Marlee Matlin’s Not Alone Anymore is a documentary focused on her life, an important project that arose due to mainstream society’s refusal to support or create authentic Deaf stories.
This is a topic that has been brought up before on FilmDis, and Not Alone Anymore was used as an example.
Fortunately, I had the opportunity to watch the documentary last week and I’d love nothing more than to talk about it, focusing on how authentic the process of the storytelling is, and my thoughts on the doc on a personal level.
Marlee is Deaf, of course, and the main star of the doc, so all good there.
Shoshannah Shern directed and produced the film. She is also Deaf. Her work is well loved in the community, having created This Close, and her character Bonnie from Jericho is well loved by mainstream and hearing society.
These two are who you see the most throughout the doc.
Guests include Deaf actors Lauren Ridloff and Troy Kotsur, and entertainer John Maucere. They told a little bit of their own personal stories while talking about how inspiring Marlee’s work has been to them, praising her for her advocacy in entertainment and politics.
One of the first things I noticed was how the signing was actually in frame. In most works where Deaf characters are involved, including Switched At Birth, the signing is not efficiently in the frame. Sometimes these characters and their signing are shown from behind or they are partially caught off, not allowing a clear and full view of the hands. But in Not Alone Anymore, the view is clear, and that’s how you know it’s the proper work of a Deaf director.
So many times, the Deaf community has made complaints about not being able to see clear signing on the screens. Not just in movies and TV, but also live television such as press conferences. This seems to be due to aesthetics and also deeming the information not important enough to be shown, and no matter how many times we tell them to properly frame the signing, the requests seem to go ignored.
That is why it is important for Deaf people to not only be in front of the camera, but also behind the camera. I have had to experience this myself on set once, where my interpreter, who was also an actor, had to remind the director and camera people to have my hands fully in frame.
Not only is it important for Deaf people to be behind the camera as well, to have our stories properly told from an accessibility standpoint, but it’s also important from a personal standpoint.
Our community has been struggling to get mainstream Hollywood to share our stories, so we often have to do it ourselves in the indie space. Sometimes this means that it’s harder to make those stories because of the lack of resources we need to properly make a film, but at the same time, that means there’s potential for the story to mean so much more.
Deaf people have control over their stories. We really see and feel the inspiration, the love, the care. I see myself in Marlee as an advocate for captions and interpreters, as someone who grew up mainstreamed and has had run-ins within the community for not being the type of Deaf person they expect me to be. Like many others, Marlee was the first Deaf person I saw and looked up to, and that’s something special to me.
I left the documentary in tears, feeling a bunch of emotions at once– bad stuff like family drama, the weight of constantly having to advocate for myself and my communities. But also good stuff like just seeing my peers and mutuals succeed in things I hope to one day have.
Those feelings are solid proof (and no, that’s not supposed to be a pun for Marlee’s autobiography I’ll Scream Later) that we need our stories told. We need them told by ourselves, by our fellow Deaf people, and we also need the mainstream to help us share that.
We can’t do it alone.