Sunday, August 22, 2021

Mr. Holland's ASL

So far, all of my analysis of secondary languages in fiction has focused almost entirely on oral languages--but sign languages are languages, too! Unfortunately, they are rather underrepresented in literature.

This is at least partially due to the fact that no sign language has a standard written form, and most of the various sign writing systems would be entirely opaque to non-signers (and to most signers, as well)--and more difficult to print. Perhaps the most straightforward option for printing and oral-accessibility would be something like David J. Peterson's Sign Language IPA (SLIPA)--but that's a very awkward system for general use, and not particularly intuitive. In practice, the most common way to write signed languages is to just gloss them--which is a very lossy encoding, and loses out on portraying much of the unique character of the language.

So, while trying to find any decent written portrayals of sign languages in fiction, I will start with film & TV representations.

Mr. Holland's Opus (<- Amazon Affiliate link) is a 1995 film about a high school music teacher (the eponymous Mr. Glenn Holland). It is primarily a heartwarming tale of a musician turned reluctant teacher who has a positive impact on countless students' lives over a 30 year teaching career; but not quite an hour into the 2 hour and 23 minute film, we are introduced to a major source of personal conflict for Mr. Holland: his son Cole is born deaf. The remainder of the film features numerous examples of ASL, and not a single subtitle.

Accurate to the time period, the Hollands are initially advised by a ridiculously audist pediatrician who tells them that "Gestures won't help him find his place in the hearing world." Fairly quickly, however, the frustrations of failed communication between Cole and his mother Iris leads them to put Cole in a school for the Deaf, where he can learn ASL.

Throughout the initial scenes in the school, everyone there is engaged in SimCom (simultaneous communication)--simultaneous signing and vocalizing. That's kinda sketchy, as the human brain doesn't handle trying to output two different languages simultaneously, and one medium or the other nearly always suffers, but it has been a common approach to Deaf education by hearing teachers nonetheless, and to the movie's credit it only portrays Cole engaging in SimCom (with stereotypically odd oral speech, learned by rote) twice, for very short periods.

Iris ends up learning ASL pretty well, although she constantly SimComs, while Glenn just barely gets by and often has trouble understanding his own son. This is a pretty cruddy situation for Cole, but it's great for the audience, because it sets us up for diagetic translation--Iris frequently has to translate what Cole says for Glenn, which allows the audience to hear the translation as well; and everything that Iris signs is simultaneously articulated in English already. And this isn't even unnrealistic--as a guy from my work said, "If I had a nickel for every time a Deaf person told me they missed out on a relationship with their father because, as the secondary caregiver, he never really learned to sign well... I'd have a whole bunch of nickels. At least a dollar's worth."

The first full-on ASL conversation in the film occurs when Iris and Cole arrive home after a science fair; Cole enters the room signing rapidly, to which Glenn responds

    "You wanna go to the what?"

This isn't a direct translation, but it indicates that Glenn has partial understanding of ASL, and allows us to infer most of what Cole was saying (he wants to go somewhere). This is somewhere between a straight diagetic Narrative Translation and contextually Making It Obvious.

Iris fills in the blank, while SimComming: "Stars. Cole discovered astronomy tonight."

This sets off more rapid fire ASL from Cole, which is terminated by this exchange with diagetic translation:

    Glenn: "Whoa! Slow down, you're goin' like a rocket!"
    Iris: "He wants to be an astronaut."

A bit later, we have Glenn telling a surly teenage Cole to take out the trash:

    Glen, SimComming: "Cole, take this stuff outside, it stinks."
    Iris, SimComming: "Go open the window for him."
    (Cole signs something to Iris.)
    Iris, SimComming: "Hey, don't bust my butt!"

The second chunk of this conversation doesn't directly involve Glenn, so Iris doesn't bother to translate. But her response indicates a pretty clear case of Easter Egging--Iris's response makes it pretty clear that Cole is Being A Teenager, and that's really all you need for the scene; but if you happen to know ASL, you can get exactly how Cole is Being A Teenager.

A bit later still, we have an inverse scene, where Iris is not present translate:

    Glenn, SimComming: "What happened to your eye?"
    (Cole signs.)
    Glenn, SimComming: "Sorry?"
    (Cole mimes punching himself.)

And here we have a visually-oriented instance of Making It Obvious!

The longest chunk of ASL comes up immediately after that, when Cole confronts Glenn in Iris's presence, signing too fast for Glen to understand until Iris steps in:

    Iris: "He wants to tell you something and he wants to be sure you understand."
    Glenn: "Couldn't we do this another time?"
    Cole: "Now!"

This one word is the first time we see Cole SimCom, and it is a perfect example of using the choice of language for dramatic effect. Choosing to vocalize does not add any literal meaning to what Cole is saying--but, at this point we have thoroughly established that Glenn sucks at ASL, that Cole knows this as sought out this opportunity to get his mother to translate an important conversation for him, and chooses to use one word of oral English to emphasize that he needs Glenn to understand.

Iris proceeds to diagetically translate the rest of the conversation between Glenn and Cole. At one point, Glenn turns to speak to Iris, and Cole grabs his head and turns it back around before signing:

    "I know who John Lennon is. I can't read your lips if you don't look at me."

which just serves to further highlight how poor Glenn's language skills are--despite his attempts at SimCom, we have just found out that Cole doesn't even understand Glenn's attempted signing unless he can read lips at the same time!

The conversation ends with one untranslated sign before Cole storms out. That's followed up by this exchange:

    Glen: "Iris, what does this [signs] mean?"
    Iris: "That means a**hole."

We get the diagetic translation, but with a very intentional delay to build a tiny bit of narrative tension and really highlight that specific message.

After some reconciliation, we have a scene in which Glenn encounters Cole sitting on top of a giant speaker cabinet, feeling the vibrations of music, which leads to a short pure-ASL conversation between the two which is left untranslated. And that's OK, because the actual content is Made Irrelevant--all that matters is that we see Glenn using ASL, showing that he has come to meet Cole halfway, as Cole has met him halfway by trying to develop an appreciation of music, and the two are behaving amicably towards each other.

For completeness: I did mention that there were two instances of Cole engaging in SimCom; the second is when an adult Cole, who presumably has had a decent relationship with his father for many years at this point, speaks orally for his father's benefit just before his retirement party. But there's nothing particularly uniquely interesting about that in terms of audience accommodation.

If you liked this post, please consider making a small donation!

The Linguistically Interesting Media Index

No comments:

Post a Comment