Libro

MEDIA LITERACY AND INTERCULTURAL DIALOGUE
Strategies, Debates and Good Practices
the effort by the deaf to speak and sing, reinforces the idea of normalizing the
deaf by making them reproduce the hearing culture.
The movie Beyond Silence, directed by Caroline Link, narrates the relationship
between a deaf father and a hearing daughter. It deals with the conflict
stemming from the daughter’s interest on learning the clarinet. As the hearing
daughter prepares to be a professional, her father feels excluded from the
musical world. In one of the most dramatic scenes, the father tries to get closer
to this sonant universe and asks his daughter what is the sound of snow. In fact,
the deaf sounds cape involves differences between groups, cultures and
identities.
In the movie Mr. Holland’s Opus, by Stephen Herek, Holland, played by Richard
Dreyfuss, is a piano teacher who finds out that his baby son is deaf. Some of
the narrative’s turning points are characterized by the difference between
deafness and sound. For the father, his son cannot share the musical universe,
prevented by his deafness. In one of the most dramatic scenes, when the father
feels deeply saddened by news about John Lennon’s death, the stereotypes
crumble down. The news makes an impact on the teacher, but he believes that
his son is unable to grasp the historical and artistic relevance of the fact. On the
contrary, during a discussion, his son confronts him by asserting that he
understands John Lennon’s relevance as well as his music and that he is not
alienated from the universe of sound. The story changes from this point
onwards. By the end of it, Richard Dreyfuss conducts an adapted concert for
the deaf, using a light scheme as an aid to show rhythm changes in the music.
The idea that the deaf is not interested on sound is usually based on two points
of view. One is that they cannot be interested as they are unable to hear,
rendering sound useless.The other is that the deaf need to preserve their
identity and once sound is implicated on speech, which represents an attitude of
normalization of deafness by the society towards the deaf community. The,
then, idea arises that the deaf tend to ignore sound.
Haguiara-Cervellini (2003), on his investigation of how music affects deafness
identified that the deaf express their musical tastes and, while doing it, affirm
their right to perceive sound.
The sound and deafness matter reveals more than tastes, as it is relevant on a
space of conflict between the idea of normalization and deaf identity. While
investigating the audiovisual production of deaf youngsters, Gutierrez (2011)
identified that the deaf make use of sounds. Their sound selection is associated
to a need of producing a message that is accessible to the hearing, as they
intend for their messages to reach everyone and be more attractive and
accommodating for the hearing. In this research project, the deaf participants
created a news telecast named O Jornal dos surdos (The Deaf News). Results
indicate that all seven participants wished to deal with sound. Of all the
youngsters with different degrees of deafness, only one participant with
profound neurosensory bilateral deafness manifested an interest on feeling the
vibration of the sound selected by the editor. The research did not investigate
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