CDIS 205: Beginning American Sign Language

August 2020 - December 2020

Minnesota State University, Mankato

My freshman year on campus at Minnesota State University, Mankato, I was in a class called CDIS 205 or beginning American Sign Language. As part of the course, we were expected to learn how to effectively communicate, at an elementary level, with the deaf. Throughout the semester we were dedicated to learning sign language and communicating in sign language. Every few weeks we would test our comprehension by watching what our teacher signed and writing down what she signed. At the end of the course, we told our professor a story completely in sign language with the words we knew. The class was not just about learning the language though. We also learned about deaf culture through analyzing different aspects. We did this in many different ways, one was looking at how members of the deaf community communicate with each other. As much as some people think, it is not all hand movements. It has a lot of importance held in facial expressions that portray the true meaning of the signs in the conversation, much like tone in hearing conversations. At the end of the class, we had to write a research paper on any topic related to deaf culture. It was overwhelming at first because there are so many aspects to choose from, and that was reflected in the spread of our topics over the class. After racking my brain for a few days, I settled on the one topic I felt really interested in, movies. I ended up looking at movies for the deaf and the development of movies from silent movies to movies done completely in American Sign Language, of which there are too few.

This experience helped me learn about a culture that is different than my own, deaf culture. It also kind of turned me back on myself. There are a lot of things we take for granted that other people cannot and how we expect everyone to be just like us or “normal.” One of the things I never thought about until this course was masks. We all had to buy the clear masks for the class so that the teacher or one of her helpers could read our lips. Most people in the pandemic did not wear those types of masks, so I realized how much harder the pandemic was for deaf people. In my sophomore year of school, I worked at Kohls in Mankato, Minnesota, and one of my coworkers was deaf. At the time we were still wearing masks, and the company required us to wear solid black masks with their logos on them. While everyone else would just point at my coworker to tell her were to go, I was able to, very badly, kind of tell her which area they would like her in for the day. We talked for a bit as well because she was impressed that I knew sign language. I told her that I knew a little from college. Before I was there, she had to ask people to remove their masks because no one got that she could not understand them with their masks on. It made me think that most people do not know a lot about this part of the community and that is very sad because what if one day they encounter someone like my coworker, then they have to rely on her ability to read lips. Plus, some people do not exercise patience when talking with them. Lip reading is not an exact science and can sometimes lead the person in a different direction. Customers often got frustrated with my coworker because she did not understand them on the first try.

Other than learning about the face value of how to form different signs with my hands to communicate with those who are deaf, this class helped me realize that our world does see hearing people as the norm. More should be done to help the deaf community because most people in the hearing community are not willing to take the time out of their day to realize the disparities of another community compared to their own. There was a time when the deaf community was shut out of the movie world. That was when sound was introduced to the movie realm, and some strides have been made to close the gaps like closed captioning.

As for the future, I plan on initiating more conversations with deaf people and learning about their experiences. Overall, this class was very helpful, and there are many ways I can utilize the knowledge that I have gained in this class. I look forward to every single one of them.

My research paper on deaf culture and the evolution of theatrical dramas in movie form can be found below

“If it’s a good movie, the sound could go off and the audience would still have a pretty clear idea of what was going on,” are words said by the infamous Alfred Hitchcock. Movies have been a staple of hearing culture since they were created. As the world of film progressed, the deaf community had a hard time keeping up, and it took a long time to catch the community back up. It is no secret that the deaf community has had a bunch of hurdles to worry about, and the film industry has tried to help them connect with more stories through silent films, captioning, and deaf films. This is also important to understanding how something that came so easily to the hearing community was a lot tougher to come by in the deaf community.

Silent films were undeniably the start of the modern film era, and they were a great aspect of the history for the deaf community. The creation of the motion picture camera in the 1890’s opened up a whole new world for everyone. As the name implies, silent films, aside from the occasional background music, had no audio which was perfect for the deaf community. Finally, they could have the same experience as hearing people without any modifications. Actors had to tell the story through their body language and facial expressions rather through words which helped bring everyone together. Because a feasible, emotional, dramatic story is hard to portray without words, most of the short films that were produced, and especially the successful ones, were slapstick comedies. These were the films that brought us our comedy classics of today such as the falling piano, falling anvil, and the banana peel. The silent film era started out with short one-minute clips, they eventually grew to be the longer films that are revered by film buffs everywhere including The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and The Passion of Joan of Arc. However, eventually people wanted to hear what the characters were saying, so in the 1920’s when the technology came out to put sound into the films, everyone jumped on that opportunity which meant that once again, the deaf community was left behind. Even though silent films are nearly obsolete, they were a great beginning to the world of movies and aspect of history for the deaf community.

