2021 has been a marquee year for D/deaf and hard-of-hearing visibility on screen. First, the Emilia Jones starring Coda, an acronym for "children of deaf adults," broke out at Sundance as one of the highest value film festival acquisitions, well, ever. A month or so later, Riz Ahmed's Sound of Metal, the story of a newly deafened drummer, was nominated for six Academy Awards.
Now, with the inclusion of The Walking Dead star Lauren Ridloff in Eternals, deaf representation has taken a cosmic leap into the realm of blockbusters. The effect? A rise in people wanting to learn sign language, a study shared by The Independent has found.
According to the research - by Preply, a digital language learning tool - there has been a 250 percent spike in searches for "learn sign language for beginners" this year. It serves to suggest that, given the film's sizable platform, Eternals has had the most marked impact - but you would expect Coda and Sound of Metal, both of which have also been spotlighted in recent media, have too piqued interest. As The Independent further notes, searches for Ridloff herself have increased worldwide by 550 percent since 1 November, with "first deaf superhero" doubling its search since November 2020.
Ridloff is one of a few D/deaf performers in Hollywood pushing for greater visibility on screen. In August, The Hollywood Reporter profiled the majority-deaf central cast of Coda, with Oscar-winner Marlee Matlin - who broke through herself with 1986's Children of a Lesser God - saying: "To have a hearing actor put on a deaf character as if it was a costume - we've moved beyond that point now." And indeed, if the recent, markedly more inclusive wave of casting has been anything to go by, times are finally a-changin'.
Chloe Zhao's superhero epic, which opened at $71 Million this weekend, also stars Gemma Chan, Kumail Nanjiani, Salma Hayek, Angelina Jolie, Brian Tyree Henry, Barry Keoghan, Richard Madden and Kit Harington.