Educational Media Reviews Online

It’s not possible for a hearing person to enter fully into the world of the deaf and hearing-impaired. This is a society with its own language(s), history, and rich culture. It’s a passionate world, and not at all monolithic. Deaf people have opinions, which they expressly frankly and without reservation, and they do not always agree with each other. But one thing’s for sure: the deaf are not to be pitied. Far, far from it.

There is sound and music on this video, but try viewing it the second time with the sound turned off. The silence the hearing “hear” will not be the silence heard by the deaf. As one views this remarkable tape, which was first made for Swiss Television, one realizes how different these two worlds are, and how ignorant those who hear are of this not-altogether silent world. The deaf feel the sound of sensations and vibrations (a flamenco dancer says she hears the sound of slammed doors in her stomach, a percussionist feels notes through the sticks of her instrument) and they see more through their eyes than other sighted persons do. They are acutely aware of facial nuance, gesture, and the totality of body language.

Watch any one of the several talented actors, mimes, dancers, musicians, and children---French, Italian, Scottish, Spanish---profiled in this documentary (with the sound off) and concentrate on that individual’s face, hands, arms, upper torso, entire body. They move, these people, the move all the time. By contrast, the hearing seem rather static, less expressive, less alive. The deaf here are so alive! So animated. The beautiful young actress who opens the film says it best when she unequivocally states that the hearing “think the deaf are unhappy but they’re wrong. We deaf people are chatterboxes and extremely high spirited.”

Deafness, to the deaf, is not necessarily a handicap. This is something that’s perhaps difficult for the hearing to comprehend. Sign language involves the whole body. Words can be spelled out or expressed in signs that involve the face, the body, and the space of the signer. How the signer places his hands expresses the future (in front of the signer), the past (behind the signer). The shoulders, the chest, the hips, all have a role to play. The deaf speak not only with their hands, but their faces and bodies. They scrutinize visual clues and interiorize their thoughts and feelings, expressing them as a gestalt. A very swiftly expressed gestalt! As one of those profiled put it, “the hands are our dictionary, the face is our grammar.”

Some of these deaf individuals do speak. They have oral as well as sign language. And this is an issue in the world of the deaf. Some scorn those deaf who refrain from signing in favor of speaking as the “tightrope-walkers of life” (the French actress Emmanuelle Laborit) while others (the French mime Jacques Challudet) extol oral language as a way to bridge the deaf/hearing worlds and to communicate better. All of them lip read, lip read so well, it seems, that there are hearing people who do not always realize they’re communicating with someone who’s deaf. Challudet relates an anecdote illustrating this that is painfully funny, but probably not unusual. An Italian stage director somewhat bitterly remarks that hearing people unfairly dominate the deaf and don’t make the effort to see the positive side of deafness, only its negative aspects.

All of the individuals expressing themselves in this documentary have slightly different stories to tell. The totally deaf flamenco dancer depends entirely on her dance teacher to show her the steps, which she then memorizes. Her performance is passionate and mesmerizing, and it would be difficult indeed for anyone to pick her out as deaf. The percussionist, who speaks, began to go deaf at the age of eight. Her parents were hearing, as were the parents of the actress and the mime. The actress comments that she did not know she was deaf until she was seven years old. She regrets not being exposed to deaf adults when she was a little girl, the absence of role models.

None of these individuals equates deafness with blackness, nor with silence. Theirs is a passionate, animated world of quick movement and gesture, of faces and bodies alive with feeling. Someone says that when he signs “wind” he internalizes the movement and his body twists to express that movement as he signs. The deaf seem more at home with their bodies; they desire to communicate fully. Only one of those profiled (the mime) refers to his deafness as a disability. The percussionist insists that hearing and deaf people have the same potential, the same possibilities---“the deaf, too, can dance,” the flamenco dancer proves---and the percussionist makes music she cannot “hear” in the traditional hearing sense of hearing. The most militant deaf person, the actress, asserts that “the hearing are obsessed with words,” implying that the deaf are capable of, and do go, beyond mere words to communicate, and can succeed in the world of the hearing as well as in the world of the deaf and hearing impaired. Nothing much is closed to them, they aver.

After seeing this documentary, a viewer would find it hard to disagree. This is a superb look into a world few of us can really begin to understand, but it’s an excellent heads-up for the hearing population of all ages, simply excellent.

Highly recommended