I finished watching Sound of Fury on Netflix over the weekend, and I have to say that I found it incredibly interesting. I have only known a few deaf people in my entire life, and I didn't really get to know them, so going into this I was practically clueless.
I had no idea that some deaf people saw things like cochlear implants as defying nature. They think that because their children are born deaf, that is the way they were intended to be. Messing with that is seen as completely awful to many of them.
One scene in the movie showed the conversation between the mother of a deaf baby and the grandmother of that same deaf child. The mother wanted cochlear implants in order to help the child have a more normal life. To hearing people, it seems like that would be an easy decision. Yes, the child should be able to hear if there is something that can be done about it. The grandmother, on the other hand, said that she was happy when she found out her grandchild was born deaf. She was very proud of the deaf culture and wanted her grandchild to experience that.
Throughout the movie, it was very easy to see that, for the most part, the only people who were against cochlear implants were people who could not hear. Those who could were totally for it. That is, without a doubt, due to the what these individuals have experienced in the past. The father of a young, deaf girl was against cochlear implants. That probably has to do with the fact that at some point in his life, he had to completely accept that he was deaf. Once he accepted it, he used it as a part of who he is as a person. The fact that his daughter may not have to accept that she is deaf was foreign to him.
The many arguments that broke out over this issue clearly show that this issue has a lot of passion behind it on both sides. It's a personal choice for both the child and the parent, but both sides have very good reasons for believing what they do.
The main point of this documentary is to show that people believe the things they do because of the discourses they belong to. People who aren’t deaf couldn’t possibly understand what it must be like to have people wanting to use technology to allow deaf kids to possibly hear. They view it as changing nature, where people who have been able to hear their entire lives see nothing wrong with it.
