Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Sound and Fury comments
How many people in this class understood any of the words I said in that clip? Probably few or none.
As a student taking American Sign Language here at UT I found this documentary quite truthful in trying to portray the sides of the story. I feel that it was more biased towards the hearing culture in the way that the Deaf were portrayed in the film. But that could just be because of the natural way the Deaf portrayed themselves in the film outside of the filmmaker's choices.
Deaf culture and community are some of the most important parts of Deaf people's lives; they do not view deafness as a disability, but rather something that empowers them. It was interesting to hear some people laughing at the Deaf people in the documentary, but the community is so close knit it is only natural for them to react in the way that they did. They are a sizable minority in the US and trying to remove their deafness is like European settlers trying to change the Native Americans culture long ago.
I enjoyed seeing the problems and resolution of both sides and the decisions each family made. The crew captured the emotions of the moment and that helped make the film genuine. I'd be interested to see what happened further with the Deaf family after they moved and how the cochlear implanted baby developed language and identity.
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Sound and Fury was in my opinion an observational documentary with multiple points of view that allowed us to take on the perspective of each of the main characters at different times. The pitfalls of observational documentaries like this one seem to be a lack of aesthetic control—in other words, it doesn’t look pretty. I don’t think Aronson used much of any artificial lighting or set design to enhance the visual aspects of the story. Only one interview, the death brother Peter’s, appeared to be set up but was jarring with its dark lighting and contrast to the rest of the film. The style reminded me of an episode of 60 minutes—a no frills, straightforward account of these families’ stories. Of course, with documenting such a serious decision as whether to implant your child with a cochlear device, it would probably be inappropriate and unethical for the filmmaker to take the participatory approach.
ReplyDeleteThe structure of the film was based around the two families’ decisions, and culminated with the baby’s implant surgery--classic event-centered documentary. (Though Aronson may not have known when filming that there would even be an event to build up to, considering that both families may have chosen not to implant their children.) The multiple points of view were necessary to demonstrate the complexity of these families’ perspectives. It proved effective in that I found myself sympathizing with both sets of parents and grandparents, though eventually succumbing to the bias of the hearing world. The arguments against the implant just didn’t have a chance when I saw the heart-wrenching scene where the baby smiled as he heard sounds for the very first time. The scenes where the characters had long, drawn out arguments seemed redundant and could have been cut down to make the film a little more concise. But the subject matter was so interesting and unexplored that Aronson could get away with that as well as the drab visual experience.