Switched At Birth: A Review

A SYTYCB Entry

As a person with a disability I’ve taken a special interest in characters with disabilities and how well (or not so well) these characters portray life with a disability on television. Switched at Birth caught my attention because it excels at discussing disability in a complex and realistic way. Merely having a character with a disability onscreen is not enough—the character needs to have wants and ambitions equal to their able-bodied counterparts. The media should take note that including disabled characters in television is the equivalent of making a promise to the audience that the character’s storyline will explore disability issues well and be a character that viewers with disabilities can relate to. Switched At Birth has taken conscious steps to fulfill that promise and it’s worth noting how this show is different:

1. Characters with a disability are played by actors with that disability.

This seems to be a real rarity in today’s casting. Producers, directors, and other crew seem to feel that it is easier to cast an able actor and use screen magic to create the illusion of a disability than to cast an actor with an actual disability. True, actors with disabilities may take more searching to find, especially in the case of shows like Glee where “triple threats” (performers who can act, sing, and dance) are needed. But ABC has proven that talented deaf and hard of hearing actors like Sean Beardy and Katie Leclerc are ready and willing to play deaf roles, a lesson that can be applied to many disabilities.

2. There is no single “deaf experience” on the show—deaf characters disagree about the best way to handle their deafness in relation to the events in the show.

This again is a rarity in other shows. If a character with a disability is included, they are usually the only one of their kind, left to encompass all the possible feelings that a person could possibly have about a disability. This is similar to situations where there is only one woman or person of color on a show—that one person is expected to represent the feelings and experiences of an entire community, which is not reasonable to expect of any one person. People within a community disagree, and multiple characters must be present to accurately show this.

To this end, Daphne and her possibly-more-than-friend Emmett are striking. Daphne was raised by a hearing mother, went to a traditional school before transferring to a school for the deaf, and feels a greater need to fit in with her biological hearing family. Emmett was raised in a deaf family, attended a deaf school, and tries to keep his contact with hearing people to a minimum. When Daphne first tries to connect with her hearing biological family, Emmett is skeptical. This may be over simplifying the different outlooks to some extent, but it is most important that each point of view is represented by a different character, not one character trying to feel both points of view because they have to represent every possible response to being deaf.

3. The deaf characters have their own interests and problems.

There is certainly an element of the inspirational disabled person storyline in Switched At Birth but it is balanced out by showing that the deaf characters also have interests able people might have. Daphne attends a cooking class and is on her school’s basketball team; Emmett plays the drums and rides a motorcycle. And of course the deaf characters on the show are interested in relationships, which brings us to…

4. Deaf characters date both hearing characters and other deaf characters.

Switched at Birth is taking the “best-friends-become-more-than-friends” theme in television in a new direction. I was happy to see this not only because this set-up gets old and tired fast, but also because disabled dating is so rarely explored on TV. Admit it, most characters with disabilities are not featured as potential love interests. They are too busy recovering from an accident or overcoming adversity to pay much attention to the girl or boy next door. Even when Leonardo DiCaprio played a character with a disability – Arnie in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape – nobody was interested.

Both Daphne and Emmett fall for and date other characters on the show. So far Daphne has dated Bay’s ex-boyfriend Liam, a hearing jock, Willkie, a hearing guitarist in the same band as Emmett, Travis, another student at Daphne’s school, and Emmett himself, though I suspect we’ll be waiting awhile to see the last one play out. Emmett is caught between Daphne and Bay, a storyline that will provide plenty of drama moving forward.

The really intriguing thing for me is how the show handles deaf/hearing and deaf/deaf relationships. Both are as complex, if not more so, than a relationship between two hearing people. Both types of relationships are explored on the show, and neither is made to seem better than the other. The complexity of relationships between able and disabled characters is not one I have seen explored much in T.V. shows or movies, but it was an issue that I and others with disabilities have had to try to navigate. The brilliance of exploring it on television is people with disabilities looking for love are reminded that this struggle is worthy of discussion and that we are not alone.

Switched At Birth does have a few problems, most notably the decision to have Emmett verbally speak to Bay, (his hearing girlfriend), which has sparked some debate among fans that the moment sent a message contrary to the rest of the show. The show can also get overly-dramatic at times, the constant switch of romantic partners and squeezing of story lines for all the drama they’re worth can start to feel like high school, but it is worth staying tuned to see what will happen next with Daphne and Emmett, and find out if you see a bit of yourself in their stories.

Disclaimer: This post was written by a Feministing Community user and does not necessarily reflect the views of any Feministing columnist, editor, or executive director.

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