Either that in the today’s film industry discriminate Deaf and Hard of Hearing, are audism which that means they have something against them, simply doesn’t care or plainly dumb. If you are someone who loves watching television shows or movies daily, there are some of the people who must have music, must play games as much as they can and then there are people who must watch television shows or movies everyday. I am one of these who must watch television shows or movies daily group, so of course we are bound to watch some television shows or movies that have one or more Deaf or Hard of Hearing characters and that same goes for the people who is in wheelchair too. But what a lot of people doesn’t realize is that these roles were given to the actor or actress that aren’t what the role of characters is such as Deaf, Hard of Hearing or in wheelchair and that is a problem. It is getting tiresome, the reason that is a problem is because it is conflict with the character’s role who isn’t even what the character’s role has and they have no right to do so. Unfortunately, some productions in films or television shows are either too dumb, discriminating them or have something against them. What they do is robbing the opportunities from the people who has what these character’s role has, if the character’s role is Deaf or Hard of Hearing then hire Deaf or Hard of hearing actor or actress and if the character’s role is in wheelchair then hire an actor or an actress who is in wheelchair. Otherwise it is conflicts in a huge way and that is a problem with the productions in both films and television shows for not having any common sense.
It is as if you are giving a character’s role who is white to a black actor or actress or giving a character’s role who is black to a white actor or actress; wouldn’t that be offensive or insulting? That is the point.
The film’s industry or television’s industry doesn’t recognize these, as it seems that lately every one of them have no common sense when it comes to that. How couldn’t they have any common sense to see through that? Giving a character’s role who is Deaf, Hard of Hearing or uses a wheelchair to some actors or actresses who isn’t Deaf, Hard of Hearing or don’t use a wheelchair. What they are doing is robbing their dreams left and right which that isn’t the right thing to do by them. As I said above, it is no different from giving the character’s role who is black to white or the character’s role who is white to black. If they are going to make an excuse saying that they couldn’t find the actor or actress who is fit to be in that character’s role then they are lying out of their arse because there is somewhat large pool of actors or actresses who is trying to make their dream to come true. These actors and actresses deserves to have these opportunities but unfortunately the productions in both films and television shows isn’t willing to give them the chance. That is a problem and that needs to stop.
For example, giving a Deaf character role to Julianne Moore to act in the upcoming new movie titled Wonderstruck and we all know for a fact that Julianne Moore isn’t even Hard of Hearing or let alone Deaf. No, you don’t get to tell me that Julianne Moore is a great actress and that she’s popular because I agree with that but she does not deserves the Deaf girl character in Wonderstruck which should have been given to a Deaf girl. There are several great Deaf actresses out there already, for instance Sandra Mae Frank who were excellent at co-acting on a very well-known stage and when I say that, I am referring to broadway. Yes I did say broadway! Yes the broadway in New York! Sandra Mae Frank was in a broadway show calls The Spring Awakening that played for several months due to tremendous success they had in broadway thanks to many Deaf actors and actresses including Sandra Mae Frank along with Daniel Durant co-starring.
Dumb Van Helsing, TV Shows
Another example is the new television show calls Van Helsing by Syfy production has a Deaf character role in it and the actor’s name is Christopher Heyerdahl and guess what?! Christopher Heyerdahl isn’t even Deaf or let alone a Hard of Hearing. What’s even worse is that in an interview after the Deaf community condemned the Syfy production for giving the Deaf character role to a hearing actor, Christopher Heyerdahl himself states that he respects hearing-impaired people along with other words which I don’t care because what is bothersome is that hearing-impaired shows nothing but disrespectful to the Deaf community and that even angered the Deaf community even more. I am consider myself as Deaf individual although in medical term, I am Hard of Hearing but I accept myself as Deaf more than what the audiologists or doctors says so I am a part of the Deaf community and I think I can speak for the majority of the Deaf community is that when anyone says hearing-impaired is strongly offensive as we don’t take that word lightly as we repeatedly asked that out of respect – call us Deaf or Hard of Hearing and that is end of the discussion. So why in the heck is Syfy allowing that? Giving the Deaf character role to someone who can hear and then allow the actor to offend the Deaf community. Does Syfy even realize that there is 360 million Deaf and Hard of Hearing people in the world which is most of these 360 million potential viewers they have just lost before they even air Van Helsing on television. Not just the show but possibly the entire shows or movies that is filmed by Syfy.
