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Deaf Jam

Eshal Asim's picture

I really liked how the movie was centred around Aneta's journey as a person and finding out who she is without her friends and Lexington. Seeing her make a space for herself in a very hearing-oriented environment was powerful. It showed that people with disabilities constantly make their presence known through their own voice (even though responsibility should not be theirs alone). I also really liked seeing the normalcy of the Lexington kids. Often in media, there's a certain level of "tokenisation" in any kind of representation, but this wasn't really "representation"; it was the normalcy of everyday life. In class, we discussed accessibility and how many institutions, including Haverford, saw/see it as some kind of enormous obstacle that can't be overcome because it's "too hard" or will ruin their definition of "normalcy". I found it so ironic that Haverford had a disablitiy-accommodated room for years, but never bothered to put a ramp because what purpose could that have possibly served? To me, it just seems like a taunt towards a community that has constantly been denied access to things that should have always been available to them.