UK Exhibit Explains Star Wars to the Blind and Deaf
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Sure, we can joke about how there’s not much to Star Wars when you take away the cool sounds and visual effects, but deep down you know that’s not true – if it were, you’d love Bayformers equally. There’s a resonant story there that can transcend disability, and a recent one-day convention allowed the saga – and other nerd properties like TMNT – to be experienced by touch, smell and texture.
Co-founder JJ Lucia-Wright was inspired to help organise it after spending the past 10 years teaching a friend who is deaf and blind about Star Wars.
Communicating via taps on the hand, disabled fans could touch lifesize replicas of Chewbacca and Threepio, and, um…”sniff the scent of the Millennium Falcon.”
I must confess I wonder what the scent would be. It’s a small ship and I imagine Wookiees having pretty hellacious bowel movements.
h/t Gallen_Dugall
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Luke Y. Thompson has been writing professionally about movies and pop-culture since 1999, and has also been an actor in some extremely cheap culty and horror movies you will probably never hear much about (he is nonetheless mostly proud of them, as he met his wife on one). As editor of The Robot's Voice since 2012, he can take the blame for the majority of the site's content, all of which he creates because he loves you very, very much. (Although he loves nachos more. Sorry.) Prior to TRV, Luke wrote for publications that include the New Times LA, Los Angeles CityBeat, E! Online, OC Weekly, Geekweek, GeekChicDaily, The L.A. Times, The Village Voice, LA Weekly, and Nerdist