It is an acronym for Children Of Deaf Adults. My wife Denise and I are deaf, and we have twin daughters with hearing. It does not matter whether my girls are hearing or deaf – they are CODAs.
It is also the name of a fine movie, starring Marlee Matlin, Troy Kotsur, and Daniel Durant. My family and I are so glad that the movie did so well, not only with a good story but also with Deaf actors acting as major Deaf characters in that movie. As everyone knows now, the movie won three Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Supporting Actor for Mr. Kotsur.
I have a few personal tidbits regarding Mr. Kotsur. One of them is that I was one of three people with hearing loss at the University at Buffalo that were interviewed a few weeks ago for their views on CODA.1 Another tidbit is that Mr. Kotsur may have looked a few times at my Facebook (FB) profile several days before the Oscars (see screenshot below). I don’t know why FB suggested that I might know Mr. Kotsur. Really, I personally don’t know him. Maybe it’s because I’ve written a few certain blogs that may have piqued his interest and/or because he may have heard a bit about myself through mutual friends. In any event, I’m a bit flattered by this approach by FB.
The reason I am writing this blog is the way Mr. Kotsur expressed his thanks to the audience for every award he received for his role in CODA. In addition to his Oscar, he has won the SAG (Screen Actors Guild) and BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) awards for the same category (Best Supporting Actor). Those awards are quite a major achievement for Mr. Kotsur – he is the first male Deaf actor to win an Oscar, SAG, or BAFTA award. Prior to that distinction, Ms. Matlin was the only Deaf actor, male or female, to win an Oscar – she won it for her leading role in Children of a Lesser God in 1987.
Whenever Mr. Kotsur won an award, he would walk to the presentation podium and would sign a story before thanking the audience for such an honor, all in American Sign Language (ASL). He was funny, charming, sincere and touching (especially when he talked about his hearing father whom he called the best signer in the whole family before the car accident).
What got my attention the most was Mr. Kotsur’s mention of ‘dirty signs’ during his Oscar acceptance speech. Whenever a Deaf person teaches a ‘dirty’ sign, it surely gets everyone’s attention, especially among people with hearing who have rarely met a Deaf person. Those people are almost always curious how a Deaf person communicates in ASL, especially when that person has a filthy mind!
When Mr. Kotsur jokingly expressed his desire to teach ‘dirty language’ in ASL to President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden, he added that Ms. Matlin told him to behave before coming to see the Bidens. Everyone, or at least almost everyone, thought he was creative and funny. Of course, his Deaf character was creative and funny (and dirty), wanting to get laid with his Deaf wife character all the time, even with their own jock itch. Not surprisingly, the Deaf parent characters were quite open with their child characters about their sex life together in the film.
All types of jokes involving ‘dirty’ signs have been tried and true – they are nothing new to the Deaf community, but the Deaf know that these ‘dirty’ jokes are usually the way to quickly initiate any relationship with a hearing person who might show a willingness to learn ASL. Not every relationship, however, lasts long. The Deaf community understands that the thrust to learn ASL could come with a hidden agenda and that the relationship could end up badly. For example, an old Deaf friend of mine, Paul, from Boston told me a story about his relationship with a hearing woman. They started out great for a short time, but at the end, Paul broke off the relationship because the woman admitted to him that she was only interested in ASL, not the person (e.g., Paul) who was teaching her to sign.
I have had some experience in teaching signs to different people. It almost always has been a pleasant time for me to communicate, not by voice but also by sign, with people with hearing. Twice, I taught signs to medical students at the University of Michigan where I was a postdoctoral fellow. Some of the signs were quite visually descriptive. For instance, the medical students asked me for signs for sex organs. So, I taught them. Hey, those medical students’ minds ain’t dirty because some, if not all, of them might want to specialize in either urology or gynecology.
As for my Harvard roommates (Matt, Carlos, Will, Chris), I taught the first three fingerspelling (and vulgar signs too – everyone loved to sign ‘bullshit’). Chris already knew sign language partially because he was (and still is) an actor. Whenever I communicated vocally with one or more of my roommates and I could not get a non-lip-readable word or two, they would finger-spell the word.
One evening, Carlos and Will decided to flip themselves over. It happened when we attended a party at Wellesley College, an all-girl college about 30 minutes’ drive from Harvard. The party was not much fun except for the end. Just outside the party room, a campus security guard told every male student (including us) to leave the building. I knew Carlos wanted to meet an old friend of his at Wellesley, but I had no inkling as to what he and Will planned to do. Somehow, they got up and walked to the guard. They pretended to sign, trying to tell the guard that they were ‘deaf.’ He tried to sign back to Carlos and Will, even making a mildly suggestive gesture (e.g., using two hands to outline what looked like figure 8). Carlos and Will vigorously nodded their heads to that gesture. I couldn’t stop smiling widely – they all knew nothing about sign language, yet they “communicated” well enough to let us stay a bit longer. As a result, Carlos’ friend was able to meet us and gave us a brief tour around campus. Like Mr. Kotsur, Carlos and Will were creative and funny.
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