Children Of a Lesser God
Had to watch the Movie "Children of a Lesser God" and write a paper on it. Good movie BTW...
The movie “Children of a Lesser God” is full of things that conflict with what I have in my head that is right for the Deaf and hearing world. It was a very good movie, and interesting to watch how they had the characters interact. I was amused by some of it, angry or frustrated with other parts. Here I will try to describe the summary of the movie and my reactions to the film.
The movie is about a speech therapist, James, who is hired at a school for the Deaf to teach the kids there how to speak and read lips. He is given a class of six or seven deaf students. While at the school he meets a young deaf woman, Sarah, who is very angry and refuses to learn to speak. He decides he wants to teach her how to speak and lip read. Through the course of the movie, clues are given to why she is so angry. She slept with hearing boys in High School to show she was just as good as the hearing girls. Her mother blamed her for her father leaving them. Her mother hated her.
While working with her, James begins to fall in love with her. He makes her quit her job and move in with him. He babies her in his love. This makes her even angrier, and she thinks he doesn’t respect her as a real person. She also reveals that she is embarrassed of her voice and it angers her that he wants her to learn to speak. They have their ups and downs, but in the end they stay together, in love, and all the deaf students at the school have learned to speak, lip read and even sing music.
My problem straight out with this movie was the whole speech therapist thing. In my dealings with the Deaf, ASL and the books we’ve had to read, I have gotten in my head a bias that the Deaf should be allowed to be Deaf. To try and force oralism on them is wrong. I understand that this movie was written and came out in the mid 1980s. At that time the perception was that the Deaf needed to be fixed and that oralism and total communication was the way to go. It still angered me that the teachers, James included, believed that teaching the deaf how to read lips and speak would give them better lives and be the only way to succeed in life.
James did baby Sarah. It wasn’t as blatant, but it was there. Making her quit her job, when she stated that she enjoyed it, wasn’t cool. She got a job later in the movie at a nail salon and looked like she was doing just fine on her own. I was glad they put that into the movie, to show that the Deaf are just as capable as the hearing in the job market. I believe in the first part of the movie (he seems to change his tune later), James thought Sarah was a fragile broken thing that he had to take care of.
Some thing that I found amusing, though I am sure that the filmmakers put it in so the hearing audience would be able to understand the signing, was that James repeated everything that Sarah or any other deaf person signed to him. And he in turn spoke everything he was signing. Maybe its part of the total communication concept, I don’t know. I just thought it silly that anyone would repeat everything they heard. No real interpreter or any hearing person that knows sign would do that. I do talk while I sign, and it badly reflects on my signs because I start using broken sentences or English word order.
I really liked how they got the kids to sing and dance with the song in the movie. Not because they were talking and singing, but because it showed how incredible their sense of timing and rythem are. They counted off at the beginning of the song and held the beat perfectly for the whole song. I understand and know that that scene probably wasn’t taken all in one take, but it was still amazing how well they kept the time.
One thing I was glad of, was at the end that they didn’t make everyone talk. The student that was the loner, always reading and writing, never spoke, and Sarah didn’t talk except when she was angry and yelling at James. Its good they didn’t try to make it out to be a “hearing happy ending”. I’m not saying that my bias goes so far to think that the Deaf SHOULDN’T learn to speak. I just think its good they showed that learning to speak is not for everyone.
Sarah’s early life, when she was a child and a teenager, was very tragic. I really have no idea how common that mentality is these days, or even in those days, that her family held against her. Her father was ashamed of a Deaf child, though there were probably other problems in the home, and left the family. Her sister made fun of her, as well as her sister’s friends, until she started sleeping with all her sister’s guy friends. Her mother was ashamed and angry with her, mostly for her husband leaving. When the movie started, Sarah hadn’t spoken to her family in eight years. Her mother sent her away to the school and Sarah just never returned.
