Some thoughts and observations provoked by Children of a Lesser God

Being hard of hearing myself, watching Children of a Lesser God (1986) was an interesting experience. It is probably the best film I have seen which focuses on the issues of deafness and hearing impairment. The sound design, in particular, serves to emphasize these issues quite well.

Internal logic, I think, is very appropriate for the sound design in a film about deaf people, especially from a philosophical point of view. Deaf people may not be able to hear sound, but they can still make sounds, they can influence the sounds others make, and they can also influence the way hearing people experience sound. While the film is approached from the perspective of a hearing person (James Leeds), for much of the film he is trying to get inside the head of a deaf person. Because it is impossible for anyone to actually see inside a person’s mind, it is absolutely essential for the filmmakers to show this through sound (I speak not specifically about the inside of the mind of a deaf person, but simply the inside of the mind of anyone). This is why the internal logic in Children of a Lesser God works so well.

Children of a Lesser God, I think, gives a very good depiction of the fears and frustrations which can be caused by deafness — or by even just relatively slight hearing impediments. I, fortunately, am by no means as bad off as any of the deaf/hard-of-hearing characters depicted in the film. Since I was very young I have experienced difficulties with hearing, which have, over the years, caused me to develop certain fears and inhibitions. For much of my life I have had a terrible time trying to understand what people say (unless it is quiet and I am only a few feet away from the person). Often, this has led to me simply guessing what people are saying, which sometimes produces awkward situations if I guess incorrectly (the equally unsavory alternative is for me to ask someone repeat what they said, sometimes three or four or five times before I hear it correctly). Because of this, I have conditioned myself to avoid situations where I might have to carry out a conversation with someone. It is largely because of this that, although I consider myself a hearing member of the community, I have grown accustomed to distancing myself from people socially. I’ve developed a total inhibition against speaking in a public area or in a group or class (whether it is quiet or not), and this inhibition is very difficult to overcome after so many years of conditioning (even though I have absolutely no difficulty speaking). I suppose I’m afraid of hearing incorrectly what others say, and am hesitant to speak because of this (too often in the past I have said the wrong thing because I misheard). Even with my hearing aid, I still sometimes have a difficult time being able to understand what other people are saying, particularly if there is a lot of background noise — my hearing aid helps me hear what people are saying, but it also picks up many other noises, and since I spent a large part of my life not hearing such noises, they pose a major distraction to me (consequently, I am sometimes just as bad off with a hearing aid as I am without one). This paragraph might be misconstrued as a divagation from a discussion of the sonic elements in Children of a Lesser God, but I think it perfectly sets up the final point I wish to make about internal logic:

With many of the examples of internal logic in the film, the background noises went away, removing sonic distractions from what the filmmaker intended us to concentrate on. Sound tends to either focus or clutter our attention capabilities. Similarly, whether I wear my hearing aid or not generally depends on the situation in which I find myself at any given moment. It all depends on what you want to concentrate on (do I really want/need to listen to the high frequencies made by the ventilation system when I’m trying to write?). I’m reminded of the British poet Philip Larkin, who, while Head Librarian at the University of Hull, would always turn his hearing aid off whenever he attended required meetings…so he could read Tolstoy’s War and Peace and ignore the meeting…