{"id":756,"date":"2020-04-18T11:05:24","date_gmt":"2020-04-18T15:05:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/inmyhead.com\/wordpress\/?p=756"},"modified":"2020-04-18T14:01:43","modified_gmt":"2020-04-18T18:01:43","slug":"zoeys-extraordinary-silence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inmyhead.com\/wordpress\/blog\/2020\/04\/18\/zoeys-extraordinary-silence\/","title":{"rendered":"Zoey’s Extraordinary Silence"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"ASL<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Zoey\u2019s Extraordinary Playlist is being lauded for showcasing deaf talent and representation in its most recent episode, \u201cZoey\u2019s Extraordinary Silence.\u201d But as is typical for the medium, it was a biased, unrealistic portrayal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019re hearing and watched the ninth episode this season \u2013 which aired April 6, 2020 \u2013 you likely recognized the song as soon as the instrumental began and maybe even remembered some of the lyrics. If you\u2019re deaf and know ASL, you knew what the characters were \u201csinging.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, the sign language-only performance of Rachel Platten\u2019s \u201cFight Song\u201d without lyrics or subtitles was dramatic and moving, and it\u2019s great that actual deaf people were playing deaf people. But the fact is, the media gravitates toward American Sign Language, or ASL, because it\u2019s so visual. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But if you\u2019re deaf like me, raised to lipread and speak, you were completely out of the loop. How\u2019s that for irony? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I looked up the lyrics, they added an extra dimension to the performance. \u201cCan you hear my voice this time? This is my fight song\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, this<\/em> is my fight song. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the episode, Zoey\u2019s father\u2019s caregiver Howie’s daughter (you follow?) Abigail is deaf. When she visits Zoey at her workplace, Zoey\u2019s colleague conveniently knows sign language and is able to interpret (otherwise they would have had to resort to cruder methods). About her dad, she signs, \u201cEver since I was little, he\u2019s always tried to shelter me from the world and make me better, whether it was cochlear implants, hearing aids, or speech therapy. But when nothing fixed me, he was devastated.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She adds, \u201cHe always made me feel like something was wrong with me. Then I went to college and met people who didn\u2019t view their deafness as a weakness.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I know parents like Howie exist. Thankfully, I know many more parents who are like mine. I was accepted, raised to be independent in society, and never made to feel like I was broken or needed to be fixed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since my congenital deafness was diagnosed at 14 months of age, I\u2019ve worn hearing aids. As an adult, I got a cochlear implant, so now I have one of each. I had daily speech therapy from my diagnosis through high school. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Deaf Culture activists shy away from what they call a medical model of deafness, or reinforcing limitations rather than abilities. They think this perspective emphasizes the \u201closs\u201d of hearing and strives to make the person be \u201cnormal.\u201d This philosophy \u2013 which they associate with someone like me — is so far from my reality, it\u2019s laughable. Even with my cochlear implant and hearing aid, I\u2019m deaf. I still can\u2019t appreciate music or understand what\u2019s said on the phone. I\u2019m reminded of my limitations every single day. But because of my parents and teachers, I\u2019ve been able to reach my full potential. I would have had more limitations had I not been taught to lipread and speak.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately, viewers who don\u2019t know much about hearing loss wouldn\u2019t know that people like me exist. In fact, 90 percent of children who are deaf are born to hearing parents, the vast majority of whom don\u2019t know ASL \u2013 just like the rest of the world. In a family report <\/a>of primary communication modality, the National Center for Hearing Assessment and Management found that 49 percent of families use listening and spoken language only, while only 3 percent use ASL only. The other percentages involve various combinations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With advances like cochlear implants, listening and spoken language outcomes are even brighter \u2013 especially if implanted by age one. Kids are on par with their hearing peers when it comes to language, and don\u2019t have the limitations older folks like me do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The struggle between Howie and Abigail is that he\u2019s scared to let her make her own choices and venture out into the world. Perhaps if he had given Abigail the right tools, he wouldn\u2019t feel this way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A deaf friend of mine who is an audiologist echoed my thoughts when she complained about the episode: \u201cJust once, can we just have a TV show with someone who is deaf, wears CIs or hearing aids, and is happy to be able to speak? I am so tired of TV and movies playing into the same old tropes. We can\u2019t keep feeling like we\u2019re in the 1960s. The d\/Deaf community is so diverse and it\u2019s sad that we always get just one viewpoint.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Can you hear my voice this time?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Zoey\u2019s Extraordinary Playlist is being lauded for showcasing deaf talent and representation in its most recent episode, \u201cZoey\u2019s Extraordinary Silence.\u201d But as is typical for the medium, it was a biased, unrealistic portrayal. If you\u2019re hearing and watched the ninth episode this season \u2013 which aired April 6, 2020 \u2013 you likely recognized the song … Continue reading Zoey’s Extraordinary Silence<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4roOt-cc","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmyhead.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmyhead.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmyhead.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmyhead.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmyhead.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=756"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/inmyhead.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":764,"href":"https:\/\/inmyhead.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756\/revisions\/764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmyhead.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmyhead.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmyhead.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}