In 1988 students at Gallaudet, the world’s only all-deaf university, eagerly anticipated the naming of its first deaf president since the school’s founding over a hundred years prior. But instead the school announced that out of the three candidates for the job, the only hearing option would become the university’s new president. Gallaudet exploded in student outrage, with protestors spilling out to the streets and eventually shutting down the campus. The new documentary Deaf President Now! tells the story of a fateful week in the history of American civil rights and deaf culture at large with enough punch to break through the conventional format.
Co-directed by documentary veteran Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth, Waiting for Superman) and first-timer Nyle DiMarco (a fellow of intriguing resume including deaf activism and wins on both America’s Top Model and Dancing with the Stars), the movie’s mostly standard interview-and-b-roll format is elevated by the verve of its participants and a wealth of firsthand recordings. Naturally the story must lean on news footage and a small amount of reenactment, but its energy comes from the surprising amount of camcorder footage of the students, reacting and coordinating in close-ups. Even the archival photography is slick enough to slide into the strong documentary lineup on Apple+.
The movie’s greatest assets are its heros and villains. The present-day talking heads of Deaf President Now! are the most prominent students in those campus videos: Greg Hlibok, the student body president who has yet to fully break out of his shell; Tim Rarus, hailing from generations of deaf family members who historically accepted second-class status; Jerry Covell, adept at rallying the crowd but may prove too brash to lead negotiations (his endlessly entertaining interview suggests the internal fire hasn’t cooled over time); and Bridgetta Bourne-Firl, pulling double-duty as a feminist activist for deaf rights. Their interviews are conducted in ASL with voiceovers for the hearing – though the audio is deployed with strategy. Asked about his response to a missive from the board of trustees, Covell’s double middle-fingers need no translation.
The obstinate board is led by the late Jane Spilman, a hearing woman so astoundingly deaf to the room that she’s a mustache away from melodrama. In her prissy dismissal of the deaf community she could be swapped for Imelda Staunton’s villainous Deloris Umbrage from the Harry Potter films with ease. Though the side of history is clear from the outset, Deaf President Now! makes room for the more nuanced conflicts within the greater conflict, clashes of personality between Hlibok and Covell, the way Bourne-Firl has to wedge herself into a spot at the leadership table when it becomes an all-male body, and debate within the movement as to whether their leading candidate for the presidency, who was not born deaf, is “deaf enough.”
The push and pull of the film’s structure is familiar but effective. When Spilman opines that deaf people are “not ready” for leadership roles, the outcry is infectious. When a student comes through at a key moment or a leader falters on the big stage, a compulsion to applaud or boo follows. The situation at Gallaudet is long settled – though the relative recency of this unquestioned marginalization is another reminder how far we’ve come/how much there’s left to do – yet the movie still feels like a call to march. For all the obvious architecture to the editing, there’s a feral catharsis in seeing people rise as a crowd and rediscover the power of a group against thoughtless leadership that can no longer hide a contempt for their own citizens. In Washington, D.C. no less.
Note: An earlier version of the article referenced subtitles for translation of the ASL – the film features voiceover as translation, not subtitles.
About the writer
C. D. Ploughman
The weary Ploughman is a writer and filmmaker, focusing these days on documentary and educational projects. He obsesses over movies with his very patient wife and children.
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“Feral catharsis” is an automatic selling point for me, and I should make good use of my Apple+ subscription while I still have it. The characterization here–if you can even use that word for documentaries–sounds fascinating and well-observed.
It’s not uncommon for documentary filmmakers to refer to the people in their movies as characters, at least during production, which shocked me when I first worked for one. But it’s useful for delineating when you’re talking about someone’s function in a film rather than the complete person. One of the interesting small moments included in this film is a speech that suggests Spilman became aware that she was the hissable villain in a bigger story.
I remember critics saying the industrialist in First Reformed seemed too villainous for a realistic movie, which now seems like a hilarious joke.
There are so many great documentaries on Apple TV+!
Boys / Girls State!
What did we watch?
