Documentary provides window into deaf culture

Student Disability Resources and Services held a screening Oct. 11, for "Sound and Fury" on the Texas A&M University-Commerce campus to raise awareness of deaf people and deaf culture.

The documentary follows one family's debate over whether or not to provide two deaf children with a device that would give them the ability to hear, called a cochlear implant. Much of the focus of the documentary is on the deaf 6-year-old, Heather Artinian, and her family, who are divided on the issue of the hearing device.

While Heather explains that she wants the implant because she wants to communicate like other people and hear the world around her, her parents struggle with making the decision to give her the cochlear.

"English is just moving lips, it has no meaning for me," Heather's father Peter explained. "But sign is so visual, it has emotion. I could communicate for the first time. My fear is that if Heather were implanted she wouldn't be a part of the deaf world or the hearing world; she'd be part of cochlear implant world."

Director of Student Disability Resources and Services Rebecca Tuerk chose this film to bring more knowledge to the subject because of the number of deaf students on campus.

"I felt like there needed to be better sensitivity to the deaf culture," Tuerk said. "We have some hearing impaired students on campus and I felt like it was important that people gain a sensitivity to them. In the past, we've shown some movies in The Club that were focused on disabilities, more on the entertaining side, but I thought maybe to go the educational angle here and change it up a bit."

Students that came to the screening were able to see the life and reality of deaf people and the deaf community. After watching the documentary, some viewers discussed the conflicts of the film.

"The father is afraid of losing his daughter to another culture, the hearing culture," audience member Laura Cordova-James said. "But that can't be further from the truth. She would become a bilingual person, being able to live comfortably in both worlds."