Mockingbird Don't Sing
Tags: flashback

Plot synopsis:
In Los Angeles, 1970, Katie Standon (Tarra Steele), a girl who has been imprisoned in her room (and without any human contact) since the age of one, is now thirteen years old. Her mother Louise (who has cataracts; Kim Darby), has taken enough abuse from her domineering husband Wes (Jack Betts); she gets her son, Billy (a few years older than Katie; Michael Azria), to help her and Katie escape their home.
At a welfare office a social worker notices something peculiar about Katie and guesses her age to be about seven while, in fact, she is thirteen. Katie is taken to Children's Hospital, and Louise and Wes find themselves being arrested for "what authorities are calling the worst case of child abuse they've ever seen". Shortly before his trial begins, Wes kills himself. The doctors and psycholinguists investigating the case form the "Katie Team", a group of experts dedicated to helping Katie learn to speak and interact with others. One of the team members, Judy Bingham (Sean Young), a special education teacher, sees Katie as a pawn whom she can use to attain international fame. She claims Katie will make her "the next Anne Sullivan." UCLA graduate student Sandra Tannen (Melissa Errico) is one of the people who appear to have Katie's welfare at heart.
Katie comes to live with Dr. Norman Glazer (Joe Regalbuto) who works at Children's Hospital, and his family, where she stays for four years. His family helps Katie become a civilized human being. Although Katie shows outstanding progress in some things (such as learning vocabulary words and sign language, preparing hygiene, showing off anger, and certain other activities), she never really learns grammatical structure. Meanwhile, Louise has surgery to remove her cataracts and visits Katie off and on.
When Katie turns eighteