries cringe at scientific studies which tried to match degrees of hearing loss with specific social behaviors, suggesting an uncomplicated relationship between hearing loss and behavior. They argue instead that the specific and particular way of being Deaf is significantly shaped by a set of shared histories (68). Some of the very first films made in the United States featured two men eating pie, an elephant performing tricks, and a Deaf woman reciting the “Star Spangled Banner” in sign language. Dated 1902, the latter was among a collection of segments made by Thomas Edison to demonstrate the “potential for moving picture films” (56). Previously, film had only been accessible as viewed through a kinetoscope, the drawback being that only one individual could use it at a time. But once the vitascope was introduced, it allowed moving picture images to be displayed on a larger screen, widening the audience. In choosing a Deaf woman as one of his first subjects, Edison was able to convey the potential of film to communicate and show the body in . Nearly ten years later, the National Association for the Deaf (NAD) endeavored to produce their own films in hopes of advancing sign language and promoting Deaf people’s experiences throughout the United States (Figure 1). They wanted to show that Deaf people had something to say and that they could say it in their own language (92). What remains is a remarkable set of images that preserves what sign language looked like at the turn of century. The films featured no captions other than the names of the signers on title cards, and aimed to illustrate sign language in its purest form. The NAD films have “provided linguists with a treasure trove of

examples of how signs have changed over time” (99). Some signs are emblems of the era, such as the sign for DOLLAR changing from a circular movement for “coin” to a change in hand motion to reflect bills. Similarly, one of the participants in an NAD film signs the word, TELEPHONE by holding two objects, one for the speaker device and the other for listening.’

Figure 1: George Veditz, president of the NAD, signs in The Preservation of the Sign Language (1913)

The silent film era was a moment in time when both hearing and Deaf audiences could enjoy going to the cinema on a comparatively equal basis, with the exception of an orchestral soundtrack. During this era, a sizeable group of Deaf actors found work in Hollywood, including Charlie Chaplin’s long-time Deaf friend and actor, Granville Redmond. Deaf performers normally played hearing characters on screen, and when they were cast in Deaf roles, they were often reduced to stereotypes that painted them as victims who were alienated from society, depressed, or entirely dependent upon others (Schuchman 43). Unfortunately, stereotypical images of the Deaf population “survived the demise of the silent film era and continued to perpetuate misinformation and false images of Deaf people and their emotions to the American public” (29). Since most of those in the hearing majority rarely encountered Deaf individuals, “the movies exerted a powerful negative influence comparable to similar derogatory film stereotypes experienced by women and a wide variety of ethnic groups” (29). As Hollywood made the transition to “talking pictures,” Deaf actors who had previously worked in entertainment found it much harder to find work and were often pushed to the margins. Soon, hearing actors began to play Deaf characters in stereotyped forms. This common practice continued for decades in Hollywood. In 1969, Alan Arkin was nominated for an Oscar for his portrayal of Deaf man John Singer in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (Miller 1969). One New York Times film critic praised his performance as “extraordinary, deep and sound; his use of his hands seems quite normal and personal, and when he walks in the night, talking, with his hands to himself, it seems a perfect dramatic expression of what the thinking is” (68). Schuchman argues that this review provides a

