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.
