Perfect Sense (SPOILER)

I have just seen a really interesting film by David MacKenzie "Perfect Sense". The Polish translation of the title is just horrible (terrible title translations is our national sport). It is something like "The last love on the world" :/ Apart from gorgeous Eva Green and Ewan MacGregor the plot is very interesting too, especially in the deaf context.

The story is rather pessimistic one. There are several waves of strange disease striking the humanity. Each attack consists of two phases: first comes the overwhelming emotion (the sadness, rage, hunger, aggressiveness or love) which is followed by the lost of one of the senses. First goes the scent, then taste. The third one the humanity looses is the hearing. Can you imagine? The whole human kind being deaf?

The interesting thing about the film is the adoption process. To each loss people can perfectly adopt sooner or later. The lack of scent and taste can be substituted (in restaurant where the main male character works) with the texture of the food, its humidity or temperature. People still go to the restaurants but are looking for some other experiences then they used to.

The loss of hearing is preceded by the attack of aggressiveness. When infected people wake up after it they realise they are deaf. At first they are being isolated by the services (there are leaflets "If you are deaf stay at home"). They are kept away as unlike the loss of scent and taste deafness is serious loss, that causes the global panic. But even after this plague people can have an ordinary life. With time everything comes back to normal somehow. There are banners in public places with sign language. People are signing in restaurants, they use notes, when attending concerts they are touching the instruments and speakers to feel the sounds.

I am really courious how the Deaf community reacts to this film. On one hand it shows the deafness as a great, horrific loss, a tragedy far more serious than the lack of other senses. On the other hand the idea of deaf humanity is extremely interesting. The deaf communities would lost their uniqueness, the base of their identity and also the ground of their exclusion, but at the same time the whole social life would be organized their way.

I have asked the users of the deaf.pl forum for opinions. I am realy curious what they think about this vision.

*This post was first published at my academic blog http://media-ethnography.blogspot.com/

Magdalena Zdrodowska

Loopback?

The most common discussions about Deaf studies in Poland are placed onto language-based discourse. Many issues are taken on: impact of sign language for deaf children (with topics related to paretning, raising and educational issues), language-related psychology and identity topics, let alone dynamically emerging linguistic issues. I'm serious glad of this, simultaneously, I'm serious concerned of this.

Linguistics is most widely recognized as the key issue in Deaf everyday life. Today, I browse through Ladd's book, Understanding Deaf Culture". There are some pages with photos, an one is the photo of kid who wear banner "We still have a dream". Looking on this kid, I realize, that in Poland many kids still share this dream, but... is this dream an loopback of advantages of sign language over oralism, endlessly proved by scholars?

I'm confused.

Mariusz Sak