There remains debate as to whether deafness and hearing-impairments should be classified as disabilities. Many, including those within the deaf community and their allies, affirm that deafness is a culture rather than a disability. Still, others affirm that having a hearing impairment imposes disadvantages on an individual. We can think of many ways that being deaf brings challenges in common daily life activities- the ringing of a doorbell, the answering the telephone, the knock of a door. In horror media, deafness may mean missing the screams of loved ones, or not perceiving an audible threat, until the threat is close enough to sense by other means.
Horror characters rely on specific strengths to get through the terror they are experiencing and/ or to survive. In some examples of television and film, deaf characters utilize their hearing impairments as a gift to fend off the horrors while the hearing characters around them remain vulnerable. In these instances, we see a paradigm shift from one in which deaf persons suffer incapacities to one in which their deafness relates to a tenacity in the face of terror, even as they maintain their human vulnerability.
Kate Siegel as Maddie in Hush
This paradigm shift in the representation of deafness is evident in the character of Maddie Young (Kate Siegel) in Mike Flanagan’s 2016 film, Hush (available on Netflix). Maddie is a deaf protagonist who has lived with her hearing as well as without it. She lost her ability to hear and speak at the age of 13. She is aware of adaptations that tap into her independence and promote her will to thrive. She is living alone, seeming happily, utilizing technologies that help her communicate (video chat) and take safety precautions (a smoke alarm’s brilliant light to catch her attention when needed). She is an author and demonstrates connection with friends and family. She cannot verbalize or hear, but she still communicates vividly.
Check out the trailer for Hush:
When an unnamed killer (John Gallagher, Jr.) terrorizes Maddie and invades her home, we are not explicitly told his motivations for doing so. Perhaps he sees her as a target due to her deafness. He even tries to use one of her function senses, her sight, against her. When she writes on her window that she did not see his face, it’s not too late, he can leave without consequences, and he removes his mask in front of her to take away that leverage.
Maddie knows his hearing is an advantage. She thinks about it. She strategizes around it. Ultimately, her adaptive device and experience as a deaf person help her tap into her strength in fighting off this predator. She uses her brightly illuminated smoke alarm to disorient him, and she does not back down until she knows this threat is over.
The ways in which deafness functions as a survival strategy has a history in horror texts, even as it is seeing a resurgence with such films as Hush, and A Quiet Place (2018).
Related post: Our guest feature on deafness in A Quiet Place.
The legend of the Pied Piper of Hamlin, while not a piece of horror folklore per se, contains the horrifying elements of parents losing their children to an unknown fate. In some versions, the children who are lulled away by the piper’s music end up in a fantastical realm full of fun. In others, the piper is a predator and they are lured to their doom. It is the hearing of the music that captivates them, and therefore holds them captive. In some versions, one child is left behind. He is the sole “surviving” youth in the community because he could not hear the music.
The Pied Piper of Hamlin
Centuries later, horror involving children is aplenty in our media. This includes horror that is geared towards a young audience. Take the Nickelodeon series “Are You Afraid of the Dark?” The episode “The Tale of the Closet Keepers” (1995) shows our young protagonist Stacey, smart, savvy, and deaf, struggle at hands of her peers when they feel frustrated over their hard time communicating with her. When Stacey and her peers are captures by species from another, held as zoo specimens, her peers look to her for salvation when they find out that unbearably painful sounds are encasing them instead of prison bars.
You can watch “The Tale of the Closet Keepers” here:
While Stacey saves hearing peers, a group of deaf characters must fight for survival against them in the short film “Dawn of the Deaf” (Rob Savage, 2016). The film shows us the beginnings of a world in which a mysterious sound carries with it a transformation to those who hear it. This sound is the so-called “virus” of this zombie apocalypse. However, instead of a slow spread through contact or air, it is a jolting, everyone-at-once noise contamination that quickly kills and alters. Everyone, that is, except those who cannot hear it. The deaf, those whose hearing impairment is enough that they were spared the gruesome change into mindless monstrosities, are the world’s survivors. The short film leaves it up to the imagination how they might band together to maximize their skills and fortitude.
Individuals within the deaf community and allies may express that they, that we, live in a hearing person’s world that forces deaf people to assimilate. In “Dawn of the Deaf,” it may still a hearing person’s world, but one that intensifies from assimilation to a battle to live, to endure. The deaf are the ones who maintain their human faculties and control. In follow-up to this film, we may hope to see how they salvage humanity.
You can watch “Dawn of the Deaf” on Vimeo:
Dawn of the Deaf from Rob Savage on Vimeo.
Lauren Jones is a social worker living in the Boston area. She has practiced creative arts therapies and loves to look at art forms as an exploration of individual and societal topics, including our hopes and fears. She typically finds herself listening to horror podcasts on commutes and researching creepy news during her lunch breaks.
