Mentor Text: What happens when deaf people go to the movies?

If you are not friends with a member of the deaf community, questions like “What Happens when Deaf People go to the movies?” have probably never circled in your head. In this video, two deaf men, Chella and Nyle take the viewer through their experience of going to the movies. Their experience is troubling from the start when they arrive and tell the movie theater employee that they are deaf and are handed pairs of headphones. When they finally get their CaptiView, which is a device that displays the movies captions, it looks like old technology and is dirty. When they sit in their seats, they realize that their CaptiViews won’t stay up, even when they are screwed in. Movie theaters being unaccommodating and uneducated is something that restricts the deaf community from being able to experience movies in their optimal setting. While this is a restriction that could be fixed easily with closed captions on movie theater screens, there needs to be support from others to make a true change. This video calls for change within movie theaters to make them more prepared for deaf viewers. The two men end the video by saying they are going to “Netflix and chill” at home. While they have restrictions on where they can become a “local” because of their hearing disabilities, they are able to work around this by viewing movies in a different setting.