Kojak, “Kojak’s Days, Part Two” – The cases on the Manhattan South detectives’ docket come to a head, and things are not entirely what they seemed in most of them. So that makes the decision to have this be a full on two parter make sense. The audience watches, has a week to think it over, and then sees that things aren’t always so simple. The biggest twist? In part one we see a woman kill her husband before he can shoot her, we think because she was having an affair with a family friend. But it turns out the husband was having the affair, and the wife was both upset her husband could not love her and ashamed because teh gay. It’s always interesting to see how gay characters were handled then. We clearly get “kill your gays” and not very much sympathy from Kojak, but the gay lover makes zero excuses for who he is and there’s nothing of the stereotype in his behavior.
And I want to call out cinematographer Sol Negrin, who was Emmy-nominated more than once for his work on the show (though not this episode). In a scene shot in lower Manhattan in December, Negrin really captures the contrast of winter sun and NYC shadow while Kojak is in conversation, and in the background, the sun reflects off one of the Twin Towers. Even putting aside the bittersweet poignancy of what we lost, the effect is utterly gorgeous and captures both a certain era and a certain time of year in the big city. I feel like there’s not enough appreciation for television cinematography, and definitely not enough for the folks behind the camera in the days when all TV was on a low budget and was essentially disposable. Negrin did not see things that way in his work on this show, and it’s one reason I like the show. Plus Negrin was a NYC based cameraman. When the show was in LA on the backlots or the streets, we lose his eye.
Looks like he shot Coming to America as well, speaking of NYC photography!
M*A*S*H, Season One, Episode Twenty-Three, “Cease-Fire”
Obviously, this is an exercise in anti-closure. I don’t know how likely it was that the show would be axed, but this comes off as them prepping for the possibility by allowing the characters to sign off without it being definitive. It’s mostly a bunch of familiar jokes about the characters, but there are a few things here; Radar and Henry get a sweet scene where Henry is the only one who gives Radar a sincere message in his scrapbook, and you can see Radar is increasingly touched as he reads it whilst Henry hadn’t even given it a second thought. They even get a cute riff on the Radar joke.
Most poignantly, Trapper has a Trapper moment, where he’s the only one who 100% refuses to believe the cease-fire rumours. Wayne Rogers is better at making Trapper distinctive than the writers, and here he gets the chance to fully embrace that, being extremely still and careful throughout the episode – most notably, when everyone is initially hysterically celebrating at the very first scene, he’s sitting still and looking at Henry on the phone, like he’s making sure. Later, when Hawkeye is giving him a typically Hawkeye speech, he’s completely impassive, allowing Hawkeye to feel good for a moment but not believing it for a moment – very reminiscent of Avon in the “I’m just a gangster, I suppose” scene on The Wire.
I love that the unit spreads the word and the party faster than Springfield would. This episode raises the question of what Hawkeye is like in peacetime in a small town. As Julius said back on The Solute, Hawkeye does seem like he belongs somewhere that he has constant enemies. We’ve seen him practically go nuts when he’s got nothing to do. On the other hand, I could see him being perfectly content to have a great bedside manner on kids with tonsils; he’s not exactly an ambitious surgeon, not like Charles later. I prefer stable, competent Margaret, but Loretta Switt certainly gives early cartoonish Hot Lips her all.
This made me laugh until I was sick: “Oh Trapper, how can you turn him down?” / “His liver’s where his heart’s oughta be.” / “What’s where his liver oughta be?” / “Onions.”
I have long thought that after the war, Hawkeye tries to go back to Crabapple Cove and can’t take it and movies to the big city and becomes more of a surgeon after all. (It’s implied he went to college or med school in NYC or Chicago or both, so he’s already used to a big city.) Being something of a fanfic writer, I even had the idea that Hawkeye ends up in Boston and spends the rest of his life sparring with Charles.
Yeah, I can easily see the idea that as much as the war makes Hawkeye long for the peace and stability of Crabapple Cove, he wouldn’t be happy their long-term: settling in Boston and keeping up a summer cottage in his old hometown makes more sense to me, and I do like the idea of him and Charles in the same city.
See also my theory that John Lennon was in personality not a pacifist at all and would’ve been driven insane in a truly peaceful society with no opposition or authority to fight.
