SGIFF33: I Didn’t Hear No Bell
Small, Slow But Steady Triumphs and Missteps in Deaf Representation
Back in April 2023, the SGIFF team published the two essays I’ve written for SGIFF33. I’m really honoured to have my writing appear alongside other great young film writers, and also to be awarded the Youth Critic Award for 2022. Our essays can be read here. In a bid for better discoverability, I’ve decided to re-publish my first essay here. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I did working on it.
I still think about Keiko sometimes— I wish I could have more of her tenacity.
I Didn’t Hear No Bell: Small, Slow But Steady Triumphs and Missteps in Deaf Representation
Amidst other recent prominent films about deaf experiences such as Oscar best picture winner CODA (2021) and Criterion-anointed Sound of Metal (2019), comes a quiet new contender: Small, Slow but Steady (ケイコ 目を澄ませて, 2022). The film is the fifth narrative feature by Japanese director Shô Miyake, and is based on the autobiographical book Makenaide (2011) written by Keiko Ogasawara, Japan’s first deaf female pro-boxer. Miyake approaches the biopic as a slice of life story set during the COVID-19 pandemic in Tokyo. Between training sessions and boxing bouts, the film also explores Keiko’s life outside the ring and parallels her character’s arc with the deteriorating health of her boxing gym’s chairman.
When a new film comes onto the scene with a central hearing-impaired character, issues of accurate and sensitive representation naturally arise. Film is a medium characterised by two sensory elements, sight and sound, and most filmmakers have unencumbered access to both senses. Small, Slow but Steady being directed by and having its deaf protagonist played by hearing persons inherently raises questions as to whether they will approach their subject with sufficient care.
Driven by Miyake’s confident directing and lead actress Yukino Keishii’s subtle and expressive performance, Miyake’s film largely avoids the pitfalls of other films with regard to deaf representation. Eschewing heavy dramatics and the high professional or personal stakes that other boxing films might build, the film’s stripped back approach is empathetic and affirming. It generates sympathy for Keiko without sensationalising her deafness.
Miyake is careful to depict Keiko as a boxer who simply happens to be deaf, not one who must specifically overcome the difficulties of deafness in her boxing career. The central conflict for Keiko is her sudden wish to quit boxing and how she mulls over the decision and hesitates to bring it up with the chairman. That conflict is not inherently tied to her deafness. Keiko’s interior struggles are presented as universally relatable, irrespective of one’s ability to hear. She searches for validation from her mother and wishes to be left alone yet also desires to feel less alone. She embodies the contradictions of being human and is wonderfully realised. Ultimately, she is the underdog all of us want to root for, and Keishii plays her beautifully.
In reaction shots, Keiko’s facial expressions give remarkable access to her underlying emotional states. The moments where her bright smile breaks through her steely exterior are some of the film’s most heartwarming moments and when tears well up in her eyes you feel so close to her even without fully knowing what she's thinking. When the film does finally grant access into Keiko’s interior life, it comes through in the form of the chairman’s wife reading out Keiko’s journals in voiceover. While the content of these journals is largely the mundane and methodical records of her daily training, having that direct access is profoundly moving. It is a window into her passion for boxing, and the sense of purpose and belonging it gives her.
When it comes to specifically representing the effects of deafness on Keiko’s daily life, Miyake’s approach is observant without over-emphasising differences. Keiko is frequently the only hearing-impaired individual in scenes. Thus, the film finds Keiko communicating with others through simple, universally understood hand gestures.
These interactions are presented as mundane, as a fact of Keiko’s daily life and how she would operate within a hearing world that does not always cater to those who are hearing-impaired. They are daily difficulties, but not insurmountable obstacles. They are presented as matter of factly as the soundless devices Keiko must rely on, such as an alarm clock fan or a blinking light in lieu of a doorbell.
By embracing the need to communicate with non-verbal actions throughout the film, Miyake together with cinematographer Yûta Tsukinaga, and editor Keiko Okawa, allow that plain and matter-of-fact approach to frame Keiko’s boxing training sessions. With longer takes and wider shot choices, training sequences become wonderfully engaging choreographed dances of jabs, hooks, and uppercuts, steadily building percussive rhythm and speed. If the film reminds me of any boxing film, it most resembles Frederick Wiseman’s documentary Boxing Gym (2010) rather than the typical boxing action film. Miyake builds up a snapshot of a gym and its people, just as Wiseman does, creating a sense of camaraderie among the boxers and trainers. Even if Keiko is the protagonist, she is a crucial part of their community and it makes her feel less alone. Keiko is neither constrained by or needs to dramatically overcome her deafness, she merely lives from day to day among family and friends. It is in this patient and sensitive portrait that I find Small, Slow but Steady, a resounding success in representing a deaf character in a considered manner.
However, Small, Slow Steady still makes small and specific choices that have inadvertently marginalised Keiko. In the few instances that she communicates with others who share her knowledge of Japanese Sign Language (JSL), the film falters and begins to treat this mode of communication as a novelty, consequently othering and objectifying the experience of deafness. While a deaf audience might have different concerns regarding the film’s representation, or even none at all, as a hearing individual the effects and implications of these directorial choices nevertheless feel apparent to me.
