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Friday, September 28, 2018
Deaf Community Criticizes Director, ‘The Silence’ Before Premiere
The Mighty: “The Silence,” a horror film that uses a hearing actress in a deaf role, is set to premiere in December, but an interview with director John Leonetti from November is circulating again following criticism from Deaf model Nyle DiMarco and Deaf actress Marlee Matlin.
5 comments:
Sidney R.
said...
Creating diverse roles in the entertainment industry is not enough—they must also be represented by diverse individuals. This article pays homage to a minority group that is often overlooked: those with disabilities. With the multitude of performers available, it should be a given to choose the most representative actor for a role. But this article shows that is not always the case. In the upcoming film, The Silence, the director chose a hearing actress to play a deaf role. He even attempted to justify it by claiming that she had an “innate sense of what it’s like being a deaf person.” This is extremely saddening to hear, considering productions like Spring Awakening and Children of a Lesser God on Broadway have seamlessly implemented the deaf community into their shows. I appreciate how this article provides a variety of perspectives in the form of tweets, direct quotes, and public comments, that show how many people are in consensus about this pressing issue. In the 21st century, we have improved with representation, but we are not quite at the level of accuracy in which we should be.
Whenever I read or hear that a production cast an actor in a role that clearly calls for a certain person, and they do not, whether that is based on disability, ethnicity, or background - it is really disheartening. However, this the full story of this was not as clear as I thought. The title and the tweets the article has leads me to think that the movie has a character who is deaf, and a hearing actor was cast in the role. However the very last sentence says that it is not a human who is deaf, the actors are aliens that don't have vision and use American Sign Language as a way to communicate in part of the movie. This is different. I can fully see both sides of the thoughts around casting, having someone who has Sign Language as there first language and knows what it is like to communicate fully with it, i.e. a deaf person, then it cast someone who is as such. However an alien who choses to learn and use ASL, is not the same. That being said, I think to fully make an opinion I would need to see the full story line.
Representation is such a crucial part of diversifying media and the arts. Having not casted a deaf actress to begin with is pretty upsetting, but then to call that to attention by applauding her "believable deafness" is appalling. As many of the commenters on Twitter pointed out, there is so much more to an experience than just what we see, in this case - the use of sign language. To reduce anyone's identity down to that would be a complete disregard for their complexity and multi-faceted beauty of individuality. Especially at a scale of this, I think it is important for people to cast actors who identify with the abilities of the role. I can see and understand how in smaller scale situations where people of all abilities are not always present how someone could be cast in that role and learn and study the experience of the character. However, when you have multi-million dollar budget and unlimited casting pool, it seems like the right thing to do would have been casting a deaf actress in that role.
While I am all for representing people of different backgrounds and abilities in film and theatre, I always always think that the role should be cast in line with the character's experiences, especially when it comes to something as integral to someone's sense of self as being Deaf. I especially appreciated one of the last Twitter comments about replacing the word "deaf" with another minority group, because often people don't have an issue casting able-bodied people for a disabled character role. I completely agree that someone cannot learn to mimic the behaviors and actions of a different group and be considered "impeccable" after. I think we need to reexamine the way people with disabilities are portrayed on stage and on screen in order to make these representations as accurate and respectful as possible. Despite the fact that I am happy to see more and more diverse characters showing up in film and theatre, I am adamant about the fact that these diverse roles should be portrayed by equally diverse people.
It cannot be stressed enough how important it is to cast with the goal of being inclusive in mind. It is important to tell the stories of people other than white, straight, able-bodied men and have those stories BE TOLD by those people. This is important to combat the notion of "normal" as well as to diversify everyone's understanding of one another and increase empathy. While it is wonderful to create minority roles, it is even more important to actually cast those roles with the correct people! It makes me so upset to see able-bodied people cast in disabled roles especially because it simply reinforces ideas about limitations on the disabled community that are completely untrue. I constantly see performances like this praised and excused because of the belief that all disabled people are bed bound and incapable of acting. In 2015, the Deaf West theater company took their rendition of Spring Awakening musical all the way to Broadway and half of the cast was deaf. Each role which had a singing part had an actor paired with them who could sing for them, but the deaf actors signed the whole time. This opened up musical theater to a significant part of the population who could not fully immerse themselves previously due to the need for splitting their attention between the stage and interpreters, if there were any. These weren't even roles written for deaf actors and yet they were able to pull it off beautifully. Yes it is more difficult, but I'm sure its equal or less than what money was paid to teach "The Silence" actress how to "act deaf". I hope something can be learned from this and we can get closer to a diverse and representative industry
5 comments:
Creating diverse roles in the entertainment industry is not enough—they must also be represented by diverse individuals. This article pays homage to a minority group that is often overlooked: those with disabilities. With the multitude of performers available, it should be a given to choose the most representative actor for a role. But this article shows that is not always the case. In the upcoming film, The Silence, the director chose a hearing actress to play a deaf role. He even attempted to justify it by claiming that she had an “innate sense of what it’s like being a deaf person.” This is extremely saddening to hear, considering productions like Spring Awakening and Children of a Lesser God on Broadway have seamlessly implemented the deaf community into their shows. I appreciate how this article provides a variety of perspectives in the form of tweets, direct quotes, and public comments, that show how many people are in consensus about this pressing issue. In the 21st century, we have improved with representation, but we are not quite at the level of accuracy in which we should be.
