Hollywood is Finally Getting Deaf Representation Right (For the Most Part)

There’s a moment at the start of Hawkeye’s third episode that almost made me angry. In a flashback scene, a very young Maya Lopez, a Deaf character, is signing with her hearing father. Having taken American Sign Language courses, I could recognize that the ASL was rudimentary ⁠ — it relied on direct translation of each individual word, something that ASL (and most languages) shies away from. I had seen a similar mistake made in other shows that attempted to represent sign language and Deaf culture, and it was always a clear sign that the creative team had been careless in their depiction of ASL.

Later in the episode, though, Lopez (played by Deaf Native American actress Alaqua Cox) signs with someone else in full-fledged ASL, and I realized the father’s poor signing had been a creative choice. Because he was hearing, and only used sign language to speak with her, his translations were purposefully rudimentary. That’s the kind of detail that only ASL users would be able to pick up on, but it’s still important, and it made me appreciate that the creative team was willing to put in the work to represent ASL and Deaf culture properly in Hawkeye. It also gives me hope for Marvel’s spin-off series centered on Lopez’s character.

This isn’t to say that Hawkeye gets everything right. That same flashback scene is filmed so close that you sometimes can’t even see what the characters are signing, an error I’m sure was not lost on Deaf viewers eager to see ASL represented.

Still, Hawkeye shows how far Deaf representation has come lately. In fact, over the past year, it’s become increasingly clear that film and television are finally ready to get Deaf and ASL representation right, even if they still sometimes miss the mark.

The most clear example is the film CODA (which stands for Child of Deaf Adults). The film, which is streaming on Apple TV+ and has been nominated for numerous awards, is a coming-of-age drama about a girl, Ruby, whose parents (played by Marlee Matlin and Troy Kotsur) and brother (played by Daniel Durant) are all Deaf and own a fishing business in Massachusetts. Her family rely heavily on her to communicate with the hearing world, and the pressure to help them while also forging her own identity is difficult to bear.

What’s notable about CODA is the nuance with which the film treats Deafness, especially by not lumping the three Deaf characters together as one singular character or using outdated stereotypes. For instance, while Ruby’s father has become hardened by his negative experiences dealing with hearing people, and prefers to keep to himself, Ruby’s brother wants to interact more with the town and act more independently than his parents and sister think he can. The film is also thoughtful in the amount of details it gives on the Deaf experience, like when Ruby’s father blasts hip-hop in his car so he can feel the beat.

Another good example is Only Murders in the Building, the mystery drama-comedy streaming on Hulu. Each episode of the show is told from a different character’s perspective, and the seventh is told from the perspective of Theo, a young Deaf man, played by James Caverly. The episode is almost completely silent, featuring just one line of dialogue. Notably, though, it isn’t completely silent. Instead, the sound engineers were careful to include extremely muffled sounds that mimic the vibrations that Deaf people are so acutely aware of. The cinematographer also worked closely with Caverly to use a different filmmaking style to give it a more visually intense look that would be noticeable to Deaf viewers.

Then there’s The Eternals, which premiered in theatres last November and was recently added to Disney+, and features the Marvel cinematic universe’s first Deaf superhero, Makkari, played by Tony-nominee Lauren Ridloff. The film fluidly switches between ASL and spoken English in scenes with Makkari and makes her Deafness feel completely natural rather than an obstacle. It’s also not flawless. While Makkari can read lips, I still noticed moments in which the character she was supposedly speaking to would look away, which would make reading lips impossible. Still, it cannot be overstated the importance of featuring ASL and Deafness prominently in a superhero role.

Meanwhile, the Bachelor franchise last year featured a different aspect of the deaf experience in Abigail Heringer, who appeared on both Season 25 of The Bachelor and Season 7 of Bachelor in Paradise. Heringer uses a cochlear implant and speaks rather than using ASL as her primary form of communication. That kind of deaf (note the lowercase d) experience is not featured often onscreen, so Heringer was celebrated for speaking openly about her experience and her relationship with deafness.

To be sure, there are still details that these movies and shows get wrong, and in many cases Hollywood still relies on singular experiences and stereotypes to depict its Deaf characters. But if the last year is any indication, onscreen Deaf representation is very much heading in the right direction.