perfect example for “the abysmal lack of understanding of deafness and the power and beauty of sign language” (69). Hearing actors’ signing was awkward at best, with words often misspelled or signs done incorrectly. After playing Deaf Smith in Deaf Smith and Johnny Ears (Cavara 1973), Anthony Quinn observed that “if every actor could play a deaf- mute once, it would be the best thing that could happen to him. I had to react to everything and everyone around me. It was a terrific experience for an actor” (104). Similarly, Alan Arkin recounted his experience while working on the set of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, and recognized that Deaf people are “as multicolored and varied emotionally as they can be,” but the “one thing that the affliction does seem to cause is a great sense of isolation.” These reactions suggest that the actors appear to have neglected any study of Deaf culture or its rich history, focusing “on the absence of hearing, not on deafness” (104). In a direct response to complaints by the Deaf community about Hollywood’s failure to cast Deaf actors in roles for Deaf characters, filmmakers cast newcomer Marlee Matlin in the critically acclaimed Children of a Lesser God. It was the first time in nearly sixty years that a Deaf person had been cast in a major role in Hollywood (82). In fact, Deaf persons were cast in all of the film’s Deaf roles. First written as a stage play by Mark Medoff and later appearing on Broadway where it won numerous Tony awards, the film received enthusiastic support after its release. Matlin went on to win an Academy Award in the leading actress category, and William Hurt was nominated for his performance. Despite its critical acclaim, the film exemplifies the previous history of the depiction of deafness in the movies: even though the protagonist is a Deaf woman, Deaf culture is misrepresented. Hurt plays James Leeds, a speech pathology teacher hired to teach Deaf students to speak with their voices in order to be successful, and Matlin plays Sarah, a member of the custodial staff at the school who has no desire to speak (Figure 2). After some mutual disdain for one another, the pair falls in love, and Sarah quits her job as a janitor and moves in with James. The remainder of the film follows their tumultuous relationship as they try to cope with vastly different worldviews.

Figure 2: James attempts to convince Sarah to speak in Children of a Lesser God (1986)

For the duration of the film, James interprets all of Sarah’s ASL dialogue out loud, presumably to himself, but clearly for the benefit of a hearing film audience. There are no subtitles. The first time we encounter Sarah is from James’s point of view. While waiting in line at the school cafeteria, he hears a crash from the kitchen, and peers in to see Sarah angrily signing to the cook. Looking on in amusement, he stands at the buffet line interpreting her dialogue out loud to himself: “Take your pots…and your lousy food, and shove them…doesn’t mince words does she?” Sarah emerges from the kitchen and stops to see him smirk at her before marching off in a huff. This first interaction sets the tone for the film—the hearing audience will be forced to rely on James to interpret for Sarah. During more intimate scenes, such as those in which the couple argue, this technique becomes especially jarring, as James’s interpreting out loud would be utterly ridiculous in the moment. After a heated argument that ends in angry sex, he speaks for Sarah as they attempt to resolve their differing views on deafness, but to no avail (Sarah’s ASL lines are in italics, although James is the one speaking her dialogue):

JAMES: Yeah? What have you just decided? No one’s ever gonna speak for you again? Come on. How are you gonna manage?

SARAH: Everyone’s always told me who I am, and I let them—she wants, she thinks— and most of the time they were wrong, they had no idea what I said, wanted, thought, and now they won’t.

JAMES: Well that’s alright, I’ll buy that. No I won’t, how could I? Because I love you! Love has nothing to do with it? That’s wonderful. Then what the hell have we been doing?! Watch your hands? It’s hard to avoid them.

Sarah goes on to explain the important distinction between the sign for “to connect” and “relationship,” which look similar but have completely different connotations when done in a certain way. She longs to be in a relationship where two people can have separate identities, but also be one:

“But you think for me, think for Sarah, as though there were no “I.” She will be with me. Quit her job, learn how to play poker, leave Orin’s party, learn how to speak. That’s all you, not me. Until you let me be an “I,” the way you are, you can never come inside my silence and know me.”

While it seems as though her heartfelt speech should resonate with James, it is clear that he has either not understood or refuses to acknowledge her point of view. He proceeds to simultaneously yell and sign at her (Figure 3):

“Well, that’s all very moving. But how are you going to manage? You can lock yourself back in your precious silent castle…but you know what? I think you’re lying. I don’t think that you think being Deaf is so goddamn wonderful. I think you’re scared to death to try. I think it is nothing but stupid pride that is keeping you from speaking right. You want to be on your own, you don’t want to be pitied? Then you learn to read my lips and use that little mouth of yours for something besides

showing me that you’re better than hearing girls in bed. Read my lips, what am I saying? You wanna talk to me? Then you learn my language. Did you understand that?”

