Representation of deaf individuals in mass culture

Polina Sineva is a scriptwriter, dramaturge, journalist, co-curator of the exhibition Co-thinkers (2016)

Text published with the author’s changes

The image of the deaf person

Imagine you’re watching a film. The protagonist is a mystery to you for now. Suddenly, you hear a piercing sound to which every character on screen reacts—except for them. Or people try to talk to them, and they point to their ears: “I can’t hear.” Or perhaps they speak in sign language. This is a general marker that allows audiences to understand that particular characteristic of the protagonist. Later, new details emerge—how the protagonist lives (on their own or integrated into the deaf community), how they interact with others—and expands upon the image of the deaf person. But there is more that we as the audience do not see.

What do I mean by this? At Garage Museum of Contemporary Art’s experimental exhibition Co-thinkers we showed Barbara Kruger’s Untitled (I thought you were someone else). This work illustrates a fairly common situation: someone asks me or any other deaf person how to get somewhere. They think I’m a hearing person, and you can’t tell right away that this is not the case. “I thought you were someone else” is a kind of manifesto of inconspicuousness as one of the fundamental differences between deafness and other forms of disability. Perhaps it is this inconspicuousness, along with the use of sign language, that creates a halo of mystery and secrecy around the “land of the deaf.”

In everyday life, hearing people do not encounter deaf people very often. If they do, it is in the “line of duty” or if one of their friends or loved ones cannot hear. Many have never encountered a deaf person at all, but have read or heard about them or perhaps even seen TV shows or films. As a result, the presentation (or representation) of the deaf takes on far greater meaning than might initially seem to be the case. How exactly are hard of hearing and deaf individuals represented today? Why is it this way? What could be changed?

In order to answer these questions, I will share a little about the history and the current situation of the representation of the deaf community in films and comics.

Representation of the deaf community throughout history

The story of the deaf community throughout the twentieth century is largely the story of deaf education, and specifically by hearing individuals. The situation changed radically toward the end of the twentieth century. Hard of hearing and deaf people began speaking about themselves in their own words more and more frequently. For that reason, we can see the history of the deaf until this moment as a story of oppression, inextricably connected to the medical understanding of deafness.

The medical understanding presumes that a deaf person needs healing, whether through a hearing aid or a cochlear implant, and speech training. This concept and the move away from it toward a social and cultural understanding reflects the development of medical ethics as a whole. If Antiquity and the Roman Empire can be characterized primarily by their cruelty with regard to people with disabilities, the centuries that followed saw a gradual softening of attitudes and the realization that people with disabilities need help. In the eighteenth century, the idea of charity both took shape and even began to fall out of fashion, and by the 1770s and 1780s the idea of deaf education started to take hold. However, it should be noted that “education” in this sense generally meant the mastery of the spoken word (oralism) by deaf people. In 1880, the Milan Congress even forbade the use of sign language.

Oralism is clearly demonstrated in the British film Mandy (1952). In the film, the parents of a young girl discover that their daughter doesn’t react to sounds and brave countless trials characteristic of the hearing families of deaf children. The parents believe that their most important task is to teach their daughter, who cannot hear, to understand spoken speech. At the end of the film, the girl says “Mandy” and everyone rejoices. I should note that the relatively recent Oscar-winning The Silent Child (2017) showed that in the intervening half a century hardly anything has changed. Hearing parents still want for their deaf children to become “normal,” hearing and using spoken speech, and ideally without resorting to sign language. Only the delivery has changed: what Mandy showed as the only viable option is an obstacle to the eponymous character’s development in The Silent Child.

The twentieth century was a period of critical changes in the understanding of deafness and of disability and inclusion in general.

By the 1960s, the cultural understanding of deafness had come to the fore. According to this concept, the deaf community is a linguistic minority with its own language and culture. A loss of hearing is seen as the acquisition of deafness. The cultural understanding is closely connected with the recognition of sign language, as well as deaf individuals’ understanding of themselves as a separate community. In Russia, this concept gained traction far later, with the creation of the Center for Education of the Deaf and Sign Language in the 1990s.

The film Hamill (2010) serves as an illustration of the cultural approach to understanding deafness. This is the story of a deaf wrestler who experiences two forms of personal growth, in the hearing world and in the world of the deaf. His grandfather made the choice for his deaf grandson, who began studying among hearing children, went to a traditional wrestling gym, fell in love with a hearing girl who rejected him, and had a disastrous experience at university, where he couldn’t understand the interpreter because he didn’t know sign language. Disappointed with his life, the protagonist sets off for Rochester University, where he finds himself included in the deaf community. His life changes: he learns sign language, finds a girlfriend and new friends, and wins first prize in a wrestling championship.

