Cultural Film Reflection Essay #1
When I first started learning ASL back in high school, I was honestly just doing it for the language credit. However, I’ve come to really enjoy ASL and the deaf community through learning more about the background and struggles deaf people have. It took me some time, but I’ve been fortunate enough to attend deaf events with other students. I also work as a cashier in a grocery store and we have a handful of deaf customers that come in regularly. Being able to sign with them has been a pleasant experience overall.
Everyday activities are pretty much the same between my life and a deaf individual’s. We go to school and work, go to protests, host parties for holidays, and have drama in practically the same ways. Both hearing and deaf worlds have small tight-knit groups of people that look down on everyone else. While deaf people can’t hear music, that doesn’t mean they can’t enjoy through other means like feeling the beat through their feet. In deaf spaces, furniture and architecture is kept very open as opposed to more compact hearing spaces so there is more room and visibility for signing.
Overall, I think that Deaf U is a good look into what college life is like through a deaf perspective. The diversity between each individual student was interesting to see, especially how their upbringings affected them in the present day. I didn’t much care for the drama or sex talk throughout the eight episodes, reminds me too much of reality T.V. It is college, so I expected some of the topics to go towards that area but not as much as the show goes over. However, it was overall a pretty good show. I wish there were more episodes available, so maybe in the future, there will be more content available like this.
When I first started learning ASL back in high school, I was honestly just doing it for the language credit. However, I’ve come to really enjoy ASL and the deaf community through learning more about the background and struggles deaf people have. It took me some time, but I’ve been fortunate enough to attend deaf events with other students. I also work as a cashier in a grocery store and we have a handful of deaf customers that come in regularly. Being able to sign with them has been a pleasant experience overall.
Everyday activities are pretty much the same between my life and a deaf individual’s. We go to school and work, go to protests, host parties for holidays, and have drama in practically the same ways. Both hearing and deaf worlds have small tight-knit groups of people that look down on everyone else. While deaf people can’t hear music, that doesn’t mean they can’t enjoy through other means like feeling the beat through their feet. In deaf spaces, furniture and architecture is kept very open as opposed to more compact hearing spaces so there is more room and visibility for signing.
Overall, I think that Deaf U is a good look into what college life is like through a deaf perspective. The diversity between each individual student was interesting to see, especially how their upbringings affected them in the present day. I didn’t much care for the drama or sex talk throughout the eight episodes, reminds me too much of reality T.V. It is college, so I expected some of the topics to go towards that area but not as much as the show goes over. However, it was overall a pretty good show. I wish there were more episodes available, so maybe in the future, there will be more content available like this.
Cultural Film Reflection Essay #2
The more that I learn about the Deaf community, the more I feel inclined to dive deeper into it. I love seeing different perspectives on life, especially in cultures that are different from my own. But it’s also very interesting to see how similar different communities really are. For instance, despite the difference in hearing capabilities, those outside of the 2% of “working” actors struggle to get work in the acting industry. Like it was mentioned in one of the videos, even if a script is picked up by a company, there is a large likelihood that the characters are going to be changed to fit a more well-known/popular actor in exchange for a more diversely filled role.
The more that I learn about the Deaf community, the more I feel inclined to dive deeper into it. I love seeing different perspectives on life, especially in cultures that are different from my own. But it’s also very interesting to see how similar different communities really are. For instance, despite the difference in hearing capabilities, those outside of the 2% of “working” actors struggle to get work in the acting industry. Like it was mentioned in one of the videos, even if a script is picked up by a company, there is a large likelihood that the characters are going to be changed to fit a more well-known/popular actor in exchange for a more diversely filled role.
An interesting pattern that I noticed through not just these videos, but through reading Inside Deaf Culture is that there’s just as much division within the community than outside. The stigma that if you are deaf, you must act a certain way and conform to specific rules to be considered truly part of the community. In the videos, when Marlee Matlin voiced the award nominees and received a mountain of criticism from the Deaf community, I was just surprised to see such a reaction. From my perspective, she was just trying to appeal to the crowd, which is normal for actresses to do, deaf or not. It is hard to really say what the right or wrong thing would have been to do in that situation. Both hearing and deaf sides of the audience would still have criticisms for whatever she did because of her deafness. |
Another issue that was super impactful through the videos was background and race and how it plays a large part in the sub-categories within the Deaf community. Deaf individuals who are black have a harder time doing things and/or landing roles than a deaf and white actor. The same applies to how easy it is for a deaf person to get an education. Immigrants and refugees already have to jump through numerous hurdles to get a green card to live in the United States, so I couldn’t imagine trying to get a proper education for your child at the same time.
Overall, I loved seeing the different experiences and perspectives of all the videos. It is interesting to see how biased and exclusionary some parts of the Deaf community can be when they themselves have been discriminated against in the past. Though looking at it in hindsight, when your people have been discriminated against for years then it only makes sense to protect your culture by keeping out anyone who doesn’t immediately fit into the descriptions. I think most, if not all, of humanity shares the innate belief that being different is a bad thing. Though a large portion of this belief stems from protecting oneself and one’s culture, it does make integrating and communicating effectively quite difficult in the long run. |