Talk:The Miracle Worker

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The William Gibson who wRote "The Miracle Worker" is not the same Gibson who writes science fiction. Gibson the playwright was born ca. 1915. Dgorsline 22:32, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Controversy surrounding film

The film shows Ann Sullivan spending a total of two weeks with Helen Keller. At the end of these two weeks Helen and Ann are at the well filling a water pitcher and Helen spontaneously vocalizes the word "water". Since closed-captioning did not exist when this film was released, deaf people were not aware that Helen Keller spoke, else they would have questioned how a person deaf and blind from the age of six months would even be aware of the existence of speech, much less being able to produce it spontaneously. It is believed that the idiom "It doesn't hold water" came into the lexicon of American Sign Language when deaf people discovered that the most dramatic moment in the film was based on an impossibility. At no time in the film did Ann Sullivan attempt to teach Helen Keller to speak. The idea that Helen would speak was devised by what film writers call a "set-up". The set-up occurs when Keller's parents are discussing the idea of hiring a teacher for Helen. The mother says, "I swear Helen tried to say "water" when she was six months old." "Water" was the precise "Miracle" that Ann Sullivan worked. It was false.

To know the true life story of Helen Keller is to understand that she was an exceptionally talented person. One must also understand that no line of dialogue in film is accidently rendered. For this final scene to made believable, the afore-mentioned set-up had to occur. The writer also had the public's prior knowledge of Keller's life to give this moment in the film a measure of believability; a opportunity to suspend the viewer's disbelief that a seven-year-old child (Helen's age in the film. Patty Duke was 16) who was naturally unaware that such a thing as speech existed might spontaneously produce speech. It's no trivial point.

While it is indisputable that Sullivan did eventually teach Keller to speak, it staggers the imagination that the hopes and dreams of American parents with deaf children of the 1960s up to the present would be hinged to this moment in a film that could not have happened in real life. It certainly effected the lives of deaf people whose parents began to compare them to Keller in their frustration to get their deaf children to "be like Helen Keller" and speak. As deaf people well know, even the most gifted among them take years to be able to utter a comprehensible syllable and a lifetime of speech therapy to maintain the ability. To have a falsehood held over one's head as an example is a shattering experience that endures for life. So few people know the realities associated with learing to speak and this particular depiction, because of the widespread dramatic appeal of the film, should bear at least a cavat to its impact on the lives of real deaf people. For this reason, it is fair to point out to fans of this film (of which I, a deaf person, am one) that a serious controversy is associated with it. I'll try to be as balanced as possible and I hope other will assist me with any relevant comments.

Feel free to point out the controversy, but Wiki isn't the place for essays. --66.91.248.69 06:51, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Utter nonsense. The entire film shows Helen unable to comprehend "water" no matter what until the "miracle" at the pump. She and Sullivan even go wading in a creek and fall down in the *water* and the two of them sit waist-deep in water while Sullivan spells W-A-T-E-R into Helen's hand and Helen doesn't get it. So if "water" is the one word Helen kept, why didn't she say "wa-wa" when she was waist deep in it? She may have babbled it over and over but by the time she supposedly said it at age seven she didn't know what she was saying. Why? Because it was clearly the intention of the film to depict Helen as mute. Even in the long fight scene, when emotions would have virtually compelled her to, at least, scream or vocalize she was silent. True. The voicing of "wa-wa" did enhance the drama, but it was contrived to do so. The arc of the film was founded on a dramatic reversal: going from ignorance to knowledge. If Helen had been running around babbling "wa-wa" during the film as she did in real life, there wouldn't have been any miracle for hearing audiences. The reaction would have been more like, "Oh. She's been saying wa-wa throughout the film but she didn't know it meant "water" but now she finally gets it. Big deal." No. The miracle was that she spoke after being depicted as not having the slightest idea what speech was. Then suddenly, she not only speaks, she also knows the exact word to speak. The writer increased the dramatic effect more so by limiting the time Sullivan had to resolve the problem Helen had. Remember, Helen's father was on his way out to the well to fire Sullivan. Before that, Sullivan was limited to two weeks to make progress and she made none. So when time was UP, an unjust firing seconds away, what does Helen do to resolve the entire arc of the film? She speaks for the first time. Baloney Ray Foster 21:41, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Actors and Actresses.

Does Wikipedia have every actor and actress listed?

--Relaxation 19:04, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC) This movie is the STUFF!

[edit] My edits

Everything in this article was repeated twice, so I streamlined it by removing the redundant data. I am going to create a separate article for the play, and will include the Tony Award template there, where it belongs. I removed the Arthur Penn template which belongs in the film article. I also removed the list of characters because it wasn't clear who they were or in which incarnations they appeared. MovieMadness (talk) 17:12, 21 January 2008 (UTC)