Figure 3: James shouts at Sarah during an argument in Children of a Lesser God (1986)

James’s insistence that Sarah read his lips perpetuates “the most powerful public belief about deaf persons,” which attributes to them “almost magical skills to read lips” (Schuchman 48). In this way Sarah is an outlier among her peers at the school—every other Deaf character with whom James interacts can understand him perfectly whenever he neglects to use ASL. After Matlin won the Academy Award for her portrayal of Sarah in 1987, some critics attempted to discredit her win, claiming that she had received votes out of pity. Deaf audiences also chimed in, but for different reasons; they were not pleased with the way the actress presented herself at the awards ceremony. While Matlin’s acceptance speech was in ASL with her interpreter translating to the audience, she later presented the award for best male actor in a leading role, using her voice to announce the nominees. The Deaf community was upset and disheartened that Matlin chose to use her voice on a national broadcast, seemingly reinforcing the notion that Deaf people must use speech in order to be accepted in the hearing world. Deaf Studies scholar Tom Humphries described the event as “setting the Deaf community back in striving for equality with the hearing world and ASL” (Humphries 39). Prior to the film’s release, advertisements for the picture followed a similar pattern to films featuring Deaf characters that had gone before it: there was no information about deafness. Shortly after its initial announcement, several sources emphasized that the film was a love story, and director Randa Haines contended that the movie represented an improvement over the stage play since the filmmakers eliminated “deaf politics” in favor of a love story. At the film’s conclusion, after James and Sarah have separated over irreconcilable differences, they agree to find a middle ground between his hearing world and her Deaf one, reducing Sarah’s identity and the complexities of Deaf culture to something trivial in the face of true love.

As a practical matter, Hollywood often treated the Deaf community as a linguistic minority; and as such, it avoided substantive depictions of ASL until the release of Children of a Lesser God. Yet, even in this groundbreaking film, almost every Deaf character aside from Sarah speaks orally. When these characters do use ASL, the audience is required to guess at the meaning of their signs, such as during a scene where James finds himself in the hearing minority. When Sarah and James attend a party held by one of her Deaf friends, it becomes apparent that James is one of only a few hearing guests. For the duration of the night he lingers outside of conversations lost and isolated, commenting to a friend, “I just feel like everyone’s talking in some far northern Hungarian dialect over there.” It seems odd that a man who teaches at a school for the Deaf and is in a committed relationship with a Deaf woman cannot easily follow ASL conversations. Because James is the hearing audience’s only point of access into ASL, they are also clueless as to what Deaf characters are saying at the party. The viewing experience isn’t much better for Deaf viewers—Sarah’s signs, as well as those of her Deaf friends, are routinely cut out of the frame or obscured, and Deaf audiences would be unable to follow their conversations. The obvious solution to this dilemma would be the use of subtitles, but at the time, and since the transition from silent to talking pictures in the late twenties, the movie industry had rejected their use (Senghas 102). Sarah’s dialogue being perpetually wedded to a hearing person’s voice reinforces the image of the Deaf person as dependent. And despite the fact that her only desire in life is to not be “spoken for,” we listen to James “tell” us what she has said again and again. At the time, Matlin’s Sarah was one of the most powerful and potentially independent Deaf characters to appear in motion pictures, but she was reduced to a cleaning woman who becomes dependent on a hearing man who teaches Deaf students to disregard ASL in favor of using their voices. The recent release of Wonderstruck (2017) had the potential to offer another opportunity in which the Deaf community could be accurately represented in Hollywood. While the film does feature young Deaf actress, Millicent Simmonds, her character does not have a single line of ASL dialogue throughout the film; instead, we follow her story in the same vein as watching a silent film, paying particular attention to her physicality and facial expressions. Julianne Moore plays the adult version of Simmonds’s character, and along with another hearing actor in the film, she is the only character to converse in ASL (Figure 4). Once it was announced that Moore had been cast in one of the film’s Deaf roles, the Deaf community took to social media using the hashtag #deaftalent, an increasingly popular term used in Deaf circles to advocate for the hiring of Deaf actors. Some have likened the practice of hearing actors in Deaf roles to whitewashing, and have coined the term “hearing-washing” (Schiff 34). The film intercuts between two storylines, Ben’s (Oakes Fegley), set in 1977, and Rose’s (Millicent Simmonds), set in 1927 (Figure 5). Ben loses his hearing in an accident at age 12, and we learn that Rose was born Deaf. Although the film revolves around two Deaf characters, ASL dialogue only occurs briefly in a few scenes. The first occurs when Jamie, Ben’s new friend at the Museum of Natural History attempts to teach him the first few letters of the alphabet, which he learned in school. And later, Moore’s adult Rose signs to her hearing brother in a bookstore.