Want to apologize? Fine but we are more of walk the talk over talk the talk so how about replace Christopher Heyerdahl with an actual Deaf actor and that will be a start. If you are going to make an excuse such as how can you find a Deaf actor for his replacement or any Deaf actors or Deaf actresses in your future films or television shows and telling us that it is very hard to find them. Guess what? Barely hard. There is a huge pool of Deaf actors and Deaf actresses await for their opportunities to take the Deaf character role in movies or television shows; all you have to do is look for one place.
Deaf Talent and Deaf West
All you have to do is search these two words and that is “Deaf Talent”. There is an amazing size pool of Deaf actors and Deaf actresses who are waiting for their opportunities. Deaf Talent can be easily found on social media, Twitter in particular and Facebook too. Not just Deaf Talent, you can also take a look at Deaf West too as some of these were in the Spring Awakening broadway. Honestly, all it would take you to make a post on social media to announce that you are looking for Deaf actor or Deaf actress who would be interested in your upcoming film or television shows and these Deaf Talent would be all over it. You can find them using the hashtag #DeafTalent on social media such as Twitter and Facebook. Deaf and Hard of Hearing in Deaf Talent truly deserves the chance to be in the character Sam for Van Helsing, in fact, more qualified than Christopher Heyerdahl and certainly would be more fitting as they are Deaf in Deaf character role. Nothing can get better than that. Advice to any productions for films or televisions, if you ever plan on to have a Deaf or Hard of Hearing character in your film or television show then get Deaf or Hard of Hearing person to have it because they are more fitting to do so than any actors or actresses who can hear and that makes more sense than ever because it doesn’t make any sense at all when you are giving the Deaf character role to someone who can hear as that actor or actress who can hear doesn’t know what it is to be Deaf or Hard of Hearing.
Give them a chance. Imagine getting 360 million potential views from the Deaf community in the entire world because one of them is their people. Some of the people in Deaf Talent and Deaf West have what it takes as they have the experience such as being in broadway or in successful television shows or movies such as Jericho with Shoshannah Stern as Bonnie Richmond, Switched At Birth, Children of a Lesser God with Marlee Matlin and others. Bigger television show? Ok, how about Nyle Dimarco winning the mirror trophy in Dancing With The Stars 22nd cycle and winning American Next Top Model cycle 22 in the same year so you get the idea. Seriously Syfy, wake up and smell the coffee because you make no sense by giving the Deaf character role to Christopher Heyerdahl who can hear and is clueless what it’s like to be Deaf.
What a shameful and senseless you guys over at Syfy are with Van Helsing. That also goes for any other productions who make the same mistake as Syfy with Van Helsing.
Deaf Talent and Deaf West Social Media
Here are a few ways you can take a look at Deaf Talent and follow them. Here is the list of where the Deaf Talent is on social media and I recommend that you follow them.
Deaf Talent
Twitter: Twitter.com/DeafTalent and click this hashtag #DeafTalent too.
Facebook: Facebook.com/DeafTalentNow
Deaf West
Website: DeafWest.org
Twitter: Twitter.com/DeafWest
Facebook: Facebook.com/DeafWestTheatre
Thank you very much for all of your time reading this article and I hope that all of you have a great night. If any of you know a television show or movie that has Deaf or Hard of Hearing character in it but the actor or actress isn’t Deaf or Hard of Hearing, please let me know and that goes the same with if you know any movies or television shows that has Deaf or Hard of Hearing character in it that is given to Deaf or Hard of Hearing actor or actress. I would greatly appreciate it. And any new movies or television shows that’s coming up in the future, you hear or see that they are talking about a character who is Deaf, Hard of Hearing or uses a wheelchair and was given to an actor or an actress who isn’t even Deaf, Hard of Hearing or in wheelchair then please let me know as well so I can stove a stick up their arse for having no brains to have common sense. Thank you kindly and I love you guys!
