El Deafo is a 2014 graphic novel memoir by Cece Bell, chronicling her childhood up to 5th grade as a deaf person in The '70s and The '80s, as well as depicting everyone ironically as "rabbit people".
An Animated Miniseries adaptation was released on Apple TV+ on January 7th, 2022. Cece Bell herself worked on it as an executive producer, writer, and narrator. The trailer can be seen here.
The graphic novel provides examples of:
- Alpha Bitch: Inverted with Missy who is very sweet and enthusiastic about Cece's disability, but also unintentionally gets on Cece's nerves. Lampshaded by Ginny who implies that she is a popular girl.
- Anthropomorphic Animal Adaptation: The novel is based on the author's real life experiences of growing up deaf, except all the people are drawn as rabbits.
- Autobiography: Aside from depicting humans as rabbits, it's a mostly faithful account of author Cece Bell's early life after losing most of her hearing from meningitis.
- Better as Friends: A one-sided example. Despite having a massive crush on him for a majority of the book, Cece thinks this to herself when her Mike becomes a fan of Van Halen.
- Big Brother Bully: Laura is like this to her little sister, making her the target of "the dining room game", where you have to walk around the dining room table until Laura sics her dog. Cece is also subject to the game once.
- Coordinated Clothes: Invoked by Laura, who convinces Cece to wear matching clothes to school to show their budding friendship. After a few days of this, Laura gets annoyed with Cece for wearing a pale blue shirt instead of a dark blue one, though Cece thinks to herself that Laura didn't specify which blue to wear.
- Does Not Like Spam: Cece doesn't like fish, but ends up having to eat a fish dinner due to a miscommunication between her and Martha. However, she eats it anyway to not let Martha know that anything's amiss with her.
- Dude, Not Funny!: Played for Drama. When Cece's showing Martha her new glasses, she compares herself to Helen Keller. Martha doesn't find it funny because she believes that she caused Cece's eye injury, which led to her needing glasses. Cece would later assure her that this isn't the case.
- El Spanish "-o": The title of the book and a nickname Cece gives herself. Not only is the Spanish word for "deaf" "sordo", but in Cece's case, it would actually be "La Sorda" because she's a girl.
- Furry Lens: A semi-autobiographical work illustrating human beings as rabbits.
- Group Costume Fail: When Laura asks Cece to dress like twins for a week, she gets mad at Cece when, a few days in, Cece wears a pale blue shirt that doesn't match the dark blue shirt Laura is wearing, even though Laura never specified the shade of blue. Also discussed since Cece points out in her narration that, due to her Phonic Ear setting her apart from everyone else, she and Laura can never really look alike.
- Heroic BSoD: Martha feels awful when Cece accidentally runs into a tree branch and pokes her eye, blaming the incident on herself when it wasn't. She would then avoid or run away from Cece if she notices her, though they would reconcile at the end.
- Innocently Insensitive: Both Missy and Ginny. When Ginny introduces Cece to Missy as her "deaf friend," Missy starts trying to teach Cece sign language, which she finds patronizing. Ginny also speaks to Cece (and only Cece) in a slow, over-articulated way, which she doesn't realize actually makes it harder for Cece to understand her.
- Knew It All Along: Cece avoids telling Martha about her hearing aids and, because Martha treats her so normally, Cece never suspects that Martha was already told by the neighborhood kids until Cece turns her hearing aids off at their sleepover.
- Lawyer-Friendly Cameo: Wilma and Fred Flintstone, along with Spock and Kirk appear as rabbit versions of themselves. Daffy Duck and Porky Pig, as well as Tom and Jerry appear in a much more simplified style.
- Little Bit Beastly: The characters are depicted as "rabbit people". They are mostly human-like except for their ears and noses. Their fur, if they have any at all, is also skin-colored.
- Love Floats: A frame shows Cece doing this metaphorically after she heard that Mike knows The Beatles.
- Moving Angst: Cece moves to another state after kindergarten and leaves her first best friend, Emma, behind.
- New Friend Envy: Laura is this to Cece when she befriends Ginny. Afterwards, she becomes increasingly possessive, demanding that Cece only hang out with her.