The Righteous Gemstones, “Interlude II” and “Never Avenge Yourselves, but Leave It to the Wrath of God”
That second episode title is decidedly ominous in the context of an episode where Jesse attempts to avenge himself and (apparently) succeeds … ah, okay, Eli’s been riddled with bullets. By those damn cycle ninjas! This ending works incredibly well even though I’m spoiled enough to know that this isn’t the end of our favorite televangelist paterfamilias: it gets great mileage out of the contrast with the ending of “As to How They Might Destroy Him,” where Jesse and Amber were down on the floor of the bus and obviously safe the whole time–and where the cycle ninjas probably even knew that. We go from an extravagantly violent show of force that’s ultimately a meaningless gesture to a man being surrounded on a dark road, shot up through his windshield, and abandoned as he loses consciousness and careens to a halt on a cordoned-off section of road. Now we’ve got blood and serious injury, even if I know it’s not death. The ante’s definitely been upped, and Jesse is the who upped it.
Backtracking now, “Interlude II” is likewise excellent. (And features more Goggins singing!) The bittersweet stinger of Baby Billy saying, and apparently believing, that he’ll have time to make things right with Harmon, no need to worry about it now, is a good use of the flashback’s dramatic irony, and it also makes me feel the sheer weight of all the years on these characters: he had time, but he didn’t use it, and to us (and probably to him) it in fact feels like it all passed in the blink of an eye. No wonder he retreats from lies, self-justification, and a barely hidden sense of guilt to total denial, and no wonder that denial facilitates him potentially repeating the experience all over again with Tiffany and Lionel.
It had crossed my mind that Eli could have killed Glendon Marsh–Goodman’s stillness when Junior brought up his death, and the little flash of guilt at Junior’s reputation taking the fall for it all, hinted that he could have been–but that he instead covered up for his aged, senile father doing it is even better. And, given the combination of family loyalty and poor decision-making (you should have already stopped your dad from getting his hands on guns, Eli!), also even more Gemstone. I also love how we get even more history repeating itself here: the Baby Billy plot is the more obvious for that, since it’s such a specific (and reprehensible) decision, but Eli also followed the same pattern with Glendon and his son. They come back, he lets them in, they cross his moral lines, he cuts off the relationship, they retaliate. He replays the process with Junior more reluctantly (he’s smart enough to be cautious about round two) but also, once the rebuilt relationship kicks off, more needily (he’s a little starved for friendship that isn’t mixed with professional obligation, the way it is with Martin; when he still has Aimee-Leigh, he’s much more able to be straightforward and direct about cutting Glendon off).
Additional highlights: Eli realizing that his weird, difficult, troubled daughter has someone in her life who genuinely loves and understands her (and BJ’s awed “I’ll never wash this hand again!” reaction to getting Eli’s approval). Eli trying to apologize to Kelvin, with nuanced parent-child agony playing out while Kelvin is scrubbing the floor with mop hands. Me briefly thinking Keefe would succeed in carrying the cross for Kelvin because of the purity of his love: “Oh, nope. He’s fallen immediately.” Amber’s glee at everyone praising her for shooting the cycle ninja, and her sweet, helpful reframing of Jesse’s failure to do the same by concentrating on how quick he was at coming to their defense. Jesse sidelining Levi when he tries to talk about defending his family (Levi being the Jerry despite looking like a romance novel cover model is never not sadly funny to me). The sling army getting carried away with the threats in the confrontation with Junior: “We would never rape women!”
I love too the ambiguity of how Glendon’s death plays out – does the senile dad get maybe a little of what’s happening? That “Thou hast JUDGED THE WICKED” from the great M. Emmett Walsh suggests some level of awareness. (Though fuck Glendon to hell, he’s terrifying in that scene threatening Eli where before he’s a flatulent, even avuncular kinda thug.)
I could totally see that, especially with it already established that Roy hated and feared Glendon. At the very least, I think that removed some key hesitation to pull the trigger on him, even if he didn’t completely understand why he was doing it.
And completely agreed on how well that “avuncular thug” vibe works for Glendon: the chummy earthiness amps up the believability of the threat he poses.
