Switched at Birth Finale - I interviewed Marlee Matlin

I love the way the show Switched at Birth handles disability. I'm an overthinking critic, and I'm happy to overthink and criticize any cultural product, but I think Switched at Birth is amazing for so many reasons. But here's why I started watching it.

Emmett, in this scene, is arrested. He's working on his bike and can't hear anything, because he's Deaf. The police shout commands, but he just stands there, and then they tackle him. This is a dynamic that I cover in my journalism, but that I hadn't seen dramatized before. The show depicts it twice, once at the end of an episode without sound, and once with an episode.


I interviewed Marlee Matlin, a supporting character on the show, about her experience with Switched at Birth and her career and activism.

Let’s start with Switched at Birth. When I first heard the premise, it sounded like a pretty light show — but it’s changed the conversationabout disability on TV. What, in your mind, is its legacy?

I knew from the start that there was something unique and groundbreaking about the show. [Creator] Lizzy Weiss invited me to watch the pilot, and when I saw not only one deaf actor, but a number of them all signing, subtitled, and incorporated in a manner that I had only dreamed should happen in TV, I knew she had done her homework. Switched at Birth proved that deaf actors can be part of any TV show and there should never be a worry that somehow it wouldn’t work. Switched at Birth was definitely a game changer for the community of deaf actors in Hollywood, as well as viewers eager for diversity.

Can you tell me a story about about being on set when the show felt different to you?

It felt different the first day I walked on the set and was asked to do my lines without having to worry about having to speak, without having to think about the actor who would be translating my signs into responses that made it clear what I was saying or who was interpreting for me. My hands, my language, did all the talking, and captions took care of the rest. That was the moment I realized that I was finally free to act with the means that I was most comfortable with as an actor who happens to be deaf and who communicates in American Sign Language. Acting finally was available to me just like everyone else.

READ THE WHOLE INTERVIEW.

Audio Descriptions and Switched at Birth

I was recently contacted by two writers and advocates working on pushing digital media to provide audio descriptions for the show Switched at Birth. You can read about their efforts here. Audio descriptions are always necessary to make TV and movies fully accessible, but this show, with its frequent use of ASL, makes them especially important. Also, because it's a show about difference, disability, and identity, the irony of the show being inaccessible to blind individuals is particularly heavy.

Here's what the writers experienced when they first turned on the show:

As the first episode introduced Daphne and Bae there was a lot of dialogue. And so I could follow that story. Daphne’s mother was there and signed while she spoke which was nice. Shortly though it became clear that there were a lot of scenes shot completely in ASL. So there was just silence in those moments. Though I love audio description, and have never been so energized about advocating for it since meeting Robert, I’ve usually done pretty good with shows that have a lot of dialogue. But this was so different as part of a conversation could be going on in ASL and then someone talking in English so it was extremely difficult.

It strikes me that there has to be a better way to get audio descriptions added to a show. We went through this with Daredevil, when the irony that a show featuring a blind protagonist wouldn't be accessible to blind people generated lots of publicity and forced Netflix to make the change (I covered it for Vice). There's something similar going on here, and with sufficient push, I'm sure it's possible to get Freeform's streaming service (ABC Family changed its name; read about the fascinating history of the network here from Jacqui Shine) to add audio descriptions, or otherwise to push Netflix/AppleTV/whoever to do it? I suspect it might have to come from the network, though.

I wrote three pieces about Switched at Birth last Fall, when the show added a Down syndrome prenatal diagnosis plot.

• What Switched at Birth gets Right and Wrong about Families Like Mine (Salon.com, 9/8/15) 
• Down Syndrome, Prenatal Testing, and a Teenage Soap Opera? The Importance of Switched At Birth (The Mary Sue, 9/02/15)
• A "Bechdel-Wallace" Test for the Disability Community (Al Jazeera America, 8/30/15)

For Al Jazeera America (RIP), I wrote:

The producers of “Switched at Birth” also play with sound and hearing. When two deaf individuals sign, ambient sound drops. American Sign Language (ASL) conversations sometimes take place without subtitles, replicating the perspective of hearing people who do not sign. A highly praised episode in season two is entirely in ASL, showing a dramatized teenage version of the real-life Galludet uprising, in which deaf students at Galludet University, in Washington, D.C., staged a sit-in to demand a deaf president. In the show, the students seize control of a deaf-only school in danger of being closed.

In another episode, police arrest Emmett and react violently when he doesn’t respond to shouted commands. The scene is shown both with and without sound. In the former, there’s just a bright light shining in Emmett’s face before officers suddenly tackle him. I frequently write about the violence experienced at the hands of police by people with disabilities, including deaf individuals, but I’ve never seen such a scene portrayed on mainstream TV.

Furthermore, in the break between the seasons (it returns next January), I consulted with Lizzy Weiss, the show creator, and other writers, about the experience of being a new father of a boy with Down syndrome. I have to tell you that there are plenty of scenes coming that make me tear up. There's also one scene in the finale which, at least in reading the script, simply left me breathless in its depictions of disability and agency. Stay tuned, as they say (do they still say that?).

I'm committed to the show. I want it accessible to everyone. But I don't want to get audio descriptions in this piecemeal way, where advocates have to band together and fight, show by show. We need to make it a default. I'm not sure how to get there.

Universal design for TV is TV with audio descriptions.