After the world of silent films came the world of films with dialogue audio also known as talkies, but eventually captioning entered the industry which helped bring films back to the deaf community. The first form of captioning came in the form of intertitles or title cards which were added to silent movies to help bridge a gap between silent films and talkies. Before the world of sound in films there was an era where dialogue appeared in between the slides of a silent film, these slides of dialogue and stage directions were called intertitles or title cards. These were either drawn or printed slides that usually had a frame with pretty designs around the edge. Title cards were first used in 1903 for a film called Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and the creator of these intertitles was a man by the name of Emerson Romero who had a cousin who was one of the few deaf actors. In 1909, people started to realize that some people could not understand the intertitles because it was not in their native language, so subtitles came into the picture quite literally. Subtitles were the translations of the intertitles. Although this was not specifically targeted to the deaf community, once sound came into the equation, it allowed them to watch some movies. However, they could only watch movies that were not filmed in their native language. It was not until 1971 that closed captions came into the picture for the first United States national conference on television for the hearing impaired. Closed captioning is typed dialogue that appears on the bottom of the screen that can be turned off, and after its appearance at the conference, it was seen at what was then called Gallaudet College but is now called Gallaudet University in February of 1972. Some programmers caught sight of the closed captioning and decided to use that in their programs. ABC was the first to used closed captioning in their television show titled “The Mod Squad.” Closed captions were also used in commercials, and the first one to do this was IBM. Later in 1972, open captions, which are typed dialogue that cannot be turned off. Open captions were first used on PBS for a show titled “The French Chef.” While captioning was often seen as a nuisance to hearing people, it reopened up the world of film to the deaf community.

There is a selection of films that have been done in complete sign language that the deaf community can enjoy without reading any captioning whatsoever. The first full length feature film was entitled Deafula. It was a horror film that premiered in Portland, Oregon, in January 1975 and it takes place in a world where no hearing people exist, and all conversations are in American Sign Language. As one could imagine, a deaf film was not high on the list of priority for the film industry, so Deafula was an independently produced film with a total of twelve actors. Three of the twelve actors were hearing, and this was a giant leap for the deaf community. It helped launch some more Since then, there have been a few other deaf films that include titles like Country of the Deaf and A Silent Agreement. Country of the Deaf is a Russian crime film that takes place in 1990’s Moscow. The film came out in February of 1998 in Russian Sign Language. A Silent Agreement is a romantic film that was filmed in English Sign Language and Auslan, Australian Sign Language. The film follows two men and their journey of love, and it was released on September 28, 2017. Other films that have been made for the deaf community range in genres from superhero to comedic dramas, but it is not nearly as expansive as the genres that the hearing community has today. It is unfortunate that there have been so few films for the deaf community and that all the films are swept under the rug. Hopefully someday there will be a wider variety of deaf films and they will not be swept under the rug to be stepped over.

It is no secret that there are many hurdles that the deaf community has had to plow over, but when looking at the film industry, it is easier to portray these hurtles to the hearing community. Being hearing makes things easy especially in the film industry. When sound was added to films, nothing truly had to change for the hearing community, and they truly were not limited on the films that they could watch. If they wanted to watch Liam Hemsworth in The Hunger Games, they can do that without a second thought. However, the deaf community is still extremely limited in their choice of films if they do not want to read captions. It would be similar to saying that hearing people could only watch the top ten movies on Netflix right now for the rest of their lives until someone somewhere decides that maybe just maybe another movie might be added. Most people would not be happy with it, but it would make hearing people realize that they should revere the choices that they have. Years ago the only choices for cinema for the deaf were silent movies, but the introduction of movies like Deafula created a whole new world for the deaf community, and it would be amazing to see more of them in the world.

The deaf community has had to overcome many hurdles and the movie industry is no different. However, the industry has tried to knock one of those hurdles down through silent films, captioning, and deaf films, and this helps people understand the severity of one of the hurdles the deaf community has had to face. As Werner Herzog once said, “I would travel down to hell and wrestle a film away from the devil if it was necessary.”