Deaf might look at first to be a simple companion piece to Blind - same issues, different physical problem. It turns out not to be that at all, and it never feels like we’re just going over the same territory. Instead, it feels like breaking up his time in Talladega was his first experiment at longer films, and it’s so much to his career credit that he hasn’t felt limited by the typical length of feature films and documentaries when his films have required a larger canvas. It’s also time to marvel once again at his using his MacArthur “Genius” grant money to finance these films, as there’s no stipulation on how that money need be spent. To take such clearly uncommercial subject matter and make four films about it is a major achievement in itself. I don’t know the story of why PBS didn’t go for these, but great that Wiseman found a way. We’re only on the second out of four right now, but there is so much here that is great, and also anything but dull, ever. A couple of things to mention right off - I forgot to say anything with Blind about how the quality of color filming has now gotten much better since The Store, that in these it’s now quite clear and natural light always looks fine. Of course there’s nothing wrong with black and white, and often quite the opposite, but color is providing a naturalness that makes a difference in these, another way they feel less documentary-like and more just providing a sense of the every day. I think it’s a difference for the better. Also, Deaf noticeably doesn’t beat around the bush like maybe the NASCAR beginnings of Blind did. There’s maybe a joke at the start in first seeing a sign for a local Federal Prison, then one for the Alabama Institute for the Deaf and Blind, and then a third for “Village Video - now showing over 2000 movies”, putting our location between an institution and a source for another entertainment option, and then after a very few glimpses of the local community, right away we’re in front of the School for the Deaf, on the same grounds as our previous film.
The first half hour of the film is devoted mainly to different ways of teaching deaf children, and it’s quite a variety of methods and technologies. But we go over them fairly rapidly, considering that the entire film will edge toward three hours. As with Blind, the school is impressive for how well the kids appear to be doing and for how dedicated and patient their teachers are. There might be a bit of editorializing in a sign in the hallway that says "The American Dream is Alive and Well at this School. Get a good education. Give yourself a chance to be Great.” This will be explicitly echoed in a speech at the end of the film - the need for individuality and that this will lead to success, but in tension with individuality are reminders to follow the rules, like another sign that says "Obey your houseparents and teachers.” Dealing with physical handicaps gives this frequent Wiseman issue an additional tension - one goal of many is to be productive members of society, and whether being individual and also following rules can be reconciled is an open question. The efforts of the school, though, are sincere and at least in this early part of the film, look quite impressive and successful. Things take a curious turn about half an hour in when it’s field trip time, and a busload of kids make a visit to the “Talladega County Judicial Building”, which appears to be a combination courthouse and prison. After visiting a judge in his chambers, we get an ominous photo of missing children, and then in a real stunner, some of the kids see a wanted poster on the wall, which their teacher says is of “the man who killed all the deaf people”. What that’s about, I don’t think I even want to know. The strange visit continues with a walk by to some jail cells, where it’s explained to them that the cells have televisions in there because "You gotta have something for them to do. Quiet them down. They get restless." Fortunately, the view at their school is more progressive. In one of those weird Wiseman coincidences that seem like luck but likely have much more to do with knowing when you’ve filmed important stuff, a small group of kids notice that through a slot in a cell, a prisoner is gesturing in sign language, and they engage in an animated silent exchange of signing with him. We never see his face or hear his voice, but that we’d get a deaf prisoner, along with those posters, suggests that there are unfortunately other potential outcomes for some of these children.
Back at school, and now only about forty-five minutes in, things continue to feel far less upbeat. A meeting of teachers provides the grim conclusion that if the kids don’t have "fairly intelligible speech" by ninth grade, they likely won’t ever get it, and that this goal is abandoned in high school. As one teacher puts it: "We've got more important things to teach them in high school than to pull them out for speech.” They speak of what’s needed to be taught in high school for them “to survive functionally after age 21” and that earlier “chance to be great” is now getting toned down a good deal. The examples in the next couple of short classroom scenes deal with material that’s less than optimistic. One is about a boy who is “depressed and lonely” and another is about going to a McDonald’s and seeing one of their fellow students working there - one of their sample sentences is "I made a hamburger cooked by Tommy." - not exactly the highest of career aspirations. In an English class, where it’s explained that they are understanding but not vocalizing well, we’re almost into ironic content territory when one of their class sentences is "When the men have problems, or troubles with their wife nagging on them, what do they do?" These pieces seem organized to suggest big challenges ahead, and it gets tougher still in the long episode about to happen, by far the longest in either of these first two films.
I’m a little tired of saying so often that extended discussion scenes get more complex as they go along. This one time, I’m going to try to discuss how this works, because it’s a unique and pretty essential component of Wiseman films. The general idea is that what might start out to be a simple conversation begins to reveal more facets or layers, as people either admit things or say things they might have been hiding for various reasons, or because they’re prodded by another person, or because they just start going into more detail. As those complications develop, larger issues might start coming out, and comments might be made of a broader import. These often play out as dramas in their own right, as tensions and added problems, both personal and beyond, come to the surface. Part of the drama too comes from never knowing when the scene will end, as so many scenes are quite short, and there’s no way of knowing when that will not be the case.