For someone to feel so alienated from their family, and experience such horrible things at such a young age, it doesn’t even compute in my brain. I know that Deaf children of hearing families are not the only ones that go through this, and they’re even sometimes not the ones going through it. Hearing and deaf kids go through the same things to different degrees. The deaf kids have the extra language barrier to cross, but otherwise all kids are basically the same. Its sad though that Sarah’s character had to have those problems. I’m not sure if it was a good stereotype or a bad one to be conveyed in the film. It sheds light on the things that are sometimes happening with the deaf kids in the world, but it also sheds badly on the hearing families. Its interesting, maybe something I will want to check into more at a later point.
The only other thing that I really noticed in the film was the difference in the signs that were used then versus the signs I’ve learned and are used today. The sign for “do” that they were using took me half the movie to realize which sign was acturally “do”. It was both hands in ‘C’ shapes, face down in front of the stomach, and moved back and forth a couple times. I thought maybe it was like someone holding something and moving it, movement. I’m probably looking too hard into Iconic images, but that’s what it looked like to me. There were a few other signs I didn’t understand, and here is where I was really glad that James was repeating everything that Sarah said! I would never have understood half of it; especially when she would become angry and sign extremely fast.
Some of the girls in class were saying that Sarah used little to no facial expressions in the movie. I watched and tried to pay attention to her face. She did use facial expression, but it was mainly in her eyebrows and forehead. And they were very subtle movements. She would also lift or lower her head when signing, I took them to be like the up down eyebrows. Not sure if I’m correct in that assumption, like I said, she signed very fast sometimes. What she didn’t do though was open her mouth. She didn’t word anything, didn’t make “brrr” or any other non-manual signals with her mouth. The only three times I saw her open her mouth was when she was imitating/making fun of talking, when she yelled at James, and when she was panting like a dog in mock excitement. I know Marlee Matlin is a fluent signer and it must have been difficult for her to turn off all her NMS for this movie.
All in all it was a good movie, nice love story, nice ideas, nice plot. Other than my peeves with the oralism, it was enjoyable to get through and ended well.
The movie “Children of a Lesser God” is full of things that conflict with what I have in my head that is right for the Deaf and hearing world. It was a very good movie, and interesting to watch how they had the characters interact. I was amused by some of it, angry or frustrated with other parts. Here I will try to describe the summary of the movie and my reactions to the film.
The movie is about a speech therapist, James, who is hired at a school for the Deaf to teach the kids there how to speak and read lips. He is given a class of six or seven deaf students. While at the school he meets a young deaf woman, Sarah, who is very angry and refuses to learn to speak. He decides he wants to teach her how to speak and lip read. Through the course of the movie, clues are given to why she is so angry. She slept with hearing boys in High School to show she was just as good as the hearing girls. Her mother blamed her for her father leaving them. Her mother hated her.
While working with her, James begins to fall in love with her. He makes her quit her job and move in with him. He babies her in his love. This makes her even angrier, and she thinks he doesn’t respect her as a real person. She also reveals that she is embarrassed of her voice and it angers her that he wants her to learn to speak. They have their ups and downs, but in the end they stay together, in love, and all the deaf students at the school have learned to speak, lip read and even sing music.
My problem straight out with this movie was the whole speech therapist thing. In my dealings with the Deaf, ASL and the books we’ve had to read, I have gotten in my head a bias that the Deaf should be allowed to be Deaf. To try and force oralism on them is wrong. I understand that this movie was written and came out in the mid 1980s. At that time the perception was that the Deaf needed to be fixed and that oralism and total communication was the way to go. It still angered me that the teachers, James included, believed that teaching the deaf how to read lips and speak would give them better lives and be the only way to succeed in life.
James did baby Sarah. It wasn’t as blatant, but it was there. Making her quit her job, when she stated that she enjoyed it, wasn’t cool. She got a job later in the movie at a nail salon and looked like she was doing just fine on her own. I was glad they put that into the movie, to show that the Deaf are just as capable as the hearing in the job market. I believe in the first part of the movie (he seems to change his tune later), James thought Sarah was a fragile broken thing that he had to take care of.
