Friday, March 29th, 2024

"Becoming Helen Keller" Story


"BECOMING HELEN KELLER"

New PBS film illuminates the life of an American icon

by Rob Lauer



In honor of National Disability Employment Awareness Month, the PBS "American Masters" series will premiere the new documentary "Becoming Helen Keller" at 9:00 p.m. on Tuesday, October 19. The film rediscovers the complex life and legacy of author and activist Helen Keller.

Her name is easily recognizable from grade-school history projects, the film "The Miracle Worker," as well as tasteless jokes. But most Americans nowadays are unclear about Keller's place in history and why is she so often considered one of the twentieth century's most remarkable women.

Born a healthy child to a well-to-do Alabama family in 1880, Helen contracted scarlet fever while an infant and was left blind and deaf. As she grew from infancy into childhood, she became wild and unruly.

Helen's life changed in 1887 when Anne Sullivan, a 20-year-old graduate of the Perkins School for the Blind, came to live with her family and serve as her teacher. The daughter of poor Irish immigrants, Anne, like so many blind people of that day, spent years as a ward of the state before entering Perkins at 14 years of age.  After enduring many botched operations, her sight was partially restored.

Anne began teaching Helen by manually signing words into the child's hand.  Helen quickly learned to form the letters correctly, in the correct order, but with no concept of language, she did not yet associate her hand motions to specific ideas and meanings.

On April 5, 1887, less than a month after her arrival, Anne sought to resolve her pupil's confusion regarding the nouns "mug" and "milk," which Helen confused with the verb "drink."

Taking Helen to the water pump outside, Anne out the girl's hand under the spout. As the cool water gushed over one hand, Ann spelled into Helen's other hand the word "w-a-t-e-r," first slowly, then rapidly. Suddenly, the signals had meaning in Helen's mind. She knew that "water" meant the cool substance flowing over her hand. Quickly, Helen stopped and touched the earth, demanding its letter name. By nightfall, the child had learned 30 words.

As Helen's education continued, her high intelligence became obvious. News of what seemed to be a miracle was quickly picked up and sensationalized by the media of the day. Advocacy for the blind and for those living with other disabilities entered the public consciousness.

It was Helen's work as an advocate for the disabled that touched director Laurie Block personally and inspired her to create the film.

"I belong to the generation of women who learned about her child's disability during pregnancy," she explains. "That was 30 years ago. My family needed special education, affordable healthcare, an accessible environment, and vocational services. I wondered how disability advocacy was done before the Civil Rights Era, and creating this film about Helen Keller's life let me explore that."

Using hundreds of rarely-seen photographs, historic film clips, and striking recreations, "Becoming Helen Keller" vividly brings Helen's story to life from her perspective, illuminating how she became one of the 20th century's first human rights pioneers.




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