P.S. Seriously give Deaf Talent and Deaf West a chance. Deaf Talent and Deaf West rocks. I am proud of you and never give up!
Joshua “Joshie” Sullivan.
Follow me on Twitter @JoshiesWorld or on other social media! Also, be sure to subscribe here and you will be notified when there is a new article posted via your e-mail! Please help to spread the words about JoshiesWorld.com by sharing the website or every new article to your social profiles such as Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr by using the social buttons at the top of the website or every article.
so youre hard of hearing and consider yourself deaf against the doctors and audioligists and you also speak for the deaf community how far up your own arse are you your whats wrong with people today
@Joshua Sullivan:
“OMG they made a non-deaf actor play a deaf guy”, man whoever gives a shit about this kind of nothing has more severe problems than they realise. Grow up, you fucking man-child and stop crying about nothing like a whiny-ass privileged piece of illterate shit. Man, I hate people like you.
And FYI, both myself and my best friend are “hearing impaired”. She moreso than myself, but we both have it rough. Learn to live with it and act your age.
So what about rain man? Or people acting as a cripple or blind.. it’s called acting.. They can hire anybody to PRETEND to be anything or anyone. Even your black and white comment is ridiculous.. never seen white chicks? Or tropic thunder?
You’re offender way too fast by something that shouldn’t even matter, pathetic.
You are missing the point, Nick. The whole thing is that the fact, deaf people have to work twice or third harder to get the acting gig or any jobs. In contrast, the majority, such as everyone who can hear, can quickly get the job because the producers or directors are often clueless or ignorant. These majority of people have stolen from them and falsely acted without any idea what the Deaf people went through. Apple can’t be orange, and orange can’t be Apple because if they tried, then it wouldn’t be what they are. Sure, people can pretend to be someone else with a completely different background or pretend to know the struggles behind them if they want to be selfish unless they know to be better than that and do the right thing.
Rain man is the perfect example of taking the character away from the actor who has autistic. Same for What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. The people who don’t have what the characters have should be the last resort. It’s all about privilege, in the end, I realize.
Joshie.
Becoming a deaf actor is on you. You pigeon hole the shit out of yourself. Acting is playing a role. This world of thinking you can’t play a role if you aren’t actually the embodiment of the character is moronic. If a deaf person was auditioned and did a better job then they’d get the role. You don’t get a job just because you fit the job. You have to fucking perform better than other applicants.
I’d get someone to proof read your next rant x
I know this op-ed article on Van Helsing is a bit difficult to read as it was written back in 2016, four years ago, but I apologize for any confusion. Thank you for your suggestion, though!
Joshie.
Maybe instead of telling everyone how old your original article is, just apologize for being so over the top politically correct. That kind of rant is getting old.
I have no apology for that, as it stands especially for the first season of Van Helsing and what they did. Politically correct? Not really. They did do that but I am sure they learned from it especially after the community has sent them letters, written articles like this, emails, tweets, and whatnot. Some in the community’s feelings toward this back then are valid and I won’t take that away from them. It was done, written in 2016 and it is what it was. ?
Joshie.
You’re argument doesn’t fit Van Helsing though and movies/series alike. His hearings returns.
That and I don’t know of another actor who could portray the role any better.
Yes, his hearing did return. I was referring to the entire season 1. Ever think why his hearing was returned? That is something to ponder. My argument fits Van Helsing just right, but that is based on their season 1 and always will be because it did happen. But the question is, why did they start with that? His role should have been hearing since the beginning of the TV series. I don’t care about actors but the roles that are being given to the actors.
U sound like a butthurt little b*tch. This is a whole rant.
I wonder if you even read the published date of this article. Thank you for commenting!
Joshie.
Really man? As a critic this is all you can Say?
Better find a new job cuz you are bad as the review that you wrote. Judging a tv show just after one thing that upset you personally, make you deaf or blind or what other adjective you want.
