Here’s Your Sign

There are two types of people in the world: those who love Marlee Matlin and those who don’t know who Marlee Matlin is. Often referred to as “wait the deaf one?” or “oh hey didn’t she guest star on ____?,” Marlee is a generally under-appreciated actress (and secret badass) who should inspire you more than she probably does. Thus, I present to you “6 Reasons to Step Up Your Appreciation for Marlee Matlin.” 

1. She’s talented as fuck.

There are a lot of underrepresented subsets in Hollywood/the entertainment industry in general, but the Deaf community has pretty much one representative (spoiler: it’s Marlee) which basically means that all the responsibility of spreading cultural awareness, all the pressure to succeed and to be taken seriously rests upon one set of admittedly very lovely  shoulders.

Luckily she’s really damn good at it. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role for Children of a Lesser God (which btw was also the first thing she was ever in AND SHE GOT AN OSCAR). She also has a Golden Globe and 4 Emmy nominations as well as a bunch of other rando nominations that you can wikipedia.

Her resume’s pretty stacked because, as previously alluded to, she guest stars in a lot of crap i.e. Seinfeld, ER, Nip/Tuck, My Name is Earl, Blue’s Clues (BLUES CLUES YOU GUYS), Desperate Housewives, Family Guy….as well as her regular/recurring roles on The L Word, Switched at Birth, and the West Wing.

Oh yeah and she was also on Dancing With the Stars which freaked everyone out because they’re like “u cant do that, u cant hear da music wut?” and Marlee Matlin was like “the fuck I can’t.” And then she freaked everyone out by performing in the roast of Donald Trump  and doing really well (with the winning line “I guess I’m the perfect person for this roast because much like The Situation, I too have never heard the sound of laughter”). So basically Marlee Matlin is shattering every stereotype you didn’t even know you had about Deaf people and what they can and cannot do. 

Plus she looks adorable doing it.

Joey Lucas is always relevant always. 

2. She’s been through hell and back.

She was a two-time rape survivor before her 16th birthday. At age 11 she was raped by female babysitter, and at age 14 she was raped at least once by her high school teacher in exchange for passing grades. She developed a severe drug addiction in high school which escalated when, at age 19, she started a relationship with Children of a Lesser God co-star William Hurt in which she was beaten and raped yet again sporadically for two years. 

"I didn’t know how to leave. I didn’t have friends in New York. I didn’t know that you could ask for help. I didn’t know that you could call 911. I didn’t know. And for anyone who’s in this kind of relationship, it’s hard. It’s hard to get out when you don’t know.”

She got out of the relationship, checked herself into rehab, went into counseling, and is now clean, happily married with four children, and an advocate for rape and domestic abuse victims.

3. She’s crazy dedicated to charity. 

First off, she’s actively involved with several charities, including Easter Seals (where she was appointed an Honorary Board Member), the Children Affected by AIDS Foundation, Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, VSA arts, and the Red Cross Celebrity Cabinet. When she was on Celebrity Apprentice (she got second place btw) she raised more money for charity in a single event then anyone else in TV history.

 In 1994 she was appointed by Bill Clinton to the Corporation of National Service and served as the chair for National Volunteer Week. 

Marlee + Bill= Brotp

4. She doesn’t take any shit.

 One time she was at a restaurant for the Sundance Film Festival and a group of men started mocking her and her friends signing from outside through the window. She literally ran out of the restaurant and chased them down the street to give them hell. 

As she said to CNN later in an interview: “I’m little, but I kick butt." 

5. She’s the godmother of a cruise ship.

I didn’t even know that was a thing, but apparently it is and Marlee Matlin is one. 

6. She learned Hebrew phonetically for her Bat Mitzvah.

 Let me explain to you a thing.

Learning a language phonetically means that you learn it via the sounds the syllables make. I would like for you to take a moment to appreciate how immensely difficult it would be to learn a language via the sounds the syllables make if you have never heard the sounds before.  If you’re anything like me, you’re hearing and still can’t grasp the concept of most foreign languages so I hereby grant Marlee Matlin a certificate of badassery to the highest degree. 

Oh yeah, and if a picture is worth a thousand words…..

You speak really well for a deaf person! Thanks! You speak fairly well for a hearing person.

In an agreement that the National Association for the Deaf (NAD) calls “a model for the streaming video industry,” Netflix has agreed to caption all of its shows by the year 2014.

The online-streaming giant is already captioning 82 percent of its videos, according to the consent decree [PDF] filed in court yesterday. Now, it’s bound to finish its entire library, reaching the 90 percent mark in 2013 and 100 percent by 2014.

The company has also agreed to speedily caption new content. The agreement says that Netflix will put captions on new content within 30 days by 2014; within 14 days by 2015; and within 7 days by 2016, “and shall strive to reach a point at which Conforming Captions are provided simultaneously with launch at all times.”

Netflix provides its service on more than 1,000 devices; its captioning service works on most, but not all, of those.The company promises to make “good faith, diligent efforts” to get it working on all devices, but it isn’t obligated to get 100% device compatibility.

The agreement ends a class-action lawsuit that NAD filed in 2010, claiming that Netflix’s website was a “place of public accommodation” that was out of compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. While the parties have made nice now, Netflix spent a fair amount of time trying to get the lawsuit kicked out first.

Netflix said that the ADA didn’t apply in this case, because it was superseded by a new law directing the FCC to set rules for online captioning. In June, however, Netflix definitively lost that argument, when a Massachusetts federal judge ruled [PDF] that the new law was meant to “complement, not supplant” the Americans with Disabilities Act.

“The National Association of the Deaf congratulates Netflix for committing to 100 percent captioning, and is thrilled to announce that 48 million deaf and hard of hearing people will be able to fully access Netflix’s Watch Instantly services,” said NAD CEO Howard Rosenblum in a press release accompanying the decree.

This video is very cool because it touches on a lot of issues of prejudice within the history of the Deaf community. In particular, it shows the “Deaf President Now” movement, in which the students at Gallaudet shut down the campus for a week in protest of the appointment of the 7th hearing president of the university. You can find full coverage of the protest here. 

The protest ended in the appointment of Gallaudet’s first Deaf president, I. King Jordan, who famously noted, “A deaf person can do anything a hearing person can, except hear.” 

FOR JENNA <3

It’s a lil’ rough because what the fuck does “you’d rather run when you can crawl”  mean, but I figure it’ll do. I wanted to actually use the word “psych” because you know, show title, but I wasn’t sure “psych you out” would translate in ASL.