Deaf Band, Oscar-Winner Matlin Discuss the Sound of Silence: TV

From: Bloomberg - USA - Mar 20, 2007

By Dave Shiflett

March 20 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. is a noisy nation; even the national anthem celebrates bomb blasts. Yet one group of Americans -- the deaf -- live outside the great din, often more happily than their hearing compatriots imagine, according to a captivating PBS special.

``Through Deaf Eyes,'' which airs tomorrow at 9 p.m. New York time, reveals a world invisible to most, though one not altogether quiet.

About 35 million Americans are hearing impaired, the show says, with 300,000 ``profoundly deaf.'' The deaf were once considered to be beyond the reach of education and were even shunned by evangelists, as if branded with a Scarlet D. Yet one cleric, Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, made it his mission to bring the ``gospel to the deaf'' and founded the first U.S. school for the non-hearing.

Gallaudet became enchanted by sign language, which he considered ``poetical.'' His view was fiercely opposed by Alexander Graham Bell, whose mother and wife were deaf. Bell championed ``oralist'' education that emphasized lip reading and speaking. The war between oralists and signers is a major focus of the two-hour program, which is narrated by Stockard Channing.

Bell's side achieved an early advantage. By the late 1860s signing was outlawed in many schools for the deaf; offenders were sometimes forced to wear mittens -- that world's version of the gag.

Bell was driven by dark motivations, according to the show, including a nativist fear that the deaf might become another ethnic group with its own language and an aversion to assimilation. The telephone inventor also was an advocate of eugenics, believing deaf people shouldn't intermarry.

`Deaf Flights'

The oralists also argued that sign language was a gift of the French, then as now a damning charge. Their position would eventually succumb to the power of sign language, whose beauty is amply illustrated throughout the show.

In one demonstration, a pair of satin-smooth hands ``speak'' by performing a series of graceful glides, loops and gestures that resemble a perfectly matched pair of ballerinas. Signing also reflects regional and cultural differences -- accents, as it were. Southerners often sign differently than Northerners, we learn, and ditto for blacks and whites.

The deaf have been hectored plenty, including being offered ``cures'' of a dubious nature such as sending them aloft in planes, where acrobatic stunts would hopefully rouse the slumbering hearing apparatus. Charles Lindbergh charged $50 for what he called ``deaf flights.''

Talking Movies

A 1906 U.S. Civil Service decision banned deaf people from employment -- the ruling was struck down two years later by President Teddy Roosevelt. And the 1929 release of ``The Jazz Singer,'' which introduced sound to cinema, was a ``disaster'' for the deaf, the show says.

A deaf culture slowly arose, including theater companies, writers and filmmakers, several of whose works are sampled. There's also a visit with a deaf rock band called ``Beethoven's Nightmare,'' one of whose members explains that rock can make people go deaf ``but we already are, so it's perfect.'' Their sound holds its own with some of America's finest garage bands.

Eventually, deaf artists entered the mainstream. Marlee Matlin, who won an Oscar for ``Children of a Lesser God,'' tells an amusing story about a television interviewer who informed her, seconds before going live, that ``my dog is deaf like you.'' Matlin says she wondered, ``Does she want to throw me a bone?''

Those interviewed on the show say deafness shouldn't be considered a handicap; instead, one person says, it should be equated to ``being tall instead of short.'' That perspective helped fuel the 1988 fight to name a deaf president at Gallaudet, which ended with the ascension of the royally named I. King Jordan.

The show drags on a bit, but the perspective gained is worth a yawn or two: The silent world has its beauties.

(Dave Shiflett is a critic for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this story: Dave Shiflett at dshifl@aol.com .

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