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Entry tags:
- asl,
- books,
- music,
- philosophy
Music -- it's for all H-U-M-A-N B-E-I-N-Gs
There's a meme floating around our hearing world that poor, suffering d/Deaf people have no sense of music or rhythm, unless good-hearted hearing people translate the songs into sign language for them (and, naturally, throw in some pantomime to suppliment the signs, since sign language is obviously lacking). And, I'm afraid, my last post fed into that stereotype.
So, now, I'm posting an antidote. Your vid players are not broken -- there is no melody or voice-over behind this performance. It was created by a Deaf man for a Deaf audience. And he clearly has a strong sense of rhythm (at least, to my eye -- some of this has been playing as a brainworm in my head).
From what I can gather, based on the written comments, and people replying to replies, it's a satirical review of the book To Become a Human Being -- another "book of wisdom" where a privileged white dude mines the exoticism of the "great aboriginal peoples" for fame and profit.
Much of this vid flies right over my head. It will take a while of guessing and trawling online video dictionaries to fill in the signs I'm missing. So I'll just give the timestamps and translations of the sentences I'm certain of.
(note: by convention, fingerspelled words in ASL are shown in type by putting a # in front of the word)
0:02: ...people are discussing how you can become human. #HUMAN #BEING.
0:33: How to become #ALIEN.
0:47: How to become hearing.
0:54: How to become fancy.
1:12 How to become gay #BUCKAROO.
1:22 How to become Christian.
...And I'm fuzzy on the ending, where he wraps everything up and gets to the point. I wish there were a handshape-based sign dictionary online (there is one in print, arranged in order based on phonemes, but I find video easier to follow than line drawings). Until then, I'll have to make best guesses on the English words, and type them into the search boxes until I come across the signs I recognize but don't yet know...
Still, this gave me a laugh, even though I missed about half of it.
So, now, I'm posting an antidote. Your vid players are not broken -- there is no melody or voice-over behind this performance. It was created by a Deaf man for a Deaf audience. And he clearly has a strong sense of rhythm (at least, to my eye -- some of this has been playing as a brainworm in my head).
From what I can gather, based on the written comments, and people replying to replies, it's a satirical review of the book To Become a Human Being -- another "book of wisdom" where a privileged white dude mines the exoticism of the "great aboriginal peoples" for fame and profit.
Much of this vid flies right over my head. It will take a while of guessing and trawling online video dictionaries to fill in the signs I'm missing. So I'll just give the timestamps and translations of the sentences I'm certain of.
(note: by convention, fingerspelled words in ASL are shown in type by putting a # in front of the word)
0:02: ...people are discussing how you can become human. #HUMAN #BEING.
0:33: How to become #ALIEN.
0:47: How to become hearing.
0:54: How to become fancy.
1:12 How to become gay #BUCKAROO.
1:22 How to become Christian.
...And I'm fuzzy on the ending, where he wraps everything up and gets to the point. I wish there were a handshape-based sign dictionary online (there is one in print, arranged in order based on phonemes, but I find video easier to follow than line drawings). Until then, I'll have to make best guesses on the English words, and type them into the search boxes until I come across the signs I recognize but don't yet know...
Still, this gave me a laugh, even though I missed about half of it.