Figure 4: Julianne Moore as the adult Rose in Wonderstruck (2017)

Serving as consultants for the film, Padden and Humphries were interviewed about Deaf culture in relation to the film industry in an article for The New York Times:

“It’s hard for hearing actors to look deaf to Deaf viewers,” Padden said, “since American Sign Language is not just a finger alphabet but a system of expression employing the whole body. For hearing viewers, being ‘deaf’ is about signing, or seeming silent, but for Deaf viewers, it’s the entire embodiment of that life: the eyes, the shoulders, the hands, the walking and of course the looking. Until hearing viewers see Deaf actors playing them, they may not realize entirely the hard work of embodying an entire different kind of life.”

When asked about casting Moore, director Todd Haynes admitted that there was some discussion about hiring a Deaf actor for the adult Rose, but ultimately contended that the film needed recognizable stars for financing purposes, and “the only role that offered itself that kind of status was the role of Rose.” He turned to Moore: “She took on the responsibility of that character and the research with great seriousness” (Murphy).

Figure 5: Young Rose (Millicent Simmonds) arrives to New York City in Wonderstruck (2017)

Humphries contended that the film “succeeded way better than most,” but added, “you can’t achieve authenticity without much more participation of Deaf people in all aspects of a movie about Deaf people.” Even films with Deaf involvement can misstep by putting the hearing point of view first. In the summer blockbuster Baby Driver (2017), Deaf actor CJ Jones is a scene stealer among Hollywood heavyweights including Jamie Foxx and Jon Hamm (Figure 6). But Humphries points out that “the editing cut into CJ’s signed lines so much we often couldn’t see his signing,” adding, “that’s reality, audiences are overwhelmingly hearing” (Murphy).

. Figure 6: Deaf actor CJ Jones and Ansel Elgort in Baby Driver (2017)

In contrast to many Hollywood films, which continue to cast hearing actors in Deaf roles, or diminish the contributions of Deaf actors, the television industry appears to have broken many of the prevalent stereotypes about deafness, while also providing opportunities for Deaf actors to thrive on screen. One example can be found in the second season of Aziz Ansari’s Emmy-winning Netflix series Master of None. In the episode, “New York, I Love You,” the story takes place during a single day in New York City, and follows the lives of a hotel doorman, a Deaf cashier, and a taxi driver, all of whom have intersecting storylines at the episode’s conclusion. Following the doorman’s arc, a tracking shot follows him into a bodega. The sound slowly fades, and the rest of scene plays out in complete silence. The camera zooms in on Maya (Treshelle Edmond) behind the cash register. After checking to ensure the speakers on our televisions or computers haven’t malfunctioned, we quickly realize that Maya, busy texting and oblivious to an approaching customer, is Deaf. After waiting for her to notice him, the customer speaks a few lines of dialogue in an attempt to make conversation before waving his hands to get her attention. Apologizing, Maya politely communicates via typing on her phone, and the man proceeds to make a few sorry attempts at flirting before she shows him her engagement ring and he sheepishly leaves. Throughout their encounter, viewers are firmly positioned in Maya’s silent world— what on Earth has this man been trying to say? Following her shift at work, Maya walks to

Central Park to meet up with a Deaf friend for coffee. The two exchange looks as she realizes that her friend has purchased the same jacket she is currently wearing, and Maya chastises her for being a copycat (Figure 7). Again, this scene plays out in complete silence as we watch the two friends argue in ASL. Not even the bustling sounds of Central Park can be heard.

