A review of CODA – available on Apple TV and winner of 2022, Best Picture, Oscar:
CODA Trailer - YouTube video player
A CODA is a hearing Child of Deaf Adults. Hearing children are born into Deaf families and sign language (any of over 300 hundred national sign languages) is their first language. Effectively they are culturally ‘Deaf.’ Albeit without hearing loss.
The story feels like many standard teen movies where the young adult tries to escape from her family, who don’t understand her. The plot device – where Ruby is musically talented and her deaf family don’t understand music – feels clumsy. If you can’t hear (few deaf people hear nothing at all) it doesn’t mean you have no understanding of music.
CODA is a film about the complexities of love. Joni Mitchell’s song Both Sides Now runs as a theme throughout the story. Love for Ruby, is both pink fluffy clouds in the sunrise and blackening storm clouds gathering rain. She loves her family but they infuriate her. She exhausts herself, trying to fix society’s discrimination against her family by becoming an unofficial interpreter. She feels the huge responsibility to bridge society’s communication barriers. Ruby is torn between worrying, how can they manage without her, and taking a place at the Boston, Berklee College of Music.
Ruby is hearing. Does this mean she doesn’t experience prejudice and discrimination?
Because this is her family, prejudice and discrimination directly and indirectly affect Ruby. We learn that she was bullied at school. When she started, she had a Deaf voice, which other children mocked. Speech and language therapy is common for CODAs. In the UK, they may speak English in British Sign Language (BSL) grammar. Instead of saying. "Where is my blue jacket?" they might say. "Jacket, blue, where?"
In a moment of sibling love and tension with her Deaf brother Leo. He signs to her in American Sign Language:
You can really sing, that’s special. You're so afraid that we'd look stupid. Let them figure out how to deal with deaf people. We're not helpless.
Yes, America has the Americans with Disabilities Act and the United Kingdom has the Equality Act. But in the UK, there are still situations, where a Deaf adult at a Bank, Police station or Doctors, uses their young hearing child as an interpreter. Regardless of the law, prejudice and discrimination against Deaf people occurs in both America and the UK.
CODA is not a film focussed on Deaf people and Deaf culture. This is Ruby’s story, as the only hearing child in a Deaf family. Prejudice, discrimination and communication barriers oppress her and her family. Yet they are joyous, raunchy and funny. They experience the daily oppression of a world designed for hearing people. The implicit demand of, “normal people can hear”, when the Coastguards require a hearing person on their fishing boat. They live their lives and find the joys of life. As her brother says, they’re not helpless. They’re proud of themselves, let hearing people work out how to communicate with deaf people.
I’m not a CODA but I feel the authenticity of a hearing child of deaf adults. If your Mum and Dad are deaf. Sign language is your first language. It is your emotional baby language. The first words you understand, the comforting lullaby of your Mum signing you to sleep. We see Ruby, discovering a fusion between her hearing and Deaf identity. Singing and signing to her family, in a moment of deep emotion – Both Sides Now - right at the end of her college audition.
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