"Coda" - The Movie

 

From my newsletter Know This:

 “Troy Kotsur, first Deaf man to win an acting Oscar, receives standing ovation in sign language https://www.ndtv.com/entertainment/oscars-2022-for-hearing-impaired-troy-kotsur-a-standing-ovation-in-sign-language-2846918

Troy Kotsur received a standing ovation in signed clapping at the 94th Academy Awards after he became the first-ever Deaf male actor to win an Oscar for his work in the film “CODA.”  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYedLv-1hB0 During his acceptance speech, https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/culture/story/oscars-2022-coda-star-troy-kotsur-makes-history-83671442 Kotsur said, “I really want to thank all of the wonderful deaf theater stages where I was allowed and given the opportunity to develop my craft as an actor.” Kotsur also offered a personal thank you to director Sian Heder, saying, “I read one of Spielberg’s books recently. And he said that the best director —  the definition of the best director was a skilled communicator. Sian Heder, you are the best communicator. And the reason why is you brought the deaf world and the hearing world together, and you are our bridge.”

KnowThis

CODA, which stands for “children of deaf adults” https://www.coda-international.org/ is the the primary focus of the film, which follows a 17-year-old girl named Ruby who is the only hearing member of her family. Kotsur and his co-stars Daniel Durant and Marlee Matlin, who are also Deaf, hold leading roles as members of the protagonist’s family.””

 

I signed up for a temporary Apple subscription so that we could watch the movie last night.  The Best Picture Oscar was definitely deserved and, even more so, Troy Kotsur’s Supporting Actor award.  There were times during the movie he reminded me of my father, a hard working family man with a love for jokes and stories. 

If my parents hadn’t gotten into drinking and the ensuing troubles, I believe my family would’ve been like the Rossis in many ways.  In one way, we would’ve enjoyed an insular closeness.  Like Ruby, I have always had a love for music.  I joined the choir and the Ethnomusicological Society (a folk group) in high school.  My parents would come to the concerts.  One scene in the movie especially “got” me and that was when there was no sound at all, to indicate that the Rossis couldn’t hear any of what was going on.  They looked around themselves for cues from time to time and we movie viewers saw voiceless images of Ruby and her partner singing and of the audience reacting.  This is what my parents experienced.

I well remember being the family interpreter and that was one thing that did confuse me about the movie.  I grew up in the ‘60s-‘70s and no interpreting services were provided anywhere for the Deaf.  Moreover, because my mother had attended a repressively orally based school for the Deaf, I never learned to sign until I was 19.  As a child, I found myself an oral interpreter trying to convey messages I didn’t understand myself. 

Ruby’s story seemed set in more recent times (because of the cell phones) and at that point, interpreters were regularly provided almost everywhere.  I told myself that she seemed to live in a small town which may not have had access to or finances for interpreters like the big cities had.  By the 1990s—even before cell phones—interpreters were provided in medical, governmental, and educational settings routinely.

In addition to having a really tough time communicating with my parents without sign language, they began to drink and attend a social club for the Deaf.  They fought violently with each other.  My mother also seemed to suffer with an undiagnosed emotional disorder and we could never tell from day to day what mood she’d be in.  My younger brother was hearing, like me.

I remember only a couple of bullying events that occurred because of my Deaf parents.  The first was when I was about 6 and we’d moved to a new neighborhood, to a house my parents had just purchased.  Determined gardeners, they’d ordered peat moss delivered to our back yard.  It was piled high, like a small mountain.  One morning, I woke to hear chanting outside: “Cassie’s mother is deaf and dumb!”  I jumped out of bed and ran outside to find a couple of our neighbor’s kids atop the peat moss, dancing and laughing while they chanted.  Blind with sudden fury, I ran up the mound and pushed them off.  Then I ran in to my mother and learned a new fact:  she couldn’t hear me no matter how much I shouted.  Until then, I’d believed adults were hearing outside and Deaf inside.

The second event took place when we moved to Baltimore.  I was 10 and my brother 8, and we made tentative friendships among the kids in the neighborhood.  Those kids were led by Tommy, a bully who lived right next door to us.  Every few days, Tommy would get the other kids to torment us with accusations that our parents must be Nazis since they couldn’t “talk right”.  Once Tommy chased us home, caught up with my brother and pushed him through our glass storm window.

We didn’t tell anyone at school that our parents couldn’t hear and so we weren’t teased or bullied there because of it.  Because of the bullying and the worsening issues with the drinking and violence, we became closed and didn’t confide anything to anyone.  There was an unspoken rule in our family:  there is nothing wrong with our family and don’t you dare tell anyone about us.

Still, the movie “Coda” did bring back more happy memories than sad.  I will watch it again before my subscription expires.