Re-Presenting Deaf

Children of a Lesser God 1986

Too late!

Deaf characters have been in films for quite some time. Dr. John Schuchman, a former professor at Gallaudet University and a CODA published a book called “Hollywood Speaks.” He analyzed over 150 films. He noticed that not all the deaf characters were played by deaf actors: some were played by hearing actors as well.

The word “deaf” already had countless negative definitions broadcasted in public consciousness. The notion that Deaf people need to be fixed, the institutional view and the development of cochlear implants have impacted the entire world.

Johnny Belinda 1948

Apotheosis (Divination) of Medical Personage:

Doctors = Father, God

Is it really too late?

Hall discussed visual media and how it deeply controlled the common view of black people and thus ideology. I noticed that these issues paralleled those of deaf people, and that they could be addressed the same way.

Before he died, Itard wrote that sign language is a true human language.

Representation is the way in which meaning is given to the things depicted.

Common characteristics associated with a deaf character in a film:

Jean-Marc Gaspard Itard 1821

The marriage of medico-pedagogy (medicine and education locked the very definition of “deaf.”

Let’s take black people, for instance. Suppose a white actor is put in blackface and told to “act black.” He replaces a black person and is made to represent black people.

The same has happened to deaf people. A hearing person will act as a deaf person able to sign, but with uncanny speaking abilities. They’d act in representation of deaf people. That, in essence, is a distortion of reality.

“With this accomplishment, man could have embarked just as rapidly on the vast career that this discovery (sign language) opened to his intelligence.”

• Dumb

• Inform

• Expert lipreaders

• Beggar

• Isolated

• Illiterate

• Naïve

People came to see deafness as an abnormality that needed to be fixed. This mentality was established institutes all over: authoritative figures broadcasted their view to the “deaf.” This view eve contradicted the view deaf people held of themselves. Deaf people were gathering, socializing and feeling fine. They tried to speak out about the definition. Yet their voice in society was very small and without institutions strong enough to represent them, are easily oppressed.

432 % increase

How can we change this representation?

The number of students taking American Sign Language classes increased 432% from 1998 to 2002. Among community colleges from all over the US, ASL is the second most popular language course. Among universities, ASL is the fourth most popular language course. The French used to hold sign language in high regard but that view plummeted. It eventually went back up again. Will it plummet again, or keep skyrocketing?

Meet Stuart Hall, renowned Cultural and Media Studies Theorist. His film “Representation and the Media” is very powerful. Because of his explanation, I now understand how visual images have transformed American Culture. I wanted to see how we could use this information to the view of deaf people, deafness and sign language.

Let's analyze the word: “representation.”

Sign language is visual,

Institutions “locked” the meaning of D-E-A-F

The old view of the definition of “representation” is “reflection/distortion of reality.” Can you represent an entire group of people? Take one person, have them act in place of an entire group and give way to mass belief that this is reality of that group? This creates a stereotype. That, of course, doesn’t work.

Old view:

Representation as Accurate/ Distorted

. . just like the written language is visual. Makes sense. It’d be faster. Spoken language is not visual; therefore it took thousands of years to convert it to writing. He believed that sign language would be the fastest way to develop a written language.

Back to Itard: As his death was slowly approaching after he had distributed his studies about audiology, speech and deafness in his journal (which had not been distributed) he had written what he thought, “After years and years of study, sign language has proven to be extremely valuable. If we had used sign language it would have been faster to develop the written language faster than the transfer of spoken language to written language.”

Re-Presenting Deaf

Part 2

New view:

All of these shared values, identities and information make up a group’s culture; a system of representation. Our entire understanding of the world is based on this informational exchange; through the use of language.

What is Deaf culture? Culture is a system of representation: the capacity to classify is a basic genetic feature of human beings. The particular system of classification used in a society is learned.

Representation as creative and active representations as constitutive (having the power to establish or give organized existence to something). The new view of representation: creative, active and constitutive.

For instance, the Iraq War. Are you in Iraq? No, you’re here. Therefore, the only information you get about the war is from television and newspapers. That is the limit of the information you get – from mainstream distribution. Have you gone to Iraq and asked for their interpretation of the war? No. So you feel stuck with this standard, limited information. You feel like you can’t change it or do anything about it.

Remember:

Power is like NBC, CNN, ABC, the Washington Post or USA Today newspapers, etc. Once you connect ideology and power you usually get frozen meanings, recycled meanings. So naturally you feel that to change meaning is hopeless. This meaning that you learn becomes a part of common sense.

This means that the misrepresentation (i.e. the view of deaf people) would soon slip into the subconscious. When the time comes for you to posit positive images of deaf people the misrepresentation would still reside in your subconscious.

Closure in representation naturalizes the meaning of images: it hides the process of representation.

A shared conceptual map of the world: How does this work? You were born, got a name, identity, values, culture, religion and countless others. Your parents’ influence, schooling and other social values were instilled into you as you grew up. The same happened to others. They have their world of information.

When two people come together they exchange their information. Even arguing about whether something is right or wrong is still sharing values. When others come together; they exchange information, pass it along and so on.

Someone may tell you to, “Act black. Act feminine. Act deaf.” Do you know what to do then? You visualize something you may have seen on television or a passing friend and copy their actions. Do you have a vividly clear idea of what it means to be any of those things? Probably not. You literally have the power to establish an idea; to lock an image. You intend to create something, a vision.

Now, the system of representation is culture. One has a natural internal need to classify things in order to understand the world better. One learns certain meanings, creates interpretations and applies these to the classifications they’ve formed.

Suppose one distributes an incorrect representation or misinformation. What happens? A stereotype. This occurs in many places. This is why the issue of power can never be bracketed out from the question of representation.

Meanings are never frozen. When ideology and power are mixed, the message they send out is that you cannot change the meaning. The truth is, you really can change meaning. You have the power to change meaning.

Power and ideology only attempt to fix the meanings of images and language.

Take deafness for example.

Identity, Identification and the Viewer

We’d be able to provide a diversity of meanings. The stereotypical view would be broken. People would see for once that there is a wide variety of choices.

Diversity opens up new possibilities of identity. Stuart Hall stated that after long periods of distributing misrepresentations it would soon become normal, become common sense.

You could erase those negative definitions by creating and asking someone to represent these new definitions of “deaf.” This is an example of constitutive thinking.

Representation as constitutive: having power to establish or enact. Do events in the world have one essential, fixed or true meaning? Against which distortion can be measured?

Suppose we were to challenge those representations and create our own definition of the word “deaf.” Redefine what signing means; and challenge them by putting in new, different images. Positive images as well.

Now: when you think of the word “deaf” are your definitions of “deaf” considered common sense? Not really. On television, you’ll see a deaf character pop up now and then and you’ll start to formulate common traits from those as we’ve previously discussed.

The relationship between identity and identification, roughly put, is the same as the relationship between yourself and the television screen. Suppose you see on TV a sexy woman in a sexy dress holding a perfume. It turns out to be a perfume ad. This film is actually about the perfume, not the woman. You connect the image of the woman with the perfume. You want the perfume because you think it’ll “make me hot.”

Now you understand the politics of image and the process of creating representations. How do you come to understand and interpret the meaning of the world? How do you and others come to common understanding of the world? This is called a “shared conceptual map” of the world.

A shared conceptual map: sharing the “maps of meaning” and “frameworks of intelligibility.”

You, the viewer, identify with the woman so you buy the product. Ads only work when we identify with what is represented in the images. Meaning is interpretation. Images have no fixed meaning.

Now you understand that meaning cannot be frozen. They are changeable. Just like the word “earth.” Meanings change over time.