GREAT! "I Want You To Look Me in the Eye" Opinion Film

[jesse_the_k]

Two days back, the NYT published "I Have a Visual Disability and I Want You To Look Me in the Eye," a wonderful 12-minute video by Maine filmmaker James Robinson. Robinson demonstrate how his complex vision impairments makes the world look, as well as illustrating the notional borders between normates and disabled people. Along the way, he names his vision as whale eyes (given that whales don’t have binocular vision, and they rule in the undersea world below the USS Normal).

Pro captions and audio description (Settings -> Audio track -> choose English descriptive)

direct YouTube link

He's there in the YouTube comments, answering the useful questions and politely ignoring those attempting to spin inspoporn.

I love his expert film making, and I also feel very seen. My vision issues are different, but it's so wonderful to know that people also view our world aslant.

Comments

[write_out]

Putting this on my To Watch list for sure. Thank you for sharing the link! My main issue is hearing-related, but that just means I'm extra intrigued by how others function with their sensory issues.

Sensory diversity for the win!

[jesse_the_k]

I've been professionally sighted (software publisher of a large print/voice/braille text editing system) and professionally hearing (ASL interpreter).

I love how complex humans are and the many ways we capture the world.

[sonia]

Thanks for posting that! So much there that I kind of know but don't put into words, with my similar vision issue.

Indeed.

[jesse_the_k]

I've witnessed the confusion sighted people have when interacting with people who don't do any eye contact (blind or autistic or different cultural norms). Robinson shows that alternating eye contact is similarly confusing. (Half a loaf?)

Because all this electronic medical record nonsense should be useful, I checked my chart re: my eyes

• Exotropia, intermittent
• Esotropia, intermittent
• Amblyopia
• Convergence insufficiency
• Diplopia
• Hypertropia & astigmatism

...thank heavens for https://eyewiki.org/ to explain what all those mean.

My weaker eye drifts out- and upward, though not as markedly as James Robinson's. You?

Re: Indeed.

[sonia]

I have incomitant strabismus, esotropic, with diplopia in the last few years as my eyes/brain have been less able to compensate. One eye turns in, could be either one. The amount of turn-in depends on what direction I'm looking, up/down and left/right. I see double if one eye isn't suppressed. Because my eyes converged correctly until I was 4, I do have depth perception if prisms align the images from both eyes (yay!).

The EyeWiki is very technical! Great resource, like you said.

Re: Indeed.

[jesse_the_k]

I suspect that, in order to maintain their mantle of supremacy, ophthamalogists require that every word in their diagnoses have at least three syllables.

[sasha_feather]

This was very well done!

[jesse_the_k]

<3

Can't wait to see what this filmmaker does next -- very talented!

[walgesang]

Thanks so much for sharing this! He really is an incredibly skilled filmmaker. It sort of reminded me of a video we showed to my son's class in elementary school that showed what the world looks like to a person with Asperger's.

Ah, that sounds like a fascinating video!

[jesse_the_k]

...any chance you can track down a title or filmmaker name?

---

I hope we'll be enjoying Robinson's work in years to come. He just graduated from Duke in 2020.

His senior undergrad project was Louisiana's Missing Coast, 11 minutes, captioned. Some Native Americans managed to hide in the bayou after the Louisiana Purchase and thus avoid the Trail of Tears. The land they've thrived on since is disappearing because of levees, oil/gas extraction, and rising seas. As he sums up: "The real power of climate change isn't its ability to produce hurricanes or high-speed winds, it's to perpetuate injustice."

Re: Ah, that sounds like a fascinating video!

[walgesang]

I *think* it could be "Intricate Minds II: Understanding Elementary School Classmates with Asperger Syndrome" because I do remember it also having interviews with elementary aged students as well. It might be pretty outdated but I remember there were specific things like shining a flashlight right at the camera and showing the difference between how a crowded room might sound to autistic kids.

That's fantastic for someone so young and with so much talent! I'll put that video on my to-watch list.

Re: Ah, that sounds like a fascinating video!

[jesse_the_k]

Thanks for the title!

[mific]

Good video!

[jesse_the_k]

:,)

[esteefee]

this was awesome. I'm going to send to my family so they can see what I see...sometimes overlapping doubles, sometimes switching.

[jesse_the_k]

I’m so glad that it can help communicate your experience

[cosmolinguist]

This was really interesting. I don't have strabismus but I do have nystagmus which gives me a similar "people think my eyes are weird"/"people don't know if I'm looking at them" problem.

And I also have no depth perception so I recognize a lot of his struggles (handshakes, baseball...) and his tricks too! What he said about looking for the shadows as a trick was incredibly familiar to me. I never knew how much I relied on shadows until a few years ago a big train station in my city re-opened after a renovation with very diffuse light, no shadows anywhere. I'm used to it now (well not now, I haven't been there since before pandemic times, but you know what I mean) but I still find it very tiring and unsettling.

He makes very good points: the image of the U.S.S. Normal and the sea of difference is a good one (I especially resonated with the idea that people are always trying to drag you out of the sea onto the boat, they never want to hear about what your life is like; indeed I struggle to explain the actual experience of my eye condition because I'm never expected to go beyond "how much can you see?" and my problems are with focus-shifting, with tiredness, with whether I'm stressed or sick or how busy a day I've had, a million other things. People with other chronic illnesses (migraines especially) understand me better than people who think they understand me because hey they're short-sighted and wear glasses. Glasses don't correct my eyesight anywhere near fully and everything is about spoon-management for me; other spoonies get this. :)

[jesse_the_k]

Oh dear, I just realized I'd never thanked you for this informative comment.

Let's hear it for us swimmers!