Raymond LuczakLETTER TO SEAN PENNDear Mr. Penn: I am sure that your agent is constantly deluged with a ton of scripts, so I am not going to try pitching any of my scripts here. Aside from your incredible body of work as an actor and director, you seem to be a man of integrity, always wanting to do the right thing whether in art or politics. Please think about these few considerations should you find committed financing behind a script featuring a deaf signing character. Is the deaf character three-dimensional? We don't need any more stories in which deaf characters are reduced to the weighty symbolism of how poetic their hands are, or how more "powerful" their silence is. That's an immediate tip-off that the script was probably written by hearing people who watched older films featuring deaf characters as part of their "research." These older films were written by hearing people who probably did less homework about the deaf community! Anyone who's spent a substantial amount of time among the signing community will realize that we are just people who don't see ourselves as disabled. (Try visiting a deaf signing party without an interpreter. Feel lost already? Now you're disabled. Not us.) Ignorance about our information accessibility needs is far more of a disability than our defective ears. As with any traits that make any character unique and distinctive, deafness alone isn't enough. It's actually boring. And please say no to scripts that rehash the clichés of music versus muteness, speech versus sign, or cochlear implants. More than anything else, please ask to work with a deaf scriptwriter instead of just working with an American Sign Language (ASL) consultant. (Yes, Mr. Penn, I am naturally available.) Is the character written to be "inspiring" in a realistic way? Not every gay person is inspiring, but Harvey Milk was. Milk wasn't a hottie. He wasn't rich either. He was an ordinary man who tried to master the intricacies of politics. In doing so, however, he actually galvanized the gay rights movement and made "coming out" a requirement in order to wake up the rest of the country to realize that they, too, were just ordinary people like them and make it harder for straight people to think of gay people as child molesters. (Never mind the fact that there are far more straight molesters simply because there are more straight people out there, period. If one goes by such numbers alone, straight people should not be allowed to teach children.) Wouldn't it be nice to have hearing people wake up and realize that us deaf people are as ordinary as they are? Just because we can't hear as well as they shouldn't have to make us "inspirational." Many able-bodied people still believe that our "disabilities" are something to be overcome when in reality their patronizing attitudes towards us have proven far more disabling than whatever disability we may have. I caught a sense of that in your totally credible performance as a mentally-disabled father in the film I AM SAM. Just how much signed dialogue is the deaf character expected to do? If it's a lot, I dare you to master ASL and not have your dialogue cropped by the camera's frame, and have a few deaf people watch the footage and see how well you pass as a Deaf person. (You don't know why that word was capitalized? A small detail like that is something of a litmus test for us Deaf people to see whether you've actually done your homework. The uppercase "D" refers to Deaf people who see themselves culturally deaf and use sign language to communicate; the lowercase "d" refers to deaf people who can speak well enough not to feel the need for signing.) Many deaf people hate it when the cinematographer captures all of a Deaf person's signing but masks most of a hearing person's clumsy signs. It's almost insulting. Mimicking signs isn't the same as mimicking dialogue from another language phonetically; it's way much harder, and you can't go into the studio to fix a flubbed word. What you see is what you're stuck with. That's why I dare you to try out ASL first and see how it feels on your hands. Finally, does the Deaf character have friends? This may seem strange, but having a Deaf character with no friends continues to perpetuate the myth of social isolation that goes with being unable to speak well. Yes, that may seem dramatic in terms of angst but it is becoming more offensive. I believe you can still have heightened drama among signing friends. While I am unable to judge the accuracy of Japanese Sign Language used by the hearing actress Rinko Kikuchi playing a Deaf character in Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's film BABEL, I was thrilled to see that she had a number of Deaf friends. In my involvement with the Deaf community since 1984, I've met four or five hearing people who signed so fluently that I actually thought they were Deaf at first! (With one exception being a talented interpreter, they were all "children of Deaf adults," or CODAs.) The tell-tale signs of "hearingness" are subtle, but they are definitely there and easy to catch with our Deaf eyes. It's really difficult to pass as a Deaf person, Mr. Penn, because we've had to sharpen our eyes as a matter of survival. I would suggest that if you really like the script, please sign on as an executive producer or even as director, and cast a Deaf person in the part. That actor will bring an authenticity and depth of experience to the part that a hearing non-signer cannot fake. We do not walk the streets in fear because we cannot hear what transpires in shadow. We do not ache to hear music the same way you do; many of us enjoy it in our own ways. We do not feel helpless with our lack of speech; we've already figured out how to communicate with people who feel helpless with their lack of sign. Like Gus Van Sant has shown so well with the gay community in the film MILK, we too are a proud people with issues. We are human, and thankfully so. Our humanity is what keeps the language of hands breathing long after we're dead. Mr. Penn, I appreciate your time and consideration. Should you like to discuss this more, please have your people call my people. Sincerely, Raymond Luczak *Originally published as "Response to Sean Penn" in Raymond Luczak's weekly creative essay column "Which Reminds Me&the center published in Clerc Scar.
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