Example Of Deaf Culture In The Film 'Hush'

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Hush is a horror, thriller, suspense movie that was released April 8,2016. It was co-written by Mike Flanagan, also the director, and Kate Siegel, who played the main character, Maddie Young. It is possible that Flanagan’s fandom for Steven King’s novels may be a factor in his work with Hush as the book Mr. Mercedes can be glimpsed in a scene. The movie revolves around Maddie (Seigel) who at age 13 developed bacterial meningitis and as a result developed vocal paralysis and became Deaf. The movie explores the situation behind her being under attack by an unknown serial killer. When the killer sees her he believes that she will be easy prey. Critics assist this theory by calling the movie a “suspenseful cat & mouse thriller” (). …show more content…

One of the good examples is Maddie’s self-determination. The fact that she grew up in the city while she chats with her sister. She shows her self-determination by moving out of the city into her own place and living on her own. She made a decision to do so so that she does not have to be controlled by the majority of the population or her family (106). Another somewhat good representation of Deaf culture is that Maddie seems to be a culturally marginal individual, meaning that she does not feel comfortable in either the hearing or Deaf communities. This can be seen by looking at her want to get out of the city telling her sister, “isolation happened to me. I didn’t pick it” and also “I don’t want that” when she is talking about the small number of deaf men in her area. (HUSH). However, while that is a good example, that is about where Deaf culture ends in Hush. A big part of Deaf culture is named signs. Names signs typically have some meaning behind them whether it is an arbitrary or a descriptive (206). While the character John does have what could be argued as an arbitrary name sign, the characters that Sarah and Maddie discuss do not have either. This is a bad representation as Name signs are given by the Deaf

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