Disney+ has reanimated three iconic songs to be signed by the characters, and just in time for the end of National Deaf History Month. The three songs Disney has chosen to reanimate are “The Next Right Thing” from “Frozen 2”, “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” from “Encanto”, and “Beyond” from “Moana 2”. 

The songs are specifically being animated in American Sign Language (ASL), so that people in the Deaf community or who are hard-of-hearing can also understand and enjoy the music, without having to read closed captions. 

Having these songs reanimated in ASL is incredibly important. Not having to go back and forth between the characters’ faces and the lyrics is incredibly helpful in understanding the tone of the song. 

Of course, there’s always going to be discourse about whether or not this was actually necessary. On one Instagram post, @enric0_benign0 commented, “Just… Just put subtitles.”

Another Instagram user, @ramisbeingsilly, replied with, “as [a] deaf person, subtitles help, but they don’t replace ASL. ASL is my first language, and written English is actually a different language for us. Subtitles can be hard to follow, especially for kids or people who don’t read English fluently. ASL content makes it truly accessible, not just partially.”

The songs were directed by Hyrum Osmond, and producers Heather Blodget and Christina Chen helped with the project. They collaborated with DJ Kurs and a team at the Deaf West Theatre in Los Angeles, including Catalene Sacchetti, to make sure it turned out as best as possible.

Osmond said that his reasoning behind creating these reanimations was, “…my dad is deaf, and I didn’t connect with him very much growing up. There was always that barrier between us. And I think doing this project … symbolizes the bringing down of that barrier.” 

Sacchetti, the sign language reference choreographer for this project, was the one who choreographed the lyrics. She said that she favored concepts and emotions over word-for-word transcriptions, since ASL is not a direct equivalent of English.

Even though Disney is creating these animations, it doesn’t mean that everyone in the Deaf community is happy about it. A deaf creator, Rogan Shannon (@shan_no_nosays), made a post on Instagram sharing their thoughts about the project. They start the post by saying, “…animating sign is very challenging, and I applaud them for that.”

Shannon then went on to say that they had a hard time understanding what the Disney characters were actually signing, especially when the characters were not fully facing the viewer or were shown from a distance.

One commenter on Shannon’s post, @deafplaywright, said, “I’ll be honest: I watched the clips and could not understand the signs or what was being said. I still relied heavily on the captions,” which some could argue defeats the purpose of creating these songs in ASL. 

Shannon also added that in ASL, facial expressions are incredibly important and can change the meaning of the signs. They also mentioned how easy it was to get lost in what was being communicated, especially during the wedding scene in “We Don’t Talk About Bruno.”

The last concern Shannon mentioned was about the signing models from Deaf West not matching up with the identities of the characters. They also said, “That’s important, because in these songs we have several BIPOC characters. And if those identities were signed by a white person … that’s not appropriate representation.” At the time of the post, it was not known who was signing for which characters. 

Since Shannon’s post, Sacchetti said, “We had authentic Pacific Islanders, deaf people who signed, and we collaborated with those individual talents…[For] ‘We Don’t Talk About Bruno,’ we worked with three actors from Colombia. It was really wonderful to be able to keep that cultural perspective and sensibility and add it to the character as we were creating the sign translation.”

Across the internet though, there’s been some speculation that Disney is using AI to create these reanimations. In the comment section of one Instagram post, @I-nichol said, “Hopefully not using AI but considering they just laid off like 1000 artists, who knows.”

However, Osmond has already stated that “in the majority of cases, we created entirely new animation. There were a lot of adjustments that we had to do within the animation to be true to the original intention.” In addition, there are videos on YouTube of Deaf West Theatre actors signing, with the animation process shown next to them.

The songs are available on Disney+ and YouTube.