The scene we’ll tackle lasts about 48 minutes total, an amazing length even in a film that’s 164 minutes. For 15 minutes, it’s a discussion between the school principal, a teacher, and a mother, about problems with her son Peter. The next 33 minutes also include the son. Rather than keep saying their names, I’ll just refer to them as The Principal, The Teacher, The Mother, and The Son. What I want to go through is my sense of the developing complications and issues, as of course, there is no narration and we have no idea when new matters will arise. I will guess that my description will be hard to follow, and another point of attempting this is to acknowledge the subtleties of actual conversation, how necessary it is to actually see and hear the speakers. This is a less than pale substitute to the real thing, which of course demands to be viewed. But I think it’s worth a try at least once to see if we can sort out some of what’s involved.
FIRST FIFTEEN MINUTES WITHOUT THE SON PRESENT (WE DON’T EVEN KNOW WHETHER WE WILL EVER SEE HIM)
The Principal has asked The Mother to come to the school because her son has said he wants to move to another school, because someone he knows has moved there. The Mother has written him two letters telling him no, that he should stay here in this school. At first, this sounds like the problem to be discussed. As they start to do this, it comes out that The Mother thinks there is also an issue regarding his “real father”, who refuses to ever see the boy or support him. The Mother reveals that she knew she had rubella measles before The Son was born, and that this could likely cause deafness. The “real father” minimized the risk and said to have the child anyway. When the child’s deafness was apparent, this led to the “real father” divorcing The Mother and to his rejection of The Son, which continues to this day. (The son is about fifteen.) The Mother has since remarried, but the boy still wishes to be in touch with his birth father, who refuses to do so. They call this Peter’s “second problem”. Then The Principal starts to talk about difficulties the night before regarding money, related to how much a group going skating got to take with them for incidental expenses, and that The Son wanted more and got angry when he was refused. They identify money as the third problem they must deal with. Then it eventually comes out that later that night before The Son tried to hang himself, which I'd have expected to have come up sooner. They discuss how The Principal came from home to talk to him, as did The Teacher, and that they both spent some time talking him down from being suicidal. (The Principal told him “he couldn’t have roller skates and a go kart if he was dead.”) The Principal says the boy is more calmed down today, and they discuss strategies to deal with any further suicide threats. The Teacher brings up (in what I’d consider an additional revelation) that this was his second suicide threat in just that week, that a similar incident had occurred a couple of days earlier. They then discuss what punishments can be threatened if he attempts this again. This leads The Mother to discuss how he did respond to deprivations when he was younger, and she talks a bit about his early history, since they discovered his handicap for certain at the age of three. ("It was a nerve deafness and it was uncorrectable.") She says that he wasn’t given water until he could say the word “water” in order to get him to vocalize. (That’s quite a tidbit to learn about, I’d say.) She also says he does now get “whipped” or punished when he does something wrong. They agree that suicide threats from him have to stop, and that’s where they must draw the line. The Teacher explains that “This is just a regular school. We would have a difficult time having one on one constant supervision.” The Mother then talks about his “fear of the devil” which she thinks can keep him from attempting suicide again, because “When you do, that’s where you go.” She also mentions his concerns about death, and he has told her “You're getting old. When you get old, you die." (She looks like she’s in her early forties, at the very most.) The Teacher mentions that he has told her “when you get grey hair, you die." (I’d call this quite a turn in the discussion too.) Then they say that The Son has now arrived from class, and they bring him in.
THE THIRTY-THREE MINUTES WITH THE SON PETER
When The Son comes in, he refuses to speak to his mother or to look in her direction. He vocalizes and sometimes we can understand him. The Principal and The Teacher both sign with him, so they communicate better. The Principal tries for awhile to get him to say why he thinks his mother worries about him. The answer he wants is that she loves him, which he says isn’t so. This moves to a discussion of the letters she has recently sent him regarding his wanting to move to another school, and some disagreement as to when the letters were sent and received and how many there were. The Son then says he hates his mother because she won’t move him to a different school. The Principal says to him “You need to change the word that you use”, that “don’t like’ is more appropriate than “hate”. Then he asks Peter why he doesn't like this school. He says it's because he has problems in the dormitory, and that he fights with the other boys. The Principal says when you're growing up, it's normal sometimes to argue with other boys, and that he has a bad temper. The Son agrees. The Principal says it’s normal to sometimes get angry, but when that happens "don't say, I hate, I hate, I hate" and that he shouldn't say he's going to kill himself. The Son agrees he won’t say that again. The Principal then lists all the people who care about him, and they discuss the idea of rules and why they have to be strict with him. The Principal says "you've got to stop talking about killing yourself. It you don't stop, there's many things you can't do" that for example he won’t be able to go on Boy Scout trips anymore if he does that. The Son promises that he won’t kill himself. The Teacher then tells The Son that “I want you to tell your mother Hi” since he still hasn’t done that. He refuses to again, so they tell him to look at her and say he’s angry with her. He says he's mad at her because he was waiting for a letter from her. The Teacher shifts the subject (to one important as a general issue too), that they need to discuss their difficulties in communicating, which The Teacher says are partly due to The Mother not having signing skills, and partly because Peter doesn’t watch her when she speaks anyway, so he doesn’t know what she’s saying. The Mother says she can't go to signing classes because they are all in the evening and she has three other children at home, and that “When we sit and look at one another, we do communicate.” This leads to talking about whether he misses his mother when he’s at school, and Peter says no, who he misses is his first father. The mother twice tells him his first father “just doesn’t love you” and “he does not want you”, and that he was lied to by his grandmother who tried to tell him otherwise. The Son says he’s very depressed to hear that, but they talk about how “second daddy” loves him. The Principal and The Teacher try partly successfully to get him to smile and to hug his mother. The Teacher then tells him "If you try to continue to find problems, you will do that." The Principal says that his mother has driven five hours this morning from Mobile to be at this meeting (something we didn’t know) and that “he has to stop being angry”. The Principal ends the meeting by saying to him how "everyone has rules" and “When you learn to follow the rules, you will be happier."
The summary is over, and I hope that gives some sense of the ways one of the Wiseman extended discussion scenes develops, because I think there are quite a number that proceed in this manner. The developments here of note are the gradual explanation of how the son came to develop deafness, that the initial problem about him receiving letters late from his mother and then having some dispute about spending money were actually small issues in comparison to his suicide attempt, and that this was his second suicide attempt in a week. We also come to learn of the family problems, the father who doesn’t want to be involved in any way with his deaf child, and also the difficulties there are in communicating with deaf children when the parents are not able, for whatever reasons, to learn sign language. I think we see as well in necessary detail that the problems of deaf children can extend well beyond their actual physical disability. We learn too about how the school deals with behavioral issues and how they attempt to enforce rules. Coming out as well by letting us experience the discussion at this length is the considerable patience that the school staff shows in dealing with these problems, including emergency evening trips to sit with the children at some length. I would say as well that by giving us a chance to see these interactions in this manner, it makes for both a gripping cinematic experience and a challenging one. Our sympathies can shift, our sense of the ideas coming out can vary, and the gradual revelations require careful attention and close involvement. Even with this one scene going on for 48 minutes, it never feels as if any time has been wasted or that we should have seen less. It really needs to be the length that it is, and the logic we follow is consistent with what Wiseman regularly expects of us as viewers. I think this one sequence could stand alone as its own film, but also might serve as a way to acclimate ourselves to watching these films.
Well, there’s another very good hour left to Deaf, and Wiseman lightens things up by returning to a favorite subject, a dig at the ways of television news reporters, somewhat along the lines of the one in Maneouvre that we looked at. Here, the local channel is covering their basketball game, and they start by standing much too close to the coach while his practice is going on, the kind of thing Wiseman can handle much more adroitly and circumspectly. Worse still, the cameraman stands right in the middle of the players on the court, and then even worse, we see him setting up a television light and then starts directing the players how to move past him while they film their piece. A talking reporter now joins the cameraman, and he keeps messing up his lines, forcing the players to repeat their staged moves past him. It takes them three times to get it right, all of which we see, taking all these liberties that are entirely outside Wiseman’s methods. This pretty funny scene has nothing really to do with deaf issues, but certainly feels like enjoyable Wiseman stuff.
The last part of the film generally sticks to more grown-up material than the first half, including issues of sexuality, of the school’s budget, and several strong arguments for the hearing people around the deaf needing to learn how to sign in order to communicate with them. The key line in one of these discussions is “Many times people that can hear can’t communicate.” This is a way of saying that the hearing can be deaf too. Some teachers warn their students of the difficulties they can face when they return home, saying “You need to stay in contact with people you can communicate with." - meaning either they are better off with their friends when at school or that family members have things to learn too. Boldly, there are several sequences in this last part of the film where students converse with each other entirely by signing, so as those of us watch without signing skills, we are deaf to what is being communicated. Having no subtitles is quite the correct way for these scenes to be included.
The film concludes in a very Wiseman way, with a speech before a large group, by a 93-year-old black man named A.G. Gaston, who gets a generous introduction about his successes as a businessman and about his early life as the grandchild of former slaves. (Gaston was actually a rather controversial figure in the black community, at least according to Wikipedia, who helped Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph Abernathy but who had some public disagreements with them. He lived to the age of 103.) Gaston rather colorfully describes travels around the world, and his speech is mostly a return to the individuality theme mentioned earlier, and that this is what makes America the best country in the world. He does, though, return to the group he’s speaking to and says bluntly "Ain't no such thing as a handicap. Forget your handicaps. Don't be sorry for yourself." We’re not entirely sure if the film is endorsing this view, but it’s presented pretty straightforwardly. The very last line of the film is Gaston’s: "Look forward and be glad you're in a great and free country." With an abrupt cut to the credits, the line is at least out there for us to consider and certainly to agree with if we choose. And appropriately, the end credits are entirely silent, which is usually not the case in his films.