I recently watched Sound and Fury, a documentary by director Josh Aronson and producer Roger Weisberg, which focuses on a family of two brothers; Peter and Chris Artinian. Chris is hearing and Peter is deaf, their parents are hearing. Chris is married to a hearing woman who has deaf parents, they have twins boys and one is deaf. Peter’s wife is deaf [there was no mention of wife’s parents if I recall correctly] and they have three deaf children.
Chris and his wife decide they want to implant their deaf son with the cochlear implant. With all this exposure, Peter and his wife also look into it because their 4.5 years old deaf daughter told them she wanted to get one. The film guides you through their experience of looking into cochlear implants and meeting other children with cochlear implants. They ended up deciding that Heather shouldn’t get a cochlear implant more out of fear if you ask me. While I understand the fear, it doesn’t make it right though. I could see that Heather would have been happy to get an implant but only acted as she didn’t want it anymore because she knew the parents didn’t want her to get one.
You get to see two strong sides of a debate. The deaf community acting as if it was abuse to implant a deaf child, but yet the hearing community said it was abuse to not implant a deaf child. Both extremes really upset me. As far as I am concerned, it’s all about personal choices. A deaf child while may be limited in some ways will still generally grow up to be an intelligent adult [if they receive the proper education and such] and could do very much as long as she or he had the will and determination to do so. But I won’t lie. It is difficult to be deaf, and there are many days where I just get so depressed with the thought of being this way for the rest of my life.
Both grandparents made me feel angry for various reasons. The deaf grandmother was calling her hearing daughter lousy for getting the son implanted and constantly stating how the situation was upsetting them. To me it seemed that obviously what really bothers them was the fear that they won’t be able to communicate with their grandson, and that fear is completely understandable! I know if I had a hearing kid, there would be a part of me that would cry when he or she got to say it’s first word verbally, simply because I couldn’t be a part of that experience. Or when we’re all sitting down during dinner and the child chooses to speak instead of signing and I’m left out of my own child’s life. What parent would ever want that? So I completely understand that fear but still, don’t attempt to make your child feel bad for choosing to implant their child. That solves nothing.
The hearing grandmother, she was the strongest advocate for cochlear implants. She at one point said, “I know what it’s like to grow up deaf” which confused me. She should have said “I know how it is to watch a deaf child grow up.” That’s two different things and I don’t understand how she could have failed to realize that. Also at another point of the film, Peter told her that he doesn’t want to have an implant. Granted that could have just been stubborn blind pride but he said that and yet she turns to him saying that if she could do it all over again, she would implant him. Also to make things worse, her signing was not advanced at all, I’ll admit though she signed better than my parents but still was not very good at it. It really irritated me how she was so convinced that she was the right one and refused to accept that her son didn’t agree with her. Even worse yet, there’s the hearing grandfather, sitting there saying to his son, “if your kid was a Cripple wouldn’t you want to fix him . . . ” First I have to point out how this man was insensitive enough to use the word “cripple” instead of disabled, also one must keep in mind that he said this while not signing to his deaf son. Here’s a deaf son who most likely prefers to communicate via signing since he seems to sign whenever possible, but yet his dad chooses to speak to him. I consider this the ultimate slap in the face, to have a parent refuse to speak to you in the language you are most comfortable in, left alone the language that defines who you are in a way.
One concern I have is that when people watch this film, they get the impression that all deaf people are rabid fanatics about their deaf culture. I’m far from that. We’re all human beings first, and we all develop our own opinions. It’s just easier, perhaps to get stuck in the deaf community if it’s all you have known, but in my case, I grew up in the hearing world. All my friends were hearing, all my relationships were with hearing guys, all the schools I attended were public schools where I was the only deaf child, and so on. Yet I do know some deaf people who went to a deaf school their entire life and aren’t like these people in the film.
Of course after watching this film, I debated with myself with the idea if I had a deaf child, what would I want to do? My conclusion is that I would implant my deaf child. Because I know how hard it is for me to grow up being deaf in a hearing world, and to this very day I still struggle. So why would I want that for my child? Obviously the child would learn sign language and be fluent in order to communicate with me. So I think the child would be a part of both the hearing and the deaf world and if I implanted the child at the earliest stage as possible, the child could possibly be successful with the implant. I also figure that if the child reaches an age and for some unknown reason decides it’s better to not hear. The child can simply turn it off and the deafness returns.
Also to answer some questions people may have after reading this review of mine, I don’t wish my mom implanted me because back in the 80’s the technology wasn’t as good as it is nowadays. Another question one probably has is that would I implant myself now if I had the chance to? I have struggled with this question for years ever since I was a child and my mom asked me if I wanted to get one. I believe I would but I don’t hold any misconceptions that I’d be successful. I would never be because I’m an adult already. It would take years and years before I could possibly even communicate vocally with people and who knows. However I think I would take the chance but I would never “forget” who I am. I will always feel most comfortable signing.
With all that said, this film is so emotional that I have a hard time imagining anyone watching this without being strongly impacted and full of new awareness about an issue that they perhaps never knew even existed. The emotions are so intense that even these who are already aware and have an opinion on this issue will be tugged everywhere emotionally. I highly suggest that everyone watch this film and afterwards to make sure to do research online about cochlear implants, deaf culture and the Artinian family.
Reference:
- Official ‘Sound and Fury’ website: www.pbs.org/wnet/soundandfury/ Deaf Culture: www.aslinfo.com/deafculture.cfm
