From CODA to Hawkeye, the Surge of Sign Languages on Screen is a Sign of Better Things to Come
upstart writes:
When Troy Kotsur was awarded Best Supporting Actor at the recent Academy Awards, he dedicated his win to the Deaf community. CODA went on to win Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay, making it a major step forward for the Academy's recognition of marginalized storytelling.
CODA, an acronym for Child Of Deaf Adults, follows the story of teenager Ruby Rossi. She dreams of being a singer, but is trapped by her Deaf family's dependence on her as their interpreter. Torn between her familial burdens and her longing to fit into hearing culture, Ruby struggles to convince her family to support her own goals.
[...] What makes CODA groundbreaking as a film for deaf people is not the narrative itself, but the accessibility. CODA is one of the first major features where the captions are "burned in" or hard-coded on every screen.
[...] Recently there have been more calls for open-captioned cinema sessions, where subtitles appear at the bottom of the big screen, but these are still few and far between. Hearing audiences are growing more accustomed to reading captions: as Bong Joon-Ho said of his own Best Picture winner Parasite: "Once you overcome the one-inch-tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films."
Captions are perfectly normal outside the English-speaking world, where most cinemas will show Hollywood movies with captions. The booming popularity of streaming services has normalized captions on our TV screens, especially as we gain easy access to more international productions. Even the quality of transcription and translation has fallen under scrutiny, as we saw with the different caption track options in Squid Game.
No matter how well Deaf people are represented on the screen, a lack of captioning creates an unequal language barrier for deaf viewers. Until the films and shows themselves are accessible, storytelling continues to favor and center hearing people's experience.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.