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The documentary Sound and Fury (2000), which was nominated for an Oscar, traces the impact of cochlear implants (CI) on one Long Island family, the Artinians. Two brothers-one Deaf, one hearing, one married to a Deaf woman, one married to a child of deaf adults (CODA)-face the question of whether to implant the device, which destroys part of the ear and replaces it with electrodes that provide direct, but hard to interpret, stimulation to the auditory nerves, in their deaf children.1 The hearing brother and his CODA wife decide in favor of surgery. The Deaf couple decide against it. The decision process, as captured by the director, Josh Aronson, nearly tears the extended family apart. The hearing parents of the two brothers accuse their Deaf son of child abuse for his refusal. The CODA wife, Mari, announces her decision to her Deaf parents and they promptly deem her "a lousy daughter" who, by rejecting deafness for her son, has also rejected them. The viewer can scarcely imagine more agonizing scenes.
Aronson tries to present both sides fairly, and many reviewers praised his evenhandedness.2 Yet problems remain. The film talks about Deaf culture but does not show much of it. The Deaf couple, Peter and Nita, passionately defend their cultural identity, but viewers are not provided much information about what it means to be Deaf. As a result, all their talk about Deafness could easily be misinterpreted by an innocent hearing audience as selfishness, cowardice, arrogance, and insecurity. Indeed, some of the film's reviewers reached exactly those conclusions.3
Nonetheless, the film is well done and worth viewing. That it succeeds at all in complicating the central question-whether each couple should get a cochlear implant for their deaf child-is a testament to Aronson's filmmaking skills. The problem lies not so much in Aronson's depiction as in the cultural resources that shape the audience's reception. A largely hearing audience might not understand deafness as a cultural condition; instead, its members would most likely view deafness as a medical condition, one precisely in need of the medical intervention cochlear implants represent.
Cochlear implants are only the latest example of medical interventions promising to cure deafness. This new technology reiterates a well-developed cultural attitude toward deafness. Twentieth-century researchers have suggested...