Whenever I read or hear that a production cast an actor in a role that clearly calls for a certain person, and they do not, whether that is based on disability, ethnicity, or background - it is really disheartening. However, this the full story of this was not as clear as I thought. The title and the tweets the article has leads me to think that the movie has a character who is deaf, and a hearing actor was cast in the role. However the very last sentence says that it is not a human who is deaf, the actors are aliens that don't have vision and use American Sign Language as a way to communicate in part of the movie. This is different. I can fully see both sides of the thoughts around casting, having someone who has Sign Language as there first language and knows what it is like to communicate fully with it, i.e. a deaf person, then it cast someone who is as such. However an alien who choses to learn and use ASL, is not the same. That being said, I think to fully make an opinion I would need to see the full story line.
Representation is such a crucial part of diversifying media and the arts. Having not casted a deaf actress to begin with is pretty upsetting, but then to call that to attention by applauding her "believable deafness" is appalling. As many of the commenters on Twitter pointed out, there is so much more to an experience than just what we see, in this case - the use of sign language. To reduce anyone's identity down to that would be a complete disregard for their complexity and multi-faceted beauty of individuality. Especially at a scale of this, I think it is important for people to cast actors who identify with the abilities of the role. I can see and understand how in smaller scale situations where people of all abilities are not always present how someone could be cast in that role and learn and study the experience of the character. However, when you have multi-million dollar budget and unlimited casting pool, it seems like the right thing to do would have been casting a deaf actress in that role.
While I am all for representing people of different backgrounds and abilities in film and theatre, I always always think that the role should be cast in line with the character's experiences, especially when it comes to something as integral to someone's sense of self as being Deaf. I especially appreciated one of the last Twitter comments about replacing the word "deaf" with another minority group, because often people don't have an issue casting able-bodied people for a disabled character role. I completely agree that someone cannot learn to mimic the behaviors and actions of a different group and be considered "impeccable" after. I think we need to reexamine the way people with disabilities are portrayed on stage and on screen in order to make these representations as accurate and respectful as possible. Despite the fact that I am happy to see more and more diverse characters showing up in film and theatre, I am adamant about the fact that these diverse roles should be portrayed by equally diverse people.
It cannot be stressed enough how important it is to cast with the goal of being inclusive in mind. It is important to tell the stories of people other than white, straight, able-bodied men and have those stories BE TOLD by those people. This is important to combat the notion of "normal" as well as to diversify everyone's understanding of one another and increase empathy. While it is wonderful to create minority roles, it is even more important to actually cast those roles with the correct people! It makes me so upset to see able-bodied people cast in disabled roles especially because it simply reinforces ideas about limitations on the disabled community that are completely untrue. I constantly see performances like this praised and excused because of the belief that all disabled people are bed bound and incapable of acting. In 2015, the Deaf West theater company took their rendition of Spring Awakening musical all the way to Broadway and half of the cast was deaf. Each role which had a singing part had an actor paired with them who could sing for them, but the deaf actors signed the whole time. This opened up musical theater to a significant part of the population who could not fully immerse themselves previously due to the need for splitting their attention between the stage and interpreters, if there were any. These weren't even roles written for deaf actors and yet they were able to pull it off beautifully. Yes it is more difficult, but I'm sure its equal or less than what money was paid to teach "The Silence" actress how to "act deaf". I hope something can be learned from this and we can get closer to a diverse and representative industry
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