The upcoming film, ‘Babel’ is generating a lot of buzz. Alejandro González Iñárritu directed the movie and written by Guillermo Arriaga. To summarize the plot, two boys in a desert test the range of a rifle, it collides the lives of four separate groups of strangers instantly. This is a movie that is generating a lot of buzz in the film industry and may be somewhere controversial because of the politics involved. This movie involves Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Elle Fanning a sister of Dakota Fanning’s. I’m not going to discuss these actors, what I want to focus on is the deaf and mute character.
Yes, you read it right… deaf and mute. That’s what you’ll find in all articles and reviews on this upcoming movie. She’s a rebellious deaf Japanese teenage girl; it sounds like a role that a real-life deaf actress can perform. Only the actress isn’t deaf in real life, her name is Rinko Kikuchi. I can understand how they would prefer actresses who can hear and speak, as it would prevent any communication issues from occurring. Still, to make a character more authentic, an actual deaf actress would be better suited for the role especially when the character is ‘mute’ to start with. As much as it’s great to see a deaf character getting a significant role in a movie like ‘Babel’, but the real question I have is… why didn’t they hire a deaf actress to take on the role?
This reminds me of the controversy that surrounded the movie, ‘Memoirs of a Geisha’ because they had hired Chinese actresses instead of Japanese actresses to portray the Japanese characters. It’s kind of ironic, as it’s known that the Chinese and the Japanese people have a long-standing feud. Like I said, it’s about making the character as authentic as possible. Hiring a Chinese actress to portray a Japanese character can be problematic, as they look quite different. Yes, they do look different. Maybe they look all the same to some of you, but if you take another look, you’ll see that they don’t look the same.
It reminds me of how they hired Rob Lowe to portray a deaf man in the TV mini-series, ‘The Stand’. Even though he is deaf in one ear, but he is not deaf and while he is a decent actor, he did a poor portrayal of a deaf character in the mini-series. It seems like some filmmakers are too afraid to take a risk and hire a deaf actor/actress to play a role of a deaf character because of communication issues. If they actually hired one, they’ll realize that it isn’t such a bad thing after all.
Remember how Trudy Suggs, a child born to deaf parents, she’s a freelance writer who exposed an ad campaign by Saturn, the car manufacturer. I remember hearing about this in the late 90s’ or early 2000s’; it was quite a big topic among the deaf community. Saturn’s ad firm had hired a hearing woman to portray a deaf character in a Saturn commercial. That television commercial really ruffled some feathers in the deaf community. It was the proof that there were still prejudices in the media industry toward the deaf and people with disabilities.
UPDATE: Trudy Suggs left a comment here on my blog adding more details to what I had wrote on the 'Saturn' commercial featuring a deaf character. Below here is her comment left on my blog.
Stumbled across this website by accident - first, thank you for spelling my name right. :-)
I should probably clarify the Saturn fiasco; it's not as clear-cut as it seems here (unfortunately). What happened was that Saturn had a "Real People, Real Cars" ad campaign that featured REAL owners - not actors by any measure - and one of them was Holly Daniel, who claimed to be deaf. She never once told Saturn she was hearing. It was only after some deaf people who had gone to church with her or had her as their interpreter at LSU told me that she was actually hearing that the story became bizarre.
People in the Deaf community were furious that a hearing woman would not only fake being deaf, but also make $75,000 off it. So that was the issue, especially because she was NOT an actress nor did she tell the truth to Saturn. However, Saturn should have been more responsible in bringing her onboard.
Trudy, thanks for the clarification, I appreciate it.
I hope that a couple of aspiring deaf filmmakers will break out in Hollywood someday soon in a big way. Here’s a tiny hint… Mösdeux.
I truly believe that there are a lot of deaf people out there who has the potential to be great filmmakers and many of these are great storytellers to start with. Even though I’m a graphic designer, I do have an interest in the film industry and that I hope to make some short films in the future. Maybe even a full-length film. I’ve even made a few short films using 8mm and some other cheap camcorders back then when I was a teenager. As many of you know, I have a great passion for the art of film and storytelling. I have dozens of ideas of what could make a great film, though I’m not going to share them here, as that would be like giving free candies to the Spielberg wannabes.
I continue to find myself being disappointed at seeing deaf character portrayed by hearing actors/actresses. It’s just not right. A filmmaker may have the guts to take risks with their movies, yet they are so hesitant to add authenticity to their characters, it’s pretty obvious they are prejudiced when they are hiring performers who don’t feature any of these characteristic traits. Wouldn’t it make sense to hire a deaf actor to play a deaf character just as you would hire a blind person to play a blind character? To think of it, people who aren’t blind often perform the blind characters. Yes, some actors love the challenge of playing a character that is different from them in real life, like Jamie Foxx did an Oscar-worthy performance as Ray Charles, the singer in ‘Ray’.
Still, it’ll be nice if they would hire a deaf performer to portray a deaf character. I always know when I see a hearing person playing a deaf character on an episode of a TV series, or in a movie. Not many hearing actors are able to convince me that they are deaf. I will appreciate an actor’s performance as a deaf character as long it is convincing, but I’ve yet to see such a performance and I should know since I’m deaf and a big movie buff.
I do hope to see that more and more filmmakers will be starting to take a more serious note on adding authenticity to their characters in their movies and television shows in the short future. Even the deaf characters portrayed by real-life deaf performers are plagued to death with characteristic clichés. For example, lip-reading is often greatly exaggerated especially when they are able to read lips from across the street or they are portrayed as being incapable of understanding a serious situation therefore they are ‘protected’ and ‘sheltered’ by the hearing characters. Worst of all, they are often portrayed as being naïve.
One of these days, I hope to see the film industry becoming aware of the importance of adding authenticity to the deaf characters featured in movies and television shows.
Hopefully that will happen one day soon.
