'Deaf Eyes' endeavors to open ours

From: Newsday - Long Island,NY,USA - Mar 21, 2007

BY DIANE WERTS
diane.werts@newsday.com

March 21, 2007

Black culture. Southern culture. Deaf culture.

The 300,000 Americans who are profoundly deaf really do share a distinct experience, and "Through Deaf Eyes" makes it vivid for outsiders in a lively, succinct way. No handicaps here, just a "poetical" language, a tight sense of community, and a growing pride that what once was segregated came to develop its own set of discrete characteristics worth preserving and celebrating.

In just two hours' time, we plunge into the deaf perspective through a variety of evocative short films by deaf filmmakers. And we come to appreciate the challenges and joys of deaf life in America over the past 200 years, thanks to an encompassing documentary history that avoids earnestness. There's no "problem" to be addressed here, just an identity to be understood.

And debated, as it has been throughout history. The American deaf had no school until 1817, no formal visual language until later that same century, and little awareness among the hearing that they were anything other than victims of "horrendous misfortune," as Stockard Channing narrates. Just after sign language developed its own unique structure and aesthetics, it was nearly supplanted in the early 1900s by the "oral method" of reading lips and learning to speak by imitating mouth movements and throat vibrations. And now that today's technology enables a simulation of hearing, through cochlear implants transmitting sound directly to the brain, this "advance" has provoked another controversy. If deafness is indeed a mere state of being - as one person says, like being a man instead of a woman - why need it be "fixed"?

"Through Deaf Eyes" truly is a first-person experience. From actress Marlee Matlin to former Gallaudet University president I. King Jordan to ordinary adults and kids, the deaf have their say here. Producer Larry Hott's supple editing weaves a rich tapestry of comedy routines, poignant confessions, ironic encounters, agonizing decisions. One churchgoer extols the joy of finding a choir that sang in sign. Others discuss going to school among either hearing kids or fellow deaf students. Sign language dialects are explained. So are broader landmarks like the 1960s National Theatre of the Deaf and Matlin's Oscar win for 1986's "Children of a Lesser God." The "most celebrated event in deaf history" comes with the 1988 student takeover of Gallaudet demanding the university for deaf students install a deaf president.

That man, Jordan, emphasizes "there's not one way to be deaf," and that's apparent as interviewees speak clearly, or with subtitles, or through someone else's vocal translation as they sign. "Through Deaf Eyes" doesn't tell one story. It tells dozens.

THROUGH DEAF EYES. Vibrant portrait of a culture/language/identity little understood in the hearing world. Part history, part controversy, part celebration, all richly presented. Tonight at 9 on WNET/13.

Copyright 2007 Newsday Inc.