One thing I always enjoy in the show is the hints that God subtly favors the Gemstones when they try to do the right thing. Does Roy show up at the right moment if Eli doesn’t reject Glendon’s dirty money? Who knows?
I love that Eli-BJ scene. A little bit from my year in review:
“BJ is rarely if ever treated with respect by the family, but there’s enough of the righteous man remaining in Eli that he recognizes, in the midst of everyone jockeying for favor and fighting over their own self-interests: Here is someone who has genuinely come to me out of selfless concern for another. “
Oh, that’s very well-put. And I think it’s something Eli especially needs to see right then, when he feels like he’s losing his own moral center and slipping back to being the man he was.
The Island of Dr Moreau (1996)
A mess, but a fun one. There are some truly great moments, like Brando’s first appearance all dolled up in sunscreen that makes him look as bizarre as his creations. Stan Winston does amazing work her on the prosthetics. And Val Kilmer’s Brando imitation is worth the price of admission. It’s the sort of moment that feels like an outtake that they decided to keep in the film because it was so good. The film loses its center when Brando dies, leaving the film scrambling for half its time to figure out a narrative other than “chaos”. And it all devolves (heh) into 90s-style explosions for no good reason. It’s better than its reputation, but it’s not great.
If you haven’t seen Lost Soul, about Richard Stanley’s short-lived tenure on the project, I’d recommend it: funny and weird and engaging, and it gets into how wild and difficult the production was.
Justified, “Trust” – pretty big shock ending on this one, but I’m checked out enough on the show that it didn’t hit as hard as it should. Can’t give up three episodes from the end though! Let’s get this done!
Look Who’s Talking – Reminds me a lot of catching up with Three Men and a Baby last year, another movie with a high comedy concept useful for previews, about half a dozen jokes, at least three montages, and then the rest of the movie is given to a plot that really didn’t need the baby in the first place. This time instead of violent drug dealers it’s the love life of Kirstie Alley’s character, smitten with the philandering father of her Bruce Willis-voiced baby even though he has zero scenes where he’s not a blatant scumbag. The 3 Men drug escapades weren’t great action, but it was at least a little less predictable than who Alley is going to choose between a gross weaselman and a dancing John Travolta.
There’s a grand tradition of the adult plot wedged sideways into a family movie dating back to the mid-century Disney live action days where whatever the inciting incident – cat from outer space, haunting by Blackbeard’s ghost – the final outcome would hinge on high-stakes gambling hijinks. I have an affinity for these movies and their half-assed attempts by a male Hollywood screenwriter to think about children before getting pulled back into their comfort zones. And to be fair, starting with the opening credits appearing over sperm racing through a vaginal canal, I don’t think this was (ahem) conceived as a movie to take the kids to. The Boomers have grown up but they’re hiring a babysitter before going out to see this. Those babies will have their revenge in the Kids Rule 90s, then we’ll see who’s talking (it will still be the Boomers, they will talk forever).
Guy who’s only seen Boss Baby watches Look Who’s Talking: The baby isn’t actually “talking” at all! My vibes are shot!
Un amour de Swann (Swann in Love) — A 1984 Franco-German adaptation by Volcker Schlöndorff of the first volume of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, this tells the story of the urbane and sophisticated Charles Swann’s (Jeremy Irons) unhappy romance with courtesan Odette de Crécy (Ornella Muti) in Belle Epoque Paris. It’s enjoyable, but it’s hard to get past its failures as an adaptation.
I’m normally someone who supports taking an adaptation on its own terms. But this is trying to be a very close adaptation of the work and it misses on that count. Most glaringly, Swann’s obsession with Odette in the book is both pathetic and humorous. Here, it’s more sinister, importing the more offputting obsession The Narrator will later develop towards Albertine. There’s a funny scene in the book where Swann tries to eavesdrop on Odette only to be surprised by two old pensioners — he had the wrong window. The movie plays that same scene, and it’s still funny, but less so as it falls hard upon an earlier scene of Swann berating her. And indeed, the fundamental failure of the adaptation is that Odette is too sympathetic. In the book she’s an annoying trend-chaser who is interested in Swann only for his position and his money. Here, she seems like she legitimately loves him (even as she also takes his money, sure — a gal’s gotta eat), so it’s hard to see why Charles is so desperately trying to escape his own feelings for her. Muti plays the role largely without guile, and as such holds the audience’s empathy. (Another strange decision — both the leads are dubbed because neither speak French, which is a weird casting choice. Muti in particular has trouble with the French and is therefore often conspicuously not moving her mouth when she’s talking.)
