I tried to watch the movie Children of a Lesser God.
Emphasis on tried.
I called it at 24:23 min. in the name of self-preservation.
For a brief background, this film was released in 1986 to critical acclaim and commercial success, including 6 Academy Award nominations. My skeptical mind immediately thought, “Wait – was this film nominated for Academy Awards because it was worthy of the recognition or because it was a different film that highlighted disability? Was it nominated so the typical hearing people could feel good about themselves? I have more questions than answers. The film is an adaptation of a stage play of the same name. (Curious question, if an actor is solely speaking ASL on stage, are they mic’ed up anyway?) Initially, the film did not have captions but instead all of the ASL was “translated” for a hearing audience due to other actors – primarily William Hurt and his fabulous hair – repeating what was said in ASL by the other actors. Marlee Matlin won for Best Actress which from what little I saw seemed to have been well earned. She was a bright spot in an otherwise extremely cringe worthy viewing experience from the short segment I managed to suffer through on this wintery afternoon.
I hate the title. It immediately (in my opinion) infantilizes deaf/hard of hearing people using the word, “children”. The “lesser God” portion of the title also set my teeth on edge as it brought to mind the biblical philosophy that because deaf/hard of hearing people are unable to hear the word of God, we are then unable to be ‘saved” or considered worthy.
I was already full of judgement and the movie was yet to begin.
The opening credits did not help my mood as I immediately noticed that Marlee Matlin was a Deaf actor as was expected, and then saw that they rolled out the only other Deaf actor working at the time that I was aware of – Linda Bove. Also known colloquially as “Linda from Sesame Street”. Was she chosen due to her skill or because she fit the demographic? That then brought up a load of emotions in me because growing up they were the only two public facing figures that I knew of, at least, that were deaf/hard of hearing. The problem? They were completely unrelatable to me. There was zero representation in the media and books for a little girl like myself with hearing loss, aided by two hearing aids. I cannot underscore how hard it was to have others assume that I related to Marlee, Linda and – of course – my archnemesis, Helen Keller. I shall spare you the rant.
I hope to change that at some point in my lifetime, because I hate the idea of other kids not seeing themselves represented in content that they are consuming. We have a long way to go, and unfortunately not much has proceeded forward since 1986. I am still hard pressed to come up with names of visible figures that have visible hearing aids and speak freely of their hearing loss. I imagine that there are quite a few of us out there that have teeny, tiny hearing aids due to the ongoing stigmatization of hearing loss. There is a reason my molds are hot pink glitter – it is important to me that my invisible disability becomes visible.
As mentioned earlier, I did not make it through the entire film. I was turned off from the beginning when the principal of the school for the deaf stated, “Not trying to change the world around here – just trying to help a few deaf kids get along a little better”.
The filmmakers wasted no time in establishing the ableist tone from the first minutes.
It got worse.
William Hurt’s character is an educator whose sole purpose is to teach his deaf students to speak and lipread.
The savior trope has entered the chat.
I had to pause the film and take a few minutes to compose myself because the forcing of students to speak and lipread hit very, very close to home for me. I was tossed back to the horrible speech therapy sessions in the boiler room of elementary school with the speech therapist that always smelled like salami. I got tears in my eyes and felt so overwhelmed because during those sessions I always felt like a failure. I was being asked to do the impossible.
I felt a wave of emotions about how my parents made the choice for me to continue to speak, for which I am forever grateful, but as a result I had to adapt my communication to fit into the “hearing world” – I did not have the option. I had to monitor my speech from a very young age, paying constant attention to my tongue and teeth placement to ensure my clarity. I still do that, speaking is not always fluent or automatic for me, especially as my hearing loss continues to plummet as it is getting more difficult to hear my own voice. There is never a break in having to be on high alert regarding my speech because I have to adapt to communicate effectively for the hearing world, not the other way around.
The film was clearly capitalizing on this theme and reinforcing that using sign language is bad, and using speech is the only appropriate way to communicate. There is an overtone that without speech skills, you are unsuccessful. This was reinforced by Marlee Matlin’s character either refusing to speak or being unable to speak – I didn’t watch long enough to figure it out – left her working as a custodian at the deaf school where she was educated.
I was overwhelmed and spiraling and knew that continuing this film would lead me down a road of emotional reactions and I could no longer view the movie without bias.
Brad did make it through, so be sure to read his blog post for the full review.
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