ABSTRACT
A Quiet Place (2018) was celebrated by many for its strategic and inventive use of both sound and silence and for its authentic casting of Millicent Simmonds to play Regan, Deaf daughter of the protagonist family. Because a Deaf existence is often presumed to be a silent one, A Quiet Place (AQP) provides an interesting case from which to investigate the relationship of sound and silence in the Deaf experience. This chapter utilizes a close reading analysis at the intersections of Sound Studies, Deaf Studies, and Rhetoric to listen Deafly in order to answer the following questions: In what ways do sound and silence challenge or reinforce audist ideologies in AQP? How does AQP use silence to rhetorically construct deafness? The case study analysis reveals that AQP, despite the authentic casting of a Deaf actress and the film's use of American Sign Language, is created primarily for hearing audiences, supports some existing stereotypes of deafness, and is, at times, rendered inaccessible to Deaf audiences—reinforcing the idea that sound and silence are antithetical and that sound is off limits to Deaf individuals.
