Sound and Fury
its a good movie to watch to see what kind of drama a cochlear implant impacts on family life ,even if no one in the family is deaf it still impacts the deaf kid in a negative way anyways. good example of what kinds of debates are going on with the deaf community and hearing community

Sound & Fury
Great & realistic portrayal of the struggles that have gone on in the Deaf community over the cochlear implant. Should definitely purchase Sound & Fury - 6 Years Later as a follow up.

The Sign of the Times
I worked at a YMCA camp for many years, and one week out of the summer it was "Hearing impaired week" That meant that 98% of the campers were deaf, and the other 2% were usually hearing siblings. There were interpreters provided if we wanted them, and Hearing impaired counselors as staff. I always opted for no interpreter because it's much more fun to learn on your own. I now have (thanks to 10 summers of winging it) an extensive knowledge of Sign Language and I also had an insiders look to the deaf community that not many get. I used to see the campers who had Cochlear Implants get shunned, and that confused the heck out of me. I mean wouldn't you want to hear if you were deaf?
This documentary Sound and Fury tackles that question, providing all of the points of view needed to make an opinion of your own. We have:
*The Artinian family composed of Mom (Nita), Dad (Peter), Heather (who is 6) and two little brothers. The whole family is deaf.
*The Parents of Peter, grandparents of heather who are hearing
* Chris (who is hearing and is the brother of Peter) and his wife Mari (also hearing) and their three kids, two of which are twins and one of them is Deaf.
*Mari's Parents who are both Deaf.

Its one giant family saga, full of passion and confusion and hard decisions. Mari has the unique perspective being a hearing child to deaf parents, she KNOWS the deaf community, and in fact she had to have speech therapy because she learned her speech by mimicking her parents. Her parents especially her mother feel like she is betraying them because she doesn't want her child to be deaf. Peter grew up a deaf child of hearing parents and they didn't sign very well, he has embraced the "deaf culture" and never let go, he does not want his daughter to be implanted. Peter's parents want their granddaughter to have every available opportunity in this life and want her to get the implant. Heather, the 6 year old, is psyched to get the implant so she can hear music, talk on the phone, and hear cars crash (apparently she saw a crash once and now wants to hear one)She is full of life, lively, cute as can be, you want to just hug her! Her parents, decide to research the implant and the schools which heather will attend. They see that the implanted kids in school do not sign, they use their voices and implants only(which I think is wrong, you should teach them both). To them that is criminal and after seeing that some children with the implant still don't speak well, they tell heather she isn't getting it (and convince her that it was also her decision which is crappy) Peters parents are furious at him, even calling him abusive for not getting heather implanted. I wouldn't go that far, but I would say that they are too close minded and sheltered to let their child spread her wings. You can't isolate yourself, and the deaf community is realizing that.

Mari tells her parents, and other deaf friends about getting her twin implanted (which is super brave of her) and they react with such hatred and vitriol I am surprised she made it out alive. They all signed "Implanted" very much like a swinging arm knifing the air and talk of all the implanted children become robots because they have the device in their heads was pure ignorance. Her mother whines and cries about how much she is afraid that the kid will make fun of her later, and what a horrible daughter she is.

In the end, Mari gets her son implanted and Heather is told it's not going to happen, much to her chagrin. In my opinion it is horribly selfish for the parents of deaf children to want to keep their children behind, Heathers own parents did not have good educations (her mother cannot read beyond 4th grade) and her father admits that he has a good job but will never move beyond his position into anything higher. They are scared of losing heather to the "hearing world" because they are scared of what it means to them, not because of any concerns for heather and that's selfish. I do know that 6 years after the documentary is filmed Heather gets the implant, as does her mother and two brothers, the father is the only one that doesn't, they might have seen how Mari's son did so well and realized the benefits. Heather apparently has amazing speech and has one foot in both the hearing and deaf communities as it should be.

I came away from this with a better realization as to why those campers were shunned, and what the deaf community is so scared of. They don't think that deafness is a disability and that nothing is wrong to be fixed. I argue that both parties need to embrace the philosophy of "Manualism and oralism" which is that the child who receives an implant be taught both sign language and speech instead of one or the other. It makes more sense that way.

an important documentary...
SOUND AND FURY, directed by Josh Aronson, takes a good look at the deaf culture and the cochlear implant, a device that poses a great challenge and [even] a threat to their interconnectedness, as a community. The implant, if implanted in a deaf child, has the power to bring them hearing. Potentially, if an implant recipient receives it early enough, they can even grow up to speak and interact with the hearing world in a coherent and connected manner. Though, this sounds like a great miracle that all parents would potentially want for their children (especially deaf parents), this is not that case at all.

The film follows the Artinian family. The two Artinian brothers live very different lives. While Peter was born deaf, went on to marry a deaf woman and has a deaf five year old daughter, his brother can hear, married a woman whose parents are deaf, but she is also hearing. Together, they have twin boys. One can hear, but the other was born deaf. When the option of the cochlear implant is presented, the brothers react very differently, as do sets of grandparents. In the Artinian family's community in Long Island, New York, the cochlear implant is a very controversial medical phenomenon. For starters, the question of deaf people's perceived inferiority in the eyes of of hearing people is a huge issue. The cochlear implant poses even greater leverage in the favor of the hearing world's sustained stereotype--that is the feeling that Peter and many of his friends in the deaf community share. Whereas, Mrs. Artinian, Peter's mother, believes that denying a deaf child the opportunity to hear is wrong and not giving their flesh and blood the best opportunity to integrate into the hearing world, to have better opportunities. These opportunities would otherwise be denied.

The title of this documentary, alone, really made me anticipate a very fiery debate on the cochlear implant issue, and I was right. The separation between the hearing world and the deaf world is a great and difficult one. I am so glad that this film was made because it was sensitively done, and it also teaches the viewer a great deal about the intricacies of moving between the world of the hearing and the world of the deaf. It really is a huge cultural difference--bigger than you would imagine. Well worth the acclaim!

A breath-taking look
This film takes on the question of deafness: if you could make your deaf child hear, would you? It looks at two related families, one hearing and the other deaf, and chronicles their responses to this question. There are no heroes and no villians in this film, and certainly no easy answers. The stories are told without bias or agenda.

I saw this film while struggling with the decisions of my mild high-functioning autistic daughter's education. The discussion of Deaf Culture resonated for me because my daughter looked profoundly handicapped and incapable when integrated into a class of Normal/Typical (NT)children. Now she is in a school specifically for autistic children and she is flourishing. Autism was not her handicap, my blind desire to integrate her into an NT world was.

Her school, Aalborg Skolen in Aalborg, Denmark, also works with deaf children. I bought this video as a gift for the director of the school because the questions raised in it are universal.

This film is gripping, thought-provoking, and uplifting. It is a must for anyone who ever wondered "where do I belong in this world". I highly, highly recommend it.