Children of a Lesser God (1986)

By jxm5992, November 14, 2015

Children of a Lesser God is a movie directed around the issue of disability, specifically the lives of a deaf woman, Sarah, and a hearing man, James, who fall in love. James arrives at the Deaf and Hard of Hearing School after pursuing a job there to teach speech skills. Sarah is already employed by the school, which she attended as a child.

The book brings up many themes portrayed in the film. I most strongly agree with the book in that there are many symbolic gestures and motifs in the movie directly relating to the fact of challenges that arise from these two individuals being in a relationship. At the beginning of this movie the principal/director of the school states that the teachers there are not there to change the world but just there to help a few deaf kids. When talking about Sarah he states that she was the brightest student that they ever had and she could only become a janitor/custodian in the film. As a film that begins to make public the world of “disabilities” these surely are the shared assumptions of the general public. There is a strong belief in the movie that we cannot help these people, they are after all disabled. However, there was an idea that we can help change them to make them more appealing and acceptable to us as an “able” society. This is reinforced as James in his classroom states the reasons to talk to his students. While he does sign throughout the piece he continuously speaks aloud what those around him are signing to him, reinforcing that he needs them to see, through lip reading, if they cannot hear what they are saying. The book ‘s case study focuses specifically on the relationship between Sarah and James which is important but I also believe that the students he is teaching are just as important in showing their personal struggles. Throughout the movie James is almost obsessed in having his students speak and as the movie progresses Jame’s is successful in helping all of his students to speak in the classroom except for one. There is a specific section, clip attached, where I believe there is further segregation in ability, with James as a hearing teacher, four students as hard of hearing (HH), and two who are deaf. I believe that the one student who does not learn to speak throughout the piece is symbolic of Sarah. This student has accepted who he is and he has no desire to speak but he will be criticized and judged for this decision.

Another moment when we see the desire to have this group of students speak is when James is playing basketball with a group of deaf males within the school. One of them signs a crude remark directed towards James who then insists that the man speak it if he wants to call him something. This is continued throughout the entire movie as he works with his students and pressures Sarah through joking and other outbursts to say his name or make any kind of noise. There is a tremendous pressure by both Sarah and James for the other to learn the “correct” language. It is the basis for the entire piece as others in each the hearing group and the deaf community look at the other group as having stereotypes. The deaf community believes that the hearing community all think that they are “deaf and dumb,” a stereotype that I still hear in today’s world. The hearing community is untrusting of the deaf community as shown in a scene where James and Sarah are invited to a poker game and the school director implies that deafs are cheats with secret signals used to dupe the hearing players. At the time of the game after winning the group exclaims how well Sarah was able to play as if she wasn’t there and that James did an excellent job “teaching” her.

Music is another thing that the deaf and hearing community both experience but nonetheless provides another barrier for the couple. In the beginning of the film James loves listening to his Bach vinyl. When he goes on a date with Sarah she expresses her love for music and her ability to feel it through a very expressive dance. As the movie progresses we see that James becomes upset that he cannot listen to his music because she cannot share his enjoyment or appreciation of the piece(s). She asks for him to show her the music through dance but he cannot do it. Music is also used to show the desire for the deaf to be like the hearing so that the hearing feel more comfortable. After teaching some of his students how to speak they preform in a type of talent show on stage with the school faculty and parents present. When the kids begin to sing, although the parents think the song is awful, everyone in the audience is clearly happy. At the end of the performance there is a standing ovation where everyone clapped but which leads into my next thought. By clapping their hands instead of using the American Sign Language (ASL) gesture for clapping they are again doing what is making them as a hearing group feel most comfortable. No one in the movie at this time makes the effort to communicate or show their praise for the kids using their own language. Sarah’s mother is a prime example of this as she sent Sarah away at a young age because she resented her. She expresses that she did not make the effort to learn to communicate/sign with her and that she believed that her husband left because of her daughter. We later learn that Sarah’s father left when she was young because having adisabled/ deaf child showed that he had failed and his masculinity was damaged. This is a reflected feeling even today upon having a child with any kind of disability, that deafness in this case, is somehow someone’s fault, that there is going to be something wrong with this individuals life because they are “different”.

Throughout the movie neither Sarah nor James can experience what the other experiences everyday and this becomes a type of conflict. There is a happy ending where James suggests that they can come to a compromise where there is not all silence but there is also not all speaking. The book suggests that this means that women, in this case a deaf woman, needs a hearing man which was how romancing those with disabilities had been handled in the past as well.