This old geezer has too much time to read all the articles on stuttering, which includes "The King's Speech" at the moment. Since I cannot do many things due to arthritis, I spend much of my time at the computer reading (so great that I learned you can hold down the Ctrl key and scroll with the mouse to make the print larger and easier on these old eyes!!!) and posting (nobody needs to know how slowly I type nowadays - ha, ha) comments on articles.
Some reporters (2 that I have seen) have been crazy enough to report on how "The King's Speech" gets stuttering all wrong. They think that showing how stuttering was treated in the 1930s is bad for the viewers and telling about King George VI's domineering father, taunting brother, bad nanny, being left-handed, and having to wear leg braces will make people think these things cause stuttering. For Pete's sake, everyone is intelligent enough to know that this is not a film trying to teach you what causes stuttering and how to treat it! It is about what they thought in the 1930s and how they treated it then. If someone wants to keep up with the current research and methods for this century, they do like I have done and read the newsletters and postings at www.stutteringhelp.org. Ever since I discovered the web site, I check it almost daily for new things.
Some reporters are reporting about the "new research" of Dr. Drayna's discoveries of the genes that cause stuttering. That is not "new." Where were those reporters when other journalists were reporting about the discovery as soon as it was announced? The Stuttering Foundation of America was right on it and reported it before most papers knew about it. (but then, Dr. Drayna is on their Board of Directors) It seems years since I read about it (but, sometimes a day seems like a year to me - ha, ha)
I read a blog by a mother whose son stutters. She said that "The King's Speech" didn't get the stuttering right. She said as they walked out of the cinema, her son even said "that is not stuttering." Well, I need to find that blog again and tell her that there are different forms of stuttering. Some people have repetitions of the beginning letter of a word, some have repetitions of the last letter, some have prolongations of the vowel in the middle of the word, and some have what is called a block. The writers of the movie got Logue's notes from his grandson and studied them and some film clips of King George VI to learn exactly how he stuttered.
Now, this latest article that I read this morning has so many things that I would love to chat with Jane Fraser about as after reading books, brochures, the web site, and watching the videos, I doubt that she said much of what this reporter says she did.
I doubt that Ms. Fraser said, "It has taken that movie ... to educate even my family about the depth of the problem for many sufferers" as anyone who stutters or has a family member who stutters already knows before watching a movie about the depth of the problem. She would have said "no" to "Is this an emotional issue?" as we all know that emotions do not cause stuttering. Of course the family understood Malcolm Fraser's speaking problem. He spent his life searchng for ways to help his own speech and others like him, so she couldn't have said this: "As a youngster, I never understood why it was so painful for my father to speak and how mortified I was waiting for him to get a word out. Gee, I would have loved to be a "fly on the wall" when that interview was happening!