In the 1970s, the social understanding of deafness finally took shape and found widespread acceptance when deaf education transitioned to practices of integration. For this concept, the dichotomy of “deaf/hearing” and the interactions between a deaf person and society are important. For the first time, the goal is not to make a deaf person “normal” but to enable a comfortable way of life while accounting for their disability.

There is a wide gulf between integration and inclusion. If the task of integration is to teach the deaf and the hearing according to a single standard, inclusion suggests creating an environment to meet the individual needs of non-hearing students (assigning a sign language interpreter, adding subtitles to learning materials, using specialized computer programs and so on). The animated film A Silent Voice (Koe no katachi, 2016), based on the eponymous manga by Yoshitoki Ōima, talks about the problems of integration. The plot features a deaf girl who arrives at a regular school. However, for some reason she is not assigned either a translator or a tutor to help her manage her studies. As a result, the girl is not only isolated from her classmates but is bullied as well.

The subject of integration is also central to deaf author Cece Bell’s graphic novel El Deafo. The deaf heroine is having problems communicating and feels very awkward about her hearing aid. The author was able to communicate the shame she feels for her otherness and her desire to overcompensate through an imaginary alter ego. In the girl’s fantasies, El Deafo solves all of her problems, working through the lens of alienation: the people in her life are replaced by anthropomorphic rabbits. Their long ears are no coincidence, as the plot centers around hearing and problems with it.

Each concept can characterize a deaf person differently: either as a helpless, defective being, or as a subject with special educational needs, or as a full-fledged representative of their own culture. In places where the deaf community is particularly developed, the social and cultural concepts prevail; in places where the deaf are repressed, the medical understanding takes its place.

Various degrees of hearing disabilities in different families also contribute to the variety in deaf people’s lived experiences. For instance, a plot with a deaf character in a deaf family will progress in one way, whereas one featuring a deaf character in a hearing family, a person who is hard of hearing or one with late-onset hearing disabilities will operate completely differently. This is why it is so important to pay attention to who, where, and to what end the image of a deaf person is represented.

Representing the image of the deaf person: problems, myths, and questions

Insofar as the representation of deaf and hard of hearing people is a challenging task, highly questionable depictions, plot tropes, and more often arise.

Below I note the most important and widespread mistakes that occur when representing the deaf community in film and mass culture:

Stereotyping — attempting to show that communicating with deaf peoeple is difficult.

As a result, hearing people who meet a deaf person automatically believe that they are going to have a hard time. Script consultant Linda Seger notes that it is common in film to ascribe disabilities to entirely negative characters (for instance, in The Tribe (2014), a school for the deaf is rife with prostitution and drug dealing); pitiful victims; and people with superpowers, capable of incredible feats and even “healing” disabilities.

Myths — attempting to fill in gaps in an audience’s knowledge about deaf people and people with disabilities in general.

When little or nothing is known about something, myths are bound to arise. The world of the deaf has not escaped this fate. Some myths have begun to disappear over time (for instance, that “all deaf people are thieves”), but others prevail to this day. Here are the most popular among them.

Myth no. 1: “The deaf are like the mafia.” There’s even a documentary about a deaf mafia. But even though such a subculture exists within the world of the hard of hearing and the deaf, this does not mean that every single member of the community has some connection to the mafia.

Myth no. 2: “The deaf can always read lips.” The plot of the French film Read My Lips (Sur mes lèvres, 2001) is based around this myth. But here’s a story from my own life. When I was in school, the police came to us and asked us to transcribe a video where a man was saying something. It was hard to make anything out: the man was filmed in poor light and his face was in shadow. It is important to remember that good lip reading is possible only if certain rules are followed: clear articulation by the speaker, relaxed tempo of speech, good lighting, the speaker’s face turned toward the viewer, and the absence of a beard.

Myth no. 3: “Sign language is the same around the world.” Many countries have their own national sign language. There are international gestures, but they are separate signs that cannot be considered a language unto themselves.

Myth no. 4: “The deaf can’t drive cars.” Deaf and hard of hearing people can be excellent drivers. Despite this, a number of years ago there was an attempt to legally ban them from driving. There was also a recent incident with deaf taxi drivers where passengers refused to get in their cars.