The most straightforward way to incorporate sign language in a film when one expects it to be mostly watched by hearing audiences is to use subtitles. Subtitles are a simple tool for broadening access to films, most notably in the realm of spoken languages. Filmmakers have lamented that the “one-inch barrier of subtitles” seems to be a deterrent for audiences.1 Some might say they are less a filmmaker’s choice but rather an aspect of exhibition. In home-video settings for example, subtitles are a viewer’s choice, either out of necessity or preference. In Small, Slow But Steady however, Miyake boldly makes the choice of subtitling into a directorial one which foregrounds and complicates the ways JSL is included and decoded in his film.
When Keiko communicates with others in JSL, subtitles are typically used, such as in casual small talk with a co-worker. In using subtitles, JSL is presented as simply another language, much in the same way that I, as a non-Japanese speaker, must use subtitles to understand every line of dialogue. In these instances, JSL is presented on equal terms with the spoken language as simply another mode of communication. If this were the case throughout the film, subtitles would seem unremarkable. However, Miyake throws a peculiar choice into the mix: intertitles.
In the very first instance of JSL in the film, Keiko taps her brother on the shoulder and signs with no accompanying subtitles. Immediately after, the scene cuts to white text over black translating her message. The rest of their conversation cuts between signing and intertitles. The effect is jarring, interrupting the moving image, and emphatically highlights Keiko’s seemingly ‘different’ mode of communication. This is further complicated by a later scene in which Keiko is out to lunch with two friends. Notably, their entire conversation over brunch is signed completely through JSL with the glaring absence of subtitles.
When asked about that choice, Miyake justifies that “if subtitles were added, [he’s] sure that the beauty of the hand movements would be lost.”2 By omitting subtitles, Miyake wishes for us to focus on the expressiveness of JSL and not on the actual information being communicated. While I agree that there is beauty to the hand movements of JSL, it is unfortunate that when we see her most relaxed is when we least understand her.
Knowing Miyake’s reasons for omitting subtitles for this scene, we can infer his intentions for using intertitles. Intertitles translate sign language asynchronously. We can thus appreciate the expressiveness of JSL without the distraction of subtitles, and still understand what is being communicated after.
In the second and final appearance of intertitles, Keiko’s brother tries to get Keiko to open up about her feelings. The choice of intertitles here has some merit if we consider Miyake’s concerns. He wants us to closely observe Keiko’s expressions in one of the few scenes where she opens up about herself, but he still wants us to understand her. It is in line with his observational approach. I find the use of intertitles to be a double-edged choice that only confers a benefit for hearing audiences at the expense of foregrounding Keiko’s deafness. The interruption of the moving image also results in the loss of the reaction shot to make room for intertitles. By pushing focus onto sign language, we lose sight of how Keiko perceives and reacts to her brother’s questions. The benefit is detrimental, especially since subtitles would have sufficed.
Unintentionally, Miyake has turned sign language into a novel spectacle. By focusing only on the visual beauty of sign-language movements, it objectifies the method that signing individuals communicate with one another and robs Keiko and her hearing-impaired friends from being understood on their terms. Who says sign-language cannot be beautiful while being understood? Here, it seems that Miyake is equally afraid of the one-inch barrier, and his fear has resulted in othering the experiences of the deaf.
Furthermore, the scene which most betrays the curtailed limitations of deaf representation in Small, Slow But Steady is a seemingly minor moment between Keiko and the chairman. In an early scene speaking with a reporter, the chairman mentions the first time he heard Keiko’s voice out loud is her verbally saying “yes” to wanting to go pro. This sets up a payoff moment in a later conversation where the chairman implores Keiko to rediscover her will to fight in the ring. She mutters, “yes.” He tells her to say it again, louder.
Using Keiko’s speaking voice for the only time in the film in a critical scene that solidifies the bond between mentor and student is suspect. It implies that audibly asserting herself is somehow a more emphatic expression on Keiko’s part compared to her non-verbal communication. To set up a motif of Keiko’s determination with her infrequent participation in a hearing world feels insensitive when we have seen it in her training, in her fights, and in the ways she reaches out to the world around her in spite of her introverted nature.
Despite my misgivings on some of the film’s choices, Small, Slow But Steady remains,as a whole, a remarkably well-made film. Miyake’s film tells Keiko’s story with considerable grace by avoiding sensationalism, prioritising Keiko’s perspective, and giving her a rich interior life. While it may have been more enriching for the film to have cast a deaf actor in the lead role in terms of representation, Miyake’s empathetic approach is still commendable and quietly generates considerable emotional power. Coupled with Keishii’s tender portrayal of Keiko, now that’s still a heck of a one-two punch.
As coined by director Bong Joon-ho.
Interview with Shô Miyake, 'small, slow, but steady' director - cinema jove. Cinema Jove - Festival Internacional de Cine de Valencia. (2022, June 27). Retrieved November 30, 2022, from https://www.cinemajove.com/en/interview-with-sho-miyake-small-slow-but-steady-director/