Thanks to a friend in the UK, I was able to catch the BBC telemovie Soundproof. To my knowledge this hasn't been aired in the United States and I haven't heard of any plans to bring it here. My friend sent me a burned DVD of the open-captioned version, which wouldn't play on my DVD player but worked on my computer - I'm not sure if the issue with the player was due to region differences, or because it was a burned DVD.
It was really a great story - we have had nothing like that over here where deafness is a major part of the story but not the whole story. The last drama I can remember that was about deafness was Children of a Lesser God...and that was 20 years ago! It's really too bad Soundproof isn't being shown over here on regular TV or BBC America - perhaps somebody should make an American version for the American deaf audience?!
I have to admit though, as an interpreter, the Penny character drove me crazy! Needless to say she broke all the rules we have about interpreting. I don't know if the rules are the same in the UK - if there is a governing body for interpreters there - but any interpreter who did what Penny did would be so fired in a millisecond! As soon as she slipped Dean the information about the interrogator lying to him, big red signs started flashing in my head saying ILLEGAL! And then when she slept with him...well, let's just say my brain does not compute the idea of sleeping with a client!
Now, of course I don't understand BSL, but I found Penny's signing to be very stilted and Dean's signing to be more natural. I have heard that the actor who played Dean is late-deafened and had to be coached in signing, but I still found him much easier on the eyes than Penny's signing...she just seemed so rigid. And of course I couldn't use the fingerspelling at all for practice...I have learned the BSL alphabet but I am much too slow to keep up with the way they did it on TV!
One thing I wasn't sure about was at the end of the show, they said it would be aired again on BBC One's "SignZone" -I don't know what that is and I couldn't find much information about it on the web. Perhaps it is with someone in the corner signing all the spoken parts? That is very rare over here, you pretty much only see it on religious programming, and most of the time that is just captioned with no signer.
I feel really special that I got to see Soundproof, because I don't think many Americans have seen it.
[this is good] It is remarkable, rather amusing idea
Posted by: Isidore Pence | 06/17/2010 at 12:04 PM