{"id":17951,"date":"2022-05-18T00:44:28","date_gmt":"2022-05-18T00:44:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/?p=17951"},"modified":"2022-05-18T17:38:10","modified_gmt":"2022-05-18T17:38:10","slug":"hollywood-hears-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/2022\/05\/18\/hollywood-hears-you\/","title":{"rendered":"Hollywood Hears You"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\"><em>By Eric Valentine<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\">Let\u2019s play a guessing game. You need to guess what I\u2019m thinking about. Here are your three clues:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li class=\"p2\">Elitist<\/li>\n<li class=\"p5\">Cancel culture<\/li>\n<li class=\"p5\">Out of touch<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p class=\"p7\">If you guessed Hollywood, you\u2019re right. Your prize? You get to watch the Oscar-winning film <i>CODA<\/i>, or at least read this review\/commentary about why it\u2019s important you do.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p8\"><b>Out of Touch<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\">CODA is an acronym for children of deaf adults, a relatively obscure group of people, although 90% of children born to deaf parents can hear. And if you didn\u2019t know that, maybe it\u2019s not only Hollywood who\u2019s out of touch.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\">The film is about the tight-knit, somewhat feral, Rossi family\u2014both parents and their eldest son are deaf, their daughter Ruby is not. Ruby\u2019s brightest talent\u2014outside of multitasking the deaf and hearing worlds and largely being the proverbial adult of the family\u2014is her voice, the beautifully airy soprano of Emilia Jones, the young actress who plays her.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\">Guess what happens when a talented child who seems to have everything they need in life doesn\u2019t have a home that understands their talent. The gift goes unnoticed. That is, until a high school jazz choir teacher Bernardo (SPOILER ALERT: learn to roll your Rs!), played by Eugenio Derbez, gets her to audition for choir.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\">The story unfolds from there as we watch the Rossi family navigate the implications of Ruby\u2019s talent. No, not how rich and famous they\u2019ll be if she makes a hit record. More like, how the heck they\u2019re supposed to run their family-owned fishing boat without a hearing person to do everything from notice sirens to negotiate fish auction prices. We realize how out of touch our society is when it comes to the culture of the deaf.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p8\"><b>Cancel Culture<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\">Speaking of culture, let\u2019s talk cancel culture. If you think it\u2019s something liberal or new, listen up. History lesson: author J.D. Salinger, comedian Lenny Bruce, boxer Muhammad Ali, none of them were banned by liberals forcing on America their world view. These were conservative movements, well-intended at best and bigoted hate at worst. But how is it relevant to <i>CODA<\/i>?<\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\">In Hollywood, if you\u2019re thinking about making a movie about a deaf person, it doesn\u2019t take long before you think about Marlee Matlin. She\u2019s the first deaf actress to win an Oscar (<em>Children of a Lesser God<\/em>, 1987) and it springboarded an acting career still going strong today. Once she signed on to the project, <i>CODA<\/i> had a chance to get made. Matlin, however, refused to be part of the project unless every single deaf character was played by an actor who in real life is also deaf. Result: Leo Rossi, the son, would be played by deaf actor Daniel Durant, and Frank Rossi, the father, would be played by deaf actor Troy Kotsur.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\">If you think that\u2019s nice but just another version of affirmative action, consider all the results. This film didn\u2019t only win the Oscar for the best movie of the year, one of the deaf actors\u2014Kotsur\u2014also took home a statue in gold for best supporting actor.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p8\"><b>Elitist<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\">Perhaps the critical success of <i>CODA<\/i> is just elitist Hollywood film critics being politically correct and it\u2019s not as good a movie as they want to make us believe it is. After all, to date it has only made $1.6 million at the box office. Right, at the box office. But the film is something Netflix purchased\u2014at some film festival in some mountain resort town in some state out west not too far from Sun Valley\u2014for $25 million. Now that&#8217;s an expensive &#8216;lunch.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\">For me, <i>CODA<\/i> does have a tone that plays at times like an after-school special or Hallmark Channel holiday story. At times. And, in those scenes, it\u2019s the best darn after school or Hallmark movie scene I\u2019ve ever seen. At other times, it\u2019s classic storytelling with a fresh view. I won\u2019t spoil for you the two special scenes that would serve as perfect examples of the slight-surprise devices used within the latter parts of the film. I will explain the one used early on.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\">Before Ruby unleashes her gem of a voice, Bernardo asks her to tell him why she\u2019s so scared to sing. She explains, \u201cI don\u2019t know how to say it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\">\u201cTry!\u201d Bernardo demands.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\">And Ruby begins to sign her explanation with uber-emotive big brown eyes and the emotional grace only found in the hand and arm gestures of American Sign Language. (Did you know all languages have their own version of sign language? What a hassle.). She doesn&#8217;t say one spoken word and it\u2019s a moment that will find you utterly speechless. Every important moment in Ruby&#8217;s life up until that point had to be expressed without spoken word. Of course she didn&#8217;t know how to &#8216;say&#8217; it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\">And if you still can\u2019t stomach American elitism, fret not. The film is an adaptation of a 2014 film called <i>La Famille B\u00e9lier.<\/i> A Belgian-French film, of course. Ah, there\u2019s no business like show business.<\/p>\n<p><em>La Fin<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Eric Valentine Let\u2019s play a guessing game. You need to guess what I\u2019m thinking about. Here are your three clues: Elitist Cancel culture Out of touch If you guessed Hollywood, you\u2019re right. Your prize? You get to watch the Oscar-winning film CODA, or at least read this review\/commentary about why it\u2019s important you do. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","_pvb_checkbox_block_on_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-commentary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17951"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17951\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18016,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17951\/revisions\/18016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}