On the plus side, the movie is often very funny — especially Alain Delon playing Swann’s extremely swishy friend Charlus. It’d be hard to get away with such an over the top portrayal even a decade later. The acting is all very strong. Muti I only know from Flash Gordon, and while I quibble with the her character’s direction, I blame the writer and director for those choices. Muti is very good at portraying the character the script gives her. And Schlöndorff can direct the heck out of a sex scene, necessary here to demonstrate why Swann can’t just walk away. Im glad I watched this, but it’s not going to be anything I revisit. (I wonder what someone who hadn’t read Swann’s Way would think about it.)
Hacks Season 2 premiere, “There Will Be Blood.” Few dramedies actually have this many funny gags, including Aidan calling Deborah “Mom” without hesitation (“But he’s from Ohio, so…”) and Kayla’s not totally misguided “Name one movie that’s not about sex or Nazis!” (The HR rep, played by the great Martha Kelly of my beloved Baskets, thinks and says “Babe: Pig In The City.”) I like the setup for the season too of Ava and Deborah doing basically a guerilla tour with the tension lurking in the background of Ava’s angry email.
Notes: DJ genuinely worrying about Aidan’s UFC fight is kinda sweet, as is Deborah acknowledging with DJ’s housesitting, “Look, during your childhood, you should’ve been in a home and not on a bus, this is the least I can do.” Having been on a real Gypsy kick, I can see young Deborah being a Mama Rose who actually didn’t want her kid in showbiz, but didn’t shield her from the worst of it either.
Aidan’s guileless sweetness is such a great character touch: you can immediately see why DJ needs someone like him. (I just realized they’re kind of a more functional version of Judy and BJ–and BJ even tries on calling Eli “Dad.”)
Got a laugh out of reading this just remembering Kelly’s delivery of, “Babe: Pig in the City?”
Yeah, I was expecting more of a character reversal, but nope, seems like a sweetie pie himbo who’s real good at punching.
Watched Rogue One, which I enjoyed and worked for me… and I have to admit, I don’t know if it would have as well, maybe nearly as well, without having seen Andor first. I was definitely much more invested in this as the culmination of everything we saw in Andor, and the journey we saw the characters who make it to Rogue One make to get there. Not sure I would have as much otherwise, but with the context, I found it very effective.
Year of the Month update!
This June, we’ll be moving on to 1983, including all these movies, albums, books, et al!
Jun. 23rd: Sam Scott: El Sur
Jun. 24th: John Bruni: Legendary Hearts
Jun. 30th: Tristan Nankervis: The Big Chill
And there’s still time to sign up towrite about any of these movies, albums, books, et al!
May 15th: John Bruni: L’Eclisse/Il Sorpasso
May 16th: Gillian Rose Nelson: Big Red
May 19th: Bridgett Taylor: D’Aulaire’s Book of Greek Myths
May 23rd: Gillian Rose Nelson: Almost Angels
May 30th: Gillian Rose Nelson: In Search of the Castaways
I’m out for presidents to represent me (Say what?)
I’m out for presidents to represent me (Say what?)
I’m out for deaf presidents to represent me
A dumb error in this article which I’ve fixed – the sign language is translated with voiceover, not subtitles. Especially dumb given the pedigree of the voiceovers. Tim Blake Nelson does one!
As you might expect, the fight for a d/Deaf President is now a very prominent part of Gallaudet’s history, and very hard to miss if you visit the institution. (I don’t know how much the documentary gets into it, but ASL, much less ASL-first instruction, is still rejected in some circles.) It’s nice to see it getting the kind of mainstream documentary that people will stumble over when deciding what to watch on streaming.
My mom and I watched this movie last night and adored it. Jerry’s such a hoot throughout, but when Greg finally unleashes in his debate on Koppel, I wanted to stand up and cheer.
Great moment!