Images of an Invisible Disability: Framing Hearing Limitation in Film and Television - Softcover

Arising from an internal cause, a hearing disability in people generates no external physical signs. Thus, directors and screenwriters of films and TV programs have made this invisible disability visible by resorting to physical and behavioral stereotypes of deaf and hard-of-hearing characters. This book is based on Nan Edith Johnson’s reviews of about 200 films, made-for-TV movies, TV episodes, or TV series having a character with a hearing disability. She assesses these images according to the actual lived experience of hearing disability, the accessibility of the show to hearing-disabled audiences, and changes in these factors over the nine decades covered in her filmography. A Professor Emerita of Sociology at Michigan State University, she is pictured here with her Hearing Dog Gertie-Aster.