Some thing that I found amusing, though I am sure that the filmmakers put it in so the hearing audience would be able to understand the signing, was that James repeated everything that Sarah or any other deaf person signed to him. And he in turn spoke everything he was signing. Maybe its part of the total communication concept, I don’t know. I just thought it silly that anyone would repeat everything they heard. No real interpreter or any hearing person that knows sign would do that. I do talk while I sign, and it badly reflects on my signs because I start using broken sentences or English word order.
I really liked how they got the kids to sing and dance with the song in the movie. Not because they were talking and singing, but because it showed how incredible their sense of timing and rythem are. They counted off at the beginning of the song and held the beat perfectly for the whole song. I understand and know that that scene probably wasn’t taken all in one take, but it was still amazing how well they kept the time.
One thing I was glad of, was at the end that they didn’t make everyone talk. The student that was the loner, always reading and writing, never spoke, and Sarah didn’t talk except when she was angry and yelling at James. Its good they didn’t try to make it out to be a “hearing happy ending”. I’m not saying that my bias goes so far to think that the Deaf SHOULDN’T learn to speak. I just think its good they showed that learning to speak is not for everyone.
Sarah’s early life, when she was a child and a teenager, was very tragic. I really have no idea how common that mentality is these days, or even in those days, that her family held against her. Her father was ashamed of a Deaf child, though there were probably other problems in the home, and left the family. Her sister made fun of her, as well as her sister’s friends, until she started sleeping with all her sister’s guy friends. Her mother was ashamed and angry with her, mostly for her husband leaving. When the movie started, Sarah hadn’t spoken to her family in eight years. Her mother sent her away to the school and Sarah just never returned.
For someone to feel so alienated from their family, and experience such horrible things at such a young age, it doesn’t even compute in my brain. I know that Deaf children of hearing families are not the only ones that go through this, and they’re even sometimes not the ones going through it. Hearing and deaf kids go through the same things to different degrees. The deaf kids have the extra language barrier to cross, but otherwise all kids are basically the same. Its sad though that Sarah’s character had to have those problems. I’m not sure if it was a good stereotype or a bad one to be conveyed in the film. It sheds light on the things that are sometimes happening with the deaf kids in the world, but it also sheds badly on the hearing families. Its interesting, maybe something I will want to check into more at a later point.
The only other thing that I really noticed in the film was the difference in the signs that were used then versus the signs I’ve learned and are used today. The sign for “do” that they were using took me half the movie to realize which sign was acturally “do”. It was both hands in ‘C’ shapes, face down in front of the stomach, and moved back and forth a couple times. I thought maybe it was like someone holding something and moving it, movement. I’m probably looking too hard into Iconic images, but that’s what it looked like to me. There were a few other signs I didn’t understand, and here is where I was really glad that James was repeating everything that Sarah said! I would never have understood half of it; especially when she would become angry and sign extremely fast.
Some of the girls in class were saying that Sarah used little to no facial expressions in the movie. I watched and tried to pay attention to her face. She did use facial expression, but it was mainly in her eyebrows and forehead. And they were very subtle movements. She would also lift or lower her head when signing, I took them to be like the up down eyebrows. Not sure if I’m correct in that assumption, like I said, she signed very fast sometimes. What she didn’t do though was open her mouth. She didn’t word anything, didn’t make “brrr” or any other non-manual signals with her mouth. The only three times I saw her open her mouth was when she was imitating/making fun of talking, when she yelled at James, and when she was panting like a dog in mock excitement. I know Marlee Matlin is a fluent signer and it must have been difficult for her to turn off all her NMS for this movie.
All in all it was a good movie, nice love story, nice ideas, nice plot. Other than my peeves with the oralism, it was enjoyable to get through and ended well.