Feeling Seen — Finally — in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2
Emotion is the only thing players can understand when they step into Hailey Cooper’s shoes in her “Graffiti Trouble” side mission in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. A young Deaf, Black woman–and Miles Morales’s love interest–Hailey wears bilateral bright pink hearing aids and communicates using ASL (American Sign Language) with her close friends and text-based chat apps with those who don’t sign.
Hailey’s experience in the world is depicted through subtle haptic vibration and comic book style icons, displaying emotions–both her own and those of people around her. She sees fear, love, anger, confusion, to name just a few.
Hailey is the first time in my 67 years on this earth that I’ve seen more than one of my identities represented in a single character and my reaction to it caught me off guard.
I am a 6’5 Deaf Black woman. I have beautiful dark skin, I speak ASL exclusively, and I like to wear heels when I have date nights with my partner. I love my Blackness, my deafness, my height. My mother went to great lengths to ensure I loved myself–all of myself–despite knowing it wasn’t likely I’d have many peers or role models in my daily life. I don’t do much of anything to make myself fit into the world around me. My one and only attempt to conform was agreeing to get bilateral cochlear implants (CIs) 30 years ago. I have not worn them in 29 years. I’ve grown accustomed to being the only one in most spaces, alone though rarely lonely.
I’m not much of a gamer. My partner has spent the past decade working in the games industry so I’ve naturally learned a good amount about them–and their issues–from watching him play, but the extent of my game time has been in Red Dead Redemption 2 Online. I took over my youngest son’s account and character last year after he died from post-covid cardiac arrest to sustain a connection with him.
On Spider-Man 2’s launch day, I was getting ready to go out for my morning run when my partner launched the game. I looked up from tying my shoes to say goodbye and instead of my usual view of seeing subtitle text at the bottom of the screen too far away for me to read, I was shocked to see two characters sitting in a classroom signing. Two Black characters at that.
I marched over to my partner and waved my hand to get his attention.
“Who are they?” I asked.
“Miles and Hailey in Spider-Man.”
“They’re deaf?”
“Hailey is. Miles is learning ASL.”
I got chills. For the first time in my life, I was watching something on a TV screen that I didn’t need closed captions for and seeing characters that felt familiar. Run canceled. My kids, all four of them Deaf, are avid gamers. Once my shock subsided and gave way to the joy of feeling seen, represented–something I’ve never experienced–I was on Amazon buying each of them their own copy of Spider-Man 2. Imagine having been able to give them this experience when they were young, was my only thought. They were raised in a world similar to mine, where they were alone, often peerless except for each other. Their kids though, all four of my grandkids, I realized, all get to grow up in a world where someone who looked like them, signed like them, existed in a game that millions of people played. Part of the culture, not a problem to be solved for.
My son texted me yesterday, “Ma, you play Hailey’s side quest yet?”
I told him I hadn’t.
“You gotta play it. It’s in her perspective as a Deaf girl.”
I got my CIs when doing so meant you sacrificed any residual hearing you had and so without them, there’s nothing, which has been my world for the last 29 years. Without any residual hearing to rely on, I’ve become very attuned to how sound vibrates and adept at reading emotion, even when I don’t know what’s being said. Deafness is a spectrum though, so one person’s experience is likely to be very different from another’s. This is what I expected from Hailey’s experience in the game. She wears hearing aids, after all, indicating that she has some hearing, however minuscule it may be. My partner told me that Hailey’s experience is much closer to my own than I’d assumed. There is very muted sound, but only indicating that someone is saying something–not what or where. It’s impossible to make out any distinct sound, even when someone is right there speaking to Hailey.
What struck me the most about the depiction of Hailey’s deafness in the game was her thoughts and understanding being displayed through symbols. While I certainly don’t think in comic book symbols, I also don’t think in English words or thoughts. My inner dialogue is ASL, my self-talk is my hands. It’s a difficult concept to explain to those who don’t experience it because it’s not disembodied hands floating in my head speaking to me, it’s more of a feeling. In fact, the best way to describe my inner monologue is in comic book symbols.
I’m showing my age here but there was a time not too long ago where being Deaf and out in the world meant you never went anywhere without a little notebook and pen. “Pick up prescriptions for Vaughan” or “Officer I’m Deaf. I communicate with my hands. I’m not being aggressive or resisting” were the sort of things one might write down in their pad. It made exchanges with hearing people too complex, laborious. As a result, I just didn’t talk to hearing people unless I had to. Hailey’s interactions with people illustrate just how much of a boon technology has been for giving Deaf folks a little more inclusion in the hearing world.
Part way through Hailey’s quest, she approaches a graffiti artist. She takes out her phone and shows the artist the message, “I’m Deaf. Do you sign?” I must admit I was touched by the hopeful nature of her message. I type out, “I’m Deaf…” countless times each day but never once have I asked the person I need to communicate with if they sign. My messages are always simply, “I’m Deaf” followed by what I need. It’s never even occurred to me to ask if the other party signs, if I’m being honest. Hailey goes on to have a full conversation with the artist via chat app. She uses text-to-speech to call Miles, and her hearing friends are learning ASL so they can communicate with ease. The game even goes so far as to have Hailey appear on a podcast with her friend Ganke interpreting for her where it beautifully conveys the awkwardness that often comes with learning a new language.
I shaved off my locs that I’d had for decades recently and have been sporting a bald head since. When I saw my brother the week after I debuted my new ‘do he joked, “You needed some help standing out in a crowd, Deb. Not quite enough to set you apart from the rest of the world?” I know he meant it in a loving, big brother way, but as a Deaf Black woman, the pressure to minimize myself, be smaller, be less visible, less Deaf, more normal, is constant. I couldn’t help but internalize what he’d said and wonder if more people I loved saw me that way, if more people thought I should be less. I felt a twinge of shame for leaping head first into something I wanted to do for the first time in years.
The introduction of Hailey into my life came at a perfect time. Easily 50 years my junior, she is, in a way, the role model I didn’t know I needed. She’s out there, living her life in this fictional New York City, unapologetically Deaf, celebrating her Blackness through her art and sharing her love of Black art with her friends. And in response? The world is not asking her to minimize herself or be less, it’s accommodating her, embracing her, exactly as she is. She may play only a minor role in Spider-Man 2 but her potential to impact Deaf representation in all forms of media is immeasurable.
