Through Deaf Eyes Documentary Analysis

Through Deaf Eyes is a documentary conveying various aspects of Deaf life, such as school, culture, and deaf history. It was filled with information and provides a great overview. Although my reactions varied throughout the movie, I really enjoyed it. The parts about how segregation impacted the black and white deaf communities interested me; I hadn’t considered how that would affect deaf culture.
When we first began to watch this movie, I was excited to have the opportunity to learn more about Deaf life. It was nice that we were required to watch the movie, because while the movie had been suggested before I had almost forgotten it, even though I had wanted to see it. The film gave an introduction to life on planet “Eyeth,” but in doing

so had to cover a lot of information. At times it felt as though many parts of the movie became blurred because there was just so much to take in. Although part of my confusion may have also been due to the fact we watched the film in two parts.
We also watched the movie in silence, reading the captions. Because ASL grammar structure is different and the captions were behind, it was difficult to understand the signing. Often my eyes were more drawn to the captions than to the signs, making me wonder if I would have seen and remembered more had the sound been on. The lack of sound did (as I suppose was intended) also create an eerie silence in the class room. It felt at times, like all sound had been shut off except when the spell was broken by the shuffle of feet, or the occasional cough. This lack of sound was like the pressure had changed and your ears were ringing, except that you could not hear it.
It was the black and white deaf communities that really stood out as interesting to me.

I had not considered the affect segregation had on deaf history.
In 1925 a Deaf African- American couple tried to attend a National Association of the Deaf (NAD) convention. After this, the NAD banned black people from taking part in the Association. This ban was in place for the next 40 years.
Like all schools at the time, Deaf schools were separated into black deaf schools and white deaf schools. For the next 40 years the black and white deaf communities flourished separately. The signs and cultures changed and some things became unique to each culture. When segregation ended and black deaf students were allowed into white deaf schools they noticed something was different. All the students used sign language but their signs, or manner of signing, was different. The deaf white students used only a few signs, fingerspelling a majority of the time, whereas deaf black students used signs a majority of the time. In the film, Carolyn McCaskill said that she felt “humiliated” when the white students would point out that her signing was different than theirs, it made her feel as though her signing was “inferior.” Black people do have their own way of signing, tending to use even more body expression than white signers. For instance, while white signers may sign “girl” black signers will get their head into it, signing “girl” like “yeah girl”. As Carolyn said, “that’s just the black way of

communicating.”
There was a lot to learn from the film and I think I would like to watch it again. Perhaps next time I will try watching it with sound so I can focus more on the signing. But watching the movie without the sound gave me a better understanding of what life might sometimes be like for the eaf to live on planet “EARth”.