Myth no. 5: “The deaf have it easier than other people with disabilities.” The rise of this myth was aided by the invisibility of deafness, which I mentioned at the beginning of this article. However, it is important to remember that due to difficulties in communicating, deaf persons can be isolated from the rest of society, which is a serious barrier to personal growth and a comfortable life within the community.

Appropriation of deaf culture.

For me, the mimicking of sign language is the most noticeable example of appropriation. In the film Shirli-myrli (1995), there are segments where a “sign language interpreter” appears on television. In fact, this character simply imitates it, and what he says is meaningless to a deaf person. At first glance, it looks funny: after all, that’s how hearing people see sign language interpretation. But from the perspective of representation of the image of deaf people, the director appropriated the external appearance of that language and deprived it of all meaning.

A second case that I consider to be appropriation is casting a hearing actor to play a deaf role. In Two in Love (Dvoe, 1965), actress Viktoria Fedorova is quite camera-friendly as the deaf Natasha, but the awkwardness of her gestures is especially noticeable when compared to Marta Grakhova, who actually cannot hear. However, in Country of the Deaf (Strana glukhikh, 1998), a girl with late-onset hearing loss named Yaya is played by Dina Korzun, who can hear, while non-hearing actors from the Theater of Mime and Sign play other characters.

I consider these cases both appropriation and discrimination, because the absolute majority of roles in film are for hearing characters, while there is a critical lack of deaf ones. For hearing directors, the quality of an actor’s performance is far more important. They do not see the difference between sign language that was learned in a month or two versus the sign language spoken by a deaf person from birth. This incongruity, though, is only noticeable to a deaf audience. We as viewers know that film reality is largely subjective, but nevertheless, the character remains unbelievable. After all, female roles were once given to men, but with time, women began to take the stage themselves. What, then, is the cause-and-effect relationship behind the belief that finding the right deaf actor for a role is difficult? Thanks to a lobby of deaf activists in the United States, films like Children of a Lesser God (1986) and Hamill featured non-hearing actors who were able to create authentic portrayals. I should note that The Tribe has one considerable advantage, in spite of the message that feeds into negative stereotypes: deaf characters are played by deaf actors.

Terminological errors — oftentimes, terms connected to deafness are used incorrectly.

For instance, the term “deaf-mute” is often used instead of “deaf.” In other words, signs of muteness are lumped in with deafness, although more often than not deaf people have no physical barriers to speech. Deaf people can communicate with spoken speech and can only be distinguished from their hearing peers by their characteristic accent. We need to understand that a deaf person is fundamentally not mute, since they can communicate in sign language.

Often, “gestural language” is used in place of “sign language.” Here’s the problem: “gestural language” is body language (facial expressions, physical movements, and so on), but is nothing like the undoubtedly complex linguistic system that is a national sign language.

Another common mistake is the use of “speech interpreter” instead of “sign language interpreter.” The problem is that a “speech interpreter” implies “translating by ear,” which is fundamentally incorrect: we translate language, not bodily organs.

Authentic representations of the deaf

Representations of deaf people can meet a high standard of quality and authenticity. This requires several steps:

Invite professional consultants to discuss your deaf characters, from the writing stage all the way to filming. This is especially important for the screenwriter.
Create a truthful plot about the unique experience of your deaf character, without stereotyping, myths or terminological mistakes.
Invite deaf actors to play deaf characters (like in the novella Friendship (Druzhba) in Shapito-Show (2011), which offers an interesting meditation on whether the deaf are a “tribe” and whether stepping out of their community is possible for them).

One example of a successful representation of a deaf character is the show Switched at Birth (2011–2017). The plot is a melodramatic one: two sets of parents discover that their children were switched and wonder how to fix the situation. One of the girls cannot hear, which allows numerous plot lines related to deafness to unfold.

The production team took the filming process seriously, hiring a deaf consultant and offering sign language classes on set to everyone working there. I would call this show a true encyclopedia of the lives of the deaf: it explores everyday, social, and cultural situations, questions of inclusion and integration, as well as the problems of sign language, cochlear implants, positive discrimination (when a deaf person is judged favorably based on their disabilities), mixed marriages, and more.

Conclusion

Today, a solution to the problem of authentic representation of the deaf must come from deaf people themselves. It is the deaf and the hard of hearing that must take an interest in spreading information about their communities, as well as making contact with those on whom representation depends: directors, artists, and writers. It is important to remember that every character has their own path and ways of interacting with the world. All of this can serve as the foundation for a unique story worthy of telling in one’s own voice.