- New Transfer Student: Ginny moves from Georgia to Cece's school in 3rd Grade.
- Pinky Swear: Cece and Martha do a pinky swear to stay best friends forever, but Martha rescinds it after believing Cece's eye injury was her fault.
- Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: Laura compares her and Cece's matching outfits to Susan and Sharon in The Parent Trap (1961), which Cece doesn't get.
- Reading Lips: Cece discusses this as she's learning about it in kindergarten, saying that it's not as easy as it sounds. She tells the audience about various things that make it harder, such as facial hair, darkness, group conversation, or exaggerated mouth movements.
The Animated Adaptation provides examples of:
- Adapted Out:
- Cece's childhood friend Emma is not present in the miniseries, and neither is the arc about them being separated after Cece moves states.
- The plot point of Cece failing a vocabulary test because of her worsening eyesight is not present in the mini series.
- The book had an arc in which the students made "warm fuzzies" out of pom poms to hand out to the class, and Cece ends up giving Laura one after not speaking for a long time. This is absent from the series.
- Cece's curly pencil getting broken also doesn't happen.
- Although not entirely removed, less emphasis is placed on Cece bonding with her siblings while watching TV together.
- Adaptation Induced Plothole: While not exactly vital to the story, Cece's crush on Mike makes slightly less sense as a result of their shared interest in The Beatles being omitted. This also makes Mike's comment about Cece's glasses making her look like John Lennon come out of nowhere.
- Adaptation Name Change: The supervillain counterparts in Cece's imagine spots are given different names. Mighty Mom is changed to Spidermom and the "pajama wearing supervillains" become The Pajama Bunch. Martha's sidekick counterpart wasn't given a name in the book, but in the series, she's called Marvy Girl.
- Adaptational Context Change:
- The series has the couple in the diner speaking sign language, but the book specifies that they were arguing.
- In the book, Mrs. Sinklemann draws an apple on the blackboard and writes the names of misbehaving kids inside of it, saying that it only takes a few "rotten spots" to spoil the apple. In the series, the apple is changed to a tomato.
- Martha had absolutely nothing to do with Cece running into the branch in the book. In the series, she pushes the branch away from herself as she runs past it, leading it to rebound into Cece's eye.
- In the book, when Cece shows Martha her eyepatch and later her glasses, Martha vomits in response. In the series, it's toned down to her running away crying.
- Adaptational Jerkass / Adaptational Villainy: Mr. Potts, Cece's gym teacher, is more antagonistic towards her in the series. When he accidentally breaks her Phonic Ear microphone in the book, he reacts with a nervous chuckle and a "whoopsie." In the series, he insists to Cece that she'll be fine without it. The series also gives him a supervillain counterpart that the book doesn't have.
- Brand X: Almost all of the branded properties were removed from the mini series. The Fritos that Laura offers Cece became regular chips, Ginny's Monty Python record became a generic comedy record, and all of the shows that Cece watched (notably Tom and Jerry, Little House on the Prairie, and Batman) were replaced with the fictional Mighty Bolt.
- Canon Foreigner:
- Mighty Bolt, the superhero in the Show Within a Show that Cece watches, takes the place of Batman in the original book.
- P. Evil, Mr. Potts' supervillain counterpart, is a new addition. Mr. Potts didn't have a supervillain counterpart in the book.
- Composite Character: Actions attributed to certain characters in the book were given to other characters in the show to cut down on the amount of characters. For example, instead of a random girl at school, Missy becomes the one whose words Cece misinterprets as "my cat likes pie" and whose attempts to sign inspire Cece's mom to bring her to sign language classes.
- Creator Cameo: Cece Bell herself acts as the narrator of the story.
- Culturally Sensitive Adaptation: Mrs. Bell and Mrs. Wakely are not shown smoking at all.
- Demoted to Extra: Cece's siblings are not focused on nearly as much as they are in the book.
- Stylistic Suck: After Cece loses her hearing, most of the voices are muffled unless they're in an Imagine Spot or speaking through her phonic ear microphone.
