It's not surprising that documentary filmmaker Josh Aronson's latest project is "Feelin No Pain," a look at doo-wop music. Much of his previous work has been with music videos. Still, it's a major contrast to the film that has just garnered him and producer Roger Weisberg a Best Documentary Feature nomination from both the Academy Awards and the Independent Spirit Awards. "Sound and Fury" is a look at cochlear impacts and their impact on the deaf community.
"I was actually filming in Washington (D.C) when they announced the nominations," Aronson recalls during a phone interview from Los Angeles. "I must say it hit me in the gut really hard. I sort of had a knot in my stomach for two days. Getting the Academy Award nomination is an amazing honor and piece of luck. I certainly didn't have expectations that the film would be as successful as it is. I wouldn't go so far as to say it was a shock. We knew we had a very good film and since Sundance (where the movie received a nomination for the Grand Jury Prize) it has done extraordinarily well."
Josh Aronson
The film has generated some controversy. A quick glance at the discussion board for the official Web site (www.pbs.org/wnet/soundandfury) gives one a fair impression how heated the discussion of the film and its subject matter can get. Nonetheless, Aronson remembers that people on both sides of the debate were eager to cooperate. The commitment is especially evident in the scenes of domestic arguments between members of the Artinian family, where two brothers who each have a deaf child debate the virtues of the implants.
"I really wanted to show both sides of the story in an honest way so that the viewer can make up their own mind about these issues," he says. "I tried very hard not to take a side and for the film not to have a perspective. When I presented the idea of it to the family, I wanted each side of the family to tell their own story. I wanted to present it as fairly and passionately as they would allow me to. Everybody in the family wanted their story told.
"The pro-implant people wanted their story told so that deaf children and other deaf individuals would get accurate information about the cochlear implants. The anti-implant side of the family felt equally passionately that this was a dangerous technology to use in children because it left them identity-less. Simply by spending time with them and allowing them to say their piece, I won their trust."
Aronson also has been in contact with the Artinians since the film's completion.
"They're pretty much the same place they were a few years ago," he says. "If anything, they're more estranged. They (anti-implant children) are getting a good education through sign language. They're still a loving family, but there's an elephant in the room about the cochlear implant."
Technological repercussions
Much of the reason for the heated nature of the discussion is the fact that cochlear implants have a much different effect on their users than conventional hearing aids.
"A hearing aid amplifies frequencies of sound a person can hear," Aronson explains. "If you are stone deaf, a hearing aid will not allow you to hear anything. The cochlear implant harvests sound through a microphone and sends a signal through a device that's implanted and stimulates the auditory nerve. It will allow you to hear sounds at frequencies that you could not hear. Today, deaf children in schools are mercilessly teased as Peter (in the film was). With the cochlear implant, things can change dramatically. Those kids can function as hard of hearing kids and have no deaf accent to speak of."
Yet the technology has its limits.
"(Children) with the implants are not hearing," he says. "They are not hearing or deaf, and we don't know the psychological impact of that. It's not hearing as the way you and I know it.
"It's a monaural signal (as opposed to stereo), and it stimulates less than 80 percent of normal hearing. For people who are older, the brain is not prepared to comprehend sound beyond the age of five. Those are the years that the brain is programmed to determine what speech is. Beyond that the window closes. That's why Nita in the film was told that if she got an implant she would never be able to use the implant to maximum ability. She could hear sirens or ambient sounds, which would be good for safety. She could never talk on the phone. That's a real deficit for people who are older and want to get a cochlear implant."
Deaf culture
Despite the obvious potential benefits, Aronson understands why many people in the deaf community oppose the implants.
"It's asking them to walk away from their history of sign language," he says. "It's asking deaf people who have deaf kids not to use their primary language. It's an affront to people who are bonded together by something they call 'deaf culture' by hundreds of years of abuse by the hearing world and the hearing medical establishment. They've been lied to. If you look at the history of deafness, deaf children were experimented on."
Aronson has learned and gained a lot from the years he's spent on "Sound and Fury," but he observes, "It's so hard to make a documentary or any type of film, so that to set out to get an Academy Award is insane."
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