장애 정치학과 포스트휴먼 윤리: <작은 신의 아이들>과 <사랑의 모양>에 재현된 수화 여성

Disability Politics and Posthuman Ethics: Representing Signing Women in Children of a Lesser God and The Shape of Water.

This essay explores Hollywood’s appropriations of the mermaid trope and constructions of monstrosity in Children of a Lesser God and The Shape of Water. These films foreground the sexuality of female characters who cannot speak, catering to the gaze of the voyeuristic spectator, while, at the same time, engaging in disability politics and posthuman ethics. Randa Haines’s film constructs Sarah as a feisty mermaid figure who protests against the hearing world by retaining her sign language as a sub culture, expressing her deaf politics. Moreover, Sarah’s tumultuous relationship with her hearing boyfriend ends up negotiating the terms of their co-existence. In contrast, Gillermono del Toro’s film, The Shape of Water, revolves around an ethical moment at which Elisa responds to the tormented monster’s cry, recognizing their shared precariousness. Through the process, she herself metamorphoses into a monstrous life form. The voiceless heroine qua a mermaid figure turns into a real mermaid, subverting the anthropocentric human/non-human binary. Her disabled body is open to linkages with other life forms, becoming monstrous and hence the process of “becoming-imperceptible.” This paper suggests that these disability films are the results of negotiations between commercial and ethico-political considerations. Furthermore, these negotiations render disabled bodies on the big screen loci for debates over the use of disability as a narrative device.