Under the Lake and Before the Flood, episodes 3 and 4 of Doctor Who, series 9 (Amazon affiliate link), are notable for featuring a Deaf character (Cass), played by a Deaf British actor (Sophie Stone). Cass and a few other characters speak BSL (British Sign Language--which, yes, is a totally different language from American Sign Language) throughout both episodes, and the British Deaf Association praised the episodes for helping break down barriers for Deaf actors.
In particular, the Chair of the BDA said:
What was most heartening was that the Deafness of Sophie’s character, Cass, is incidental to the plot.
But that turns out to be not entirely true! In fact, Cass's Deafness is critical to the plot!
But before we get to that: how is the language itself presented, and made accessible to the typical hearing viewer?
In the opening scene, we have Lunn, later identified as Cass's interpreter, SimComming "Can I go in?" (to the mysterious craft they are investigating], to which the response is some untranslated signing from Cass. Lunn then continues SimComming with "If it's not safe, how come you can go in?", which makes it fairly obvious what Cass was signing, even though (like the previous examples of ASL I analyzed) there are no subtitles provided.
For most of the remainder of the story, when Cass speaks, we see her sign and then get the immediate (diagetic) translation from Lunn. In a few cases, where other characters may not have seen Cass, we get clarification, like this:
Cass says he might be right. It might have been here since the 1980s, when the valley flooded. [Italics added]
Additionally, after first meeting the Doctor (i.e., not already having an established relationship with him as a translator for Cass), Lunn tries to introduce his translation with "Cass is saying-" only to get cut off:
Doctor: Thank you, but I actually don't need your help. I can speak sign. [signs] Go ahead.
[Cass signs rapidly]
Doctor: No, no, actually, I can't. It's been deleted for semaphore. Someone get me a selection of flags.
Lunn [translating]: One of the ghosts is our previous commanding officer. The other, um moley guy, we don't know what he is.
And apart from that, as long as Lunn and Cass are both present, and other characters can see that Cass is speaking, Lunn simply translated directly, without comment. The fact that Cass is almost always speaking, and being spoken to, through a translator ends up being exploited for some minor comedic effects--a possibility which The Dragon Prince completely ignored! For example:
Doctor: It's a Faraday cage. Completely impenetrable to radio waves, and apparently, whatever those things are out there. So, who's in charge now? I need to know who to ignore.
Lunn [translating]: That would be me.
Lunn: Uh, her. [pointing]
The interpreter is exploited in the opposite direction in an amusing scene at the end:
Bennet: Lunn. Will you translate something to Cass for me?
Lunn: Of course.
Bennet: Tell her that you're in love with her and that you always have been.
Lunn: What?
Bennet: Tell her there is no point wasting time because things happen and then it's too late. Tell her I wish someone had given me that advice.
[Cass asks Lunn what's happening. Lunn passes on the message. Cass looks quizzically at Bennett.]
Lunn: Oh, God, no. I was just passing on what he said. Please, don't--
[Cass grabs Lunn and kisses him.]
We also get one solid example of exploiting the language barrier to delay a translation for dramatic effect:
[Cass grabs Lunn by the lapels and signs rapidly]
Lunn: No, she's right. Neither of you can get it back.
[Cass signs]
Clara: What? What is it? What did she say?
Lunn: It doesn't matter.
Clara: Please.
Lunn: She said to ask you whether travelling with the Doctor changed you, or were you always happy to put other people's lives at risk.
Clara: He taught me to do what has to be done. You should get going.
This is shortly followed up by a lampshaded instance of Making it Obvious:
Clara: Look, he'll be fine, I promise.
[Cass signs angrily.]
Clara: Okay. Didn't need anyone to translate that.
And at one point we get a clear instance of diagetic description, rather than a straight translation, when Lunn summarizes a conversation he had been having with Cass (not translated in real time as they were the only conversants, so interpretation was not necessary) for another character:
Lunn, SimComming: It's not safe out here!
Clara: What's the matter?
Lunn: She won't let me look inside the spaceship. She says it's not safe. I'm saying it's not safe out here.
Although this is a little awkward, as the only reason for Lunn to suddenly start vocalizing seems to be to bring Clara (and the audience) into the loop, and Clara wouldn't have interjected in the conversation otherwise.
Throughout the episodes, we also get a few brief shots of Cass and Lunn conversing with each other in BSL that are never translated. Some of these could be Easter Eggs, but the brevity of the shots and the fact that the signing is often half off-screen indicate that the filmmakers intended to Make it Irrelevant; the background signing exists only to show sign language to the audience, to remind them that it is there--not to communicate any additional semantic content. Similarly, nearly every scene in which some other character is talking in Cass's presence features a shot or two of Lunn moving his hands about--usually short, often only partially visible. This is enough to remind the audience that, yes, Cass is Deaf, and requires interpretation of spoken English, and it's a subtle indicator which works much better than the closest equivalent in prose; but, it's also something of a missed opportunity. Given that Lunn's actor had to do all of that signing anyway, simply reframing the shots so that all of Cass's interpretation was available to the audience as well would've gone a long way towards improving Deaf accessibility, and breaking down barriers not merely for actors, but for Deaf people on both sides of the screen.
In one instance (at least, that I was able to notice) we see one other character demonstrating knowledge of BSL to communicate with Cass without interpretation:
Bennet, SimComming: Cass, what do we do?
Cass [via Lunn]: We abandon the base. Topside can send down a whole team of marines or ghost-busters or whatever.
And in this case, the SimCom for a short simple sentence is actually reasonably justified, as Bennet wanted to keep everyone else also looped in to the conversation.
But, more significantly, we also have instances of characters needing to communicate with Cass when Lunn is not present, who do not use BSL, such as :
[O'Donnell moves in close to Cass's face]
O'Donnell: Cass, he's alive!
O'Donnell gets close and enunciates so that Cass can read her lips! And that is all it takes to establish for the audience a) that Cass can read lips, and b) that it takes attention and effort. This is never stated outright, but it is critical information to understand the plan that the Doctor comes up with: to capture the ghosts and in a small area and get them on screen with a good enough view that Cass can concentrate on reading their lips to figure out what they are saying. That's something that Cass is uniquely good at (not superhuman like Amaya from The Dragon Prince, but good), because, being Deaf, she has had to be. And the fact that the process is still not perfect is highlighted by the haltingness and corrections shown in Lunn's interpretations of Cass's reports:
Lunn: She says they're saying the same thing, the same phrase, over and over. They're saying the dark. The score. No, the sword. The for sale? No, the forsaken. The temple.
Lunn: Cass thinks the Doctor's saying something different to the others. He's saying Moran, Pritchard, Apprentice. No, Prentis [closeup of Cass fingerspelling]. O'Donnell, Clara, Doctor, Bennett, Cass.
So, you see, Cass being Deaf is not, in fact, purely incidental, but is in fact absolutely critical to the plot--that feature of that character allows the withholding of information, which is otherwise right there on the screen if you knew to look for it, from the audience and the characters until the writer wanted you to know it, by only making it accessible to the character who ought, by virtue of her Deafness, to have developed the skill to access it.
For further commentary, the actors playing Lunn and Cass have a behind the scenes interview in which they talk about using BSL in the episodes.
If you liked this post, please consider making a small donation!
No comments:
Post a Comment