Figure 7: Maya reprimands a friend for purchasing an identical jacket in “New York, I Love You” (2017)

The final scene in Maya’s arc shows the character and her boyfriend shopping in a nearby store for a present, where she attempts to bring up the subject of their boring sex life. Soon into their conversation, another Deaf woman angrily approaches the couple, eyes wide in anger as she explains that her children know ASL, including signs for female genitalia, which the couple had been using repeatedly (Figure 8). We then see her children running through the store signing “vagina” with much delight. Although Maya’s storyline is brief, Master of None did something few other television shows have: allowed an episode to run in complete silence for nearly ten full minutes. Quite jarring for hearing viewers, this technique forces the audience to experience the story from a Deaf point of view, something that never happens in Children of a Lesser God or Wonderstruck. Maya’s deafness is an integral part of her identity, and rather than focusing on her hearing loss as something to be overcome, the episode depicts Maya living a completely normal life, without help from the hearing world.

Figure 8: A Deaf mother angrily approaches Maya for publicly discussing her sex life in Master of None (2017)

In an interview with Vulture, creator Aziz Ansari commented on the episode’s storyline:

“The Deaf couple—normally when you see those people on shows, it’s like, ‘Oh my God, this poor person!’ Or it’s all about them being deaf. And when we talked to Deaf people about their lives [they said], ‘Yeah, it’s so annoying, anytime we see Deaf people on a show, there’s sad music playing and you never just see them dealing with the same problems you see other characters dealing with’” (Yuan).

As the NAD silent films proved in 1913, film and television remain the primary medium to adequately express the complexities of ASL and Deaf culture. Since the silent film era, writers, producers, and directors have not shied away from including Deaf characters on screen, but often choose cast hearing actors in many of those roles. Children of a Lesser God broke the mold in 1986 not only by casting a Deaf actress in a leading role, but by casting Deaf actors in all of the film’s Deaf roles. Although the film focuses much of its plot on deafness and a Deaf protagonist, every line of signed dialogue is wedded to the voice of a hearing person, thus reinforcing the prevalent stereotype that Deaf persons are dependent. In contrast, Netflix’s Master of None seems to have paved the way for Deaf and ASL representation on screen, aware of the fact that Deaf culture and identity cannot be learned in three months of rehearsal.

Works Cited

Children of a Lesser God. Dir. Randa Haines. Perf. Marlee Matlin and William Hurt. Paramount Pictures, 1986. DVD.

Kochhar-Lindgren, Kanta. “Hearing Difference across Theatres: Experimental, Disability, and Deaf Performance.” Theatre Journal, vol. 58, no. 3, 2006, pp. 417–436. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25069869.

Murphy, Mary Jo. Making Room for Deaf Performers in Hollywood. New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com. Oct. 27, 2017

“New York, I Love You.” Master of None. Teleplay by Aziz Ansari. Netflix. Los Gatos, California, 2017. Television.

Padden, Carol and Tom Humphries. Deaf in America: Voices from a Culture. Harvard University Press, 1988

Padden, Carol and Tom Humphries. Inside Deaf Culture. Harvard University Press, 2005

Padden, Carol. “Talking Culture: Deaf People and Disability Studies.” PMLA, vol. 120, no. 2,

Schiff, Debra. “Information Behaviors of Deaf Artists.” Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America, vol. 29, no. 2, 2010, pp. 44–47. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2463400.

Schuchman, John S. Hollywood Speaks: Deafness and the Film Entertainment Industry. University of Illinois Press, 1988

Senghas, Richard J. and Leila Monaghan. “Signs of Their Times: Deaf Communities and the Culture of Language.” Annual Review of Anthropology, vol. 31, 2002, pp. 69– 97. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/4132872.

Yuan, Jada. “Aziz Ansari Recaps Master of None’s ‘New York, I Love You’” Vulture Magazine. http://www.vulture.com, June 5, 2017.