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The Poetics of Touch: Mediating the Reality of Deafblindness in Planet of Snail

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Documentary and Disability

Abstract

Callus discusses how documentary film, an overwhelmingly audiovisual medium, can mediate the reality of the life of a deafblind person, through the two senses that are inaccessible to that person. She analyses the techniques used in Yi Seung-Jun’s 2011 Planet of Snail to convey the world as experienced by its protagonist Young-Chan, arguing that while we can watch and listen to him ‘being-in-the-world’, we cannot ever experience the world as he does. Callus also considers the documentary’s narrative of the life of Young-Chan and his wife Soon-Ho, who has a physical disability, and how their love is portrayed touchingly, while avoiding sentimentality. Finally, the chapter discusses the ethical issues raised by the inherent inaccessibility of the documentary to the very person whose life it depicts.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Heidegger developed the concept of the entity (as he calls it) Dasein (translated to being-in-the-world) in Being and Time (1962, Blackwell: Oxford).

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Filmography

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Disability Studies, University of Malta, Msida, Malta

    Anne-Marie Callus

Authors
  1. Anne-Marie Callus
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Correspondence to Anne-Marie Callus .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Film, Media and Design, University of West London , London, United Kingdom

    Catalin Brylla

  2. School of Literature and Languages, University of Surrey, Guildford, United Kingdom

    Helen Hughes

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Callus, AM. (2017). The Poetics of Touch: Mediating the Reality of Deafblindness in Planet of Snail . In: Brylla, C., Hughes, H. (eds) Documentary and Disability. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59894-3_10

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