I don’t think that you read the date when this article was published, but it was published in 2016 which 3-4 years ago when Van Helsing first came out and Van Helsing was still in its first season when I wrote this article. This review was based the first few episodes within’ the first season of Van Helsing but I admit that after the first season Van Helsing has improved since then which I was pleased. During that time, there was uproar in the Deaf community over the first season and I was among them obviously since I wrote this article but it is a valid opinion though – again at that time in the very beginning season of Van Helsing.
Thank you for the comment.
I unterstand your Point, when I got here I was just looking for some reviews about this. I didn’t know that it was written after a few episodes. On IMDb, it was saying that it is just a review about the series. 🙂
I apologize, I was referring tv “series” as Van Helsing, at that time when I wrote this review, it was based on just a few episodes from the first season when it came out a few years ago since this review/article was published in 2016. Again, I apologize for the confusion!
Joshie.
I’m sorry but your complaint would be as valid as saying an actor or actress that’s playing a vampire when their not actually a vampire… It’s a tv series played by professional actors/actresses stop whining! I’m not offended by it.
Touche, touche.
The people that decide who to choose for the acting job is the owner of the business. They are in the business of entertainment, and also in the business of making a profit.
The business owner decides who they believe will best fit the role of the character in the story. You don’t even know if they interviewed actual deaf people for the part, and decided that person didn’t fit the character, and said ‘next!’ until finally finding the actor that best met their requirements, talent, and contract negotiations.
This world is getting crazy that every group seems to have cry ‘victim status’ and declare they are ‘offended’ at the tiniest provocation.
Dude, it’s entertainment for profit. It’s not charity work. It was too long ago that the humans were rounding other humans up and slaughtering them in gas chambers based on their ancestry. Even now, there is actual enslavement of humans around the world. The communist Chinese and N Korean governments round people up and execute them for petty crimes against the government, or send them to labor camps where they die of disease and starvation, and treated like animals.
Yet, here you are… complaining about the atrocity that they chose hearing people to portray deaf characters. Please, don’t ever watch any zombie movies, cause the world doesn’t need some group of sensitive pansies to demand real dead people to play those parts.
You miss the point here, the point was that how can you give the character to someone who isn’t authentic? This article is 3 years old, I do get the point and I do understand that it is the entertainment business. The purpose of characters portraying others for the purpose to entertain but still the authenticity isn’t there. Deaf isn’t only ones, also others such as able-bodied portraying a not able-bodied character are just a cringeworthy.
Not only that, Deaf and as well others including the minority community have a very hard time getting them. I am being sensitive? Not really, it is a matter of showing the big picture which I’ve already stated – authenticity. Not just that, I am sure they can as easily contact the right actors for certain characters. Thanks for your comment, Rob!
So you’re saying Tom Hanks should have played a gay guy in Philedelphia. Or a slow person in mental processing in Forest Gump. The whole reason why they are called actors is that they can enter the mind space of the part.
You whole point that you should only have parts for people that are authentic in that role is stupid. An authentic gay person but not Tom Hanks would not have made Philedelphia. I notice you have not complained of the acting. Then what is the issue?
If a hearing person outperforms a deaf person for the part,then what do you want to do, give it to the worse actor?
My issue were never been their acting, at least in Van Helsing and any other shows or movies that portray deaf characters (most). It is just that, some of characters I think that it could be easily be acted by Deaf and Hard of Hearing actors. Not all, that I will admit but some of them are inexcusable. Van Helsing is one of them. My biggest complaint of all to be honest is that I am tired of them putting them as a last resort or acting as if they don’t exist.
Plus, whoever we are whether it be deaf, hard of hearing, gay, BIPOC (black, indigenous, people of colors), lesbian, autism, usher syndrome and more we must make sure that these characters do represent us right. We don’t want people to think something that we aren’t by watching the shows or movies. My second complaint is that the hearing people, celebrity or not, are privileged to get the cast easily while the deaf, hard of hearing, autism, wheelchair-bound, gay, lesbian, BIPOC, etc have to work as twice or triple times to finally get the cast which is unfair isn’t it? That is why I think it’s important that it has some authenticity in it and as well to be fair.
You make a good point in your article however if you may want to do a bit of spell checking and have someone do a read through to eliminate any grammatical errors before posting. The way you word a few things above make your post tougher to read and it leaves the reader questioning the intelligence of the one writing. Not trying to talk shit and definitely not an expert on grammar but I figure someone should give a few pointers to help improve the message you’re trying to get across.
This article was written in 2016, at that time I was in the middle of working on my writing skill so I apologize for any confusion! Thank you so much for the feedback and criticism!
Joshie.
Later in the series the character becomes a vampire and regains hearing. Tell me exactly how a deaf actor would pull this off.
If an actor can legitimately pull off a role they can do it, period. It’s called acting, not be who you are in front of a camera.
It isn’t all about this, it is all about the fact that the opportunity of a very small community was stolen and given to someone unauthentic actor who has no understanding what it is to be Deaf. It is exactly why many of us were turned off by this and called out on it. How can a deaf actor pull this off? You realize, they had to do that because we acted upon that and in order to try to win us back by turning him into a vampire who magically can hear so to distract us or to try to get us to forget the audacity of their doing. Thank you for your comment.
This position is divisive and short sighted. To say that “I think I can speak for the majority of the Deaf community” (you think?) Did they vote to elect you as a spokesperson? This is just as foolish as your quite poorly thought out badly written “story”. This rubbish does nothing to address anything or help anyone, and is just clumsy, poorly written, and a bad attempt at causing trouble for troubles sake. It is clear that your goal is to create division and breed hate in people. The true topic here is ACTING which is the art form in which a person “plays” a character whom they are not! In your world no one could ever take and play a role as an Ebola or even AIDS sufferer as they (hopefully) do not have either… Or what about an alien, or a Greek God? Actors portray a person they are not, but in the world you live in, the next step would be to ban acting unless an actor plays themselves, making us all actors, and you are a “bad” actor! Truly foolish and stupid!
So a deaf or blind actor/actress shouldn’t be allowed to play the role of a seeing/hearing person by your logic? This is ridiculous. You aren’t honoring anyone, only making more hate between to groups of people that should all be considered one; actors and actresses. Trying to throw in black and white examples is even more ridiculous. I believe your heart means well, but it’s only going to cause more segregation assuming that Hollywood or directors are being unfair or racist in whom they choose for a role.
Well, I see your point now. It’s a sensitive topic I must admit especially for the minorities. Sure, Deaf and Blind SHOULD, NEED or allowed to play the role of seeing/hearing character. The problem is that the majority of the actors is what? Hearing and that is unfortunate. Minorities such as Deaf, blind or even disabled people such as wheelchair bound would have to work as twice or three times to get that role than the hearing does. In my opinion, the role should be given to anyone who deserves it without any discrimination. If black want to take white role then fine, if Deaf want to take the hearing role then fine and whatnot as long as the producers or directors that seek to hire a actor to have a equal chance as anybody else would without having this “crap, he/she is Deaf” in back of the head. Hope you get what I mean. Thank you for the comment!
Of course most actors are hearing, only 5% of the world is Deaf, therefore only 5% of actors would be Deaf. Everyone should be given the exact same chance. Being an actor means you are playing the part of someone else, not yourself. Do you recommend that if a horror movie is made they should only use convicted murders as the killer? Do you have any experience in the entertainment industry? These films and shows are produced to bring in money, that’s it. They will choose whatever actor does the best job and will bring in the most money. If a Deaf actor wants the job then be a better actor than everyone else who auditions for that role.
if non deaf actors can’t play deaf roles can black people not play roles that were originally cast as white
No, shouldn’t if the role is for the white character. And that goes the same for the white person taking the role from people of colors charactor’s role.
Although I largely agree with you, the only flaw with using Van Helsing as your example is that his hearing returns.
You also have those occasional movies with people in wheelchairs who either walk again or who begin walking and end up in a chair.
We do need to see inclusive roles and actors. That I agree with