Sound and Fury

"Sound and Fury" is a documentary film released in 2000 about two American families with young deaf children and their conflict over whether or not to give their children cochlear implants, surgically implanted devices that may improve their ability to hear but may threaten their deaf identity. The film was nominated for several awards, including an Academy Award.

ynopsis

The film follows an extended family with deafness through three generations over a year and a half, focusing on two brothers — Peter, who is deaf and Chris, who has normal hearing — and their wives and children. Chris and Mari Artinian (who is a child of Deaf adult) find out that one of their newborn twins is deaf. They begin to research the cochlear implant and its advantages and disadvantages. While this is going on, Heather, Peter and Nita's oldest child, starts asking for an implant as well. The brothers, along with grandparents on both sides, become embroiled in a bitter argument over cochlear implants and deafness. For Peter and his wife, Nita, it's their fear of losing a child to the "hearing world", losing a piece of Deaf culture. They ultimately decide to raise their children in a Deaf environment, while Chris and Mari's child, Peter, receives the cochlear implant.

6 years later

In "6 Years later", Heather is now 12 years old, and herself, her 2 deaf siblings, her mother and members of her extended deaf family have all opted for the implant device. The article summarizing the documentary's events describes her as having clear speech, living in a 'mainstreamed' world, interacting with hearing people, and possessing high grades in school. These are goals lauded by the oralist movement. The girl appears to have achieved success by the oralist movement's definition in spite of living in an environment oralist educators strive to avoid as best as possible: her family is all Deaf, she attended Deaf schools and interacted primarily in the Deaf culture, and had little to no intelligible speech in the first documentary. She was able to possess a Deaf heritage, use ASL as a primary language, with little spoken language exposure or stimulation until she was implanted at 9, and still, she succeeded orally.

This partially challenges some of the requirements for implantation put forward by the cochlear implant industry, such as "the earlier implantation in the child's life would increase the chance of better language and speech development" and "use of sign language or gestures will limit or prevent the child's speech/language development". However, the success in this instance may simply be due to a better training and support, and are not applicable to all the cases.

The book "Train Go Sorry" by Leah Hager Cohen (a work on Deaf culture that covers cochlear implants and oral education from the author's perspective of having been involved in an oral school transitioning to include sign language in its classrooms) presents views from both sides and places cochlear implants in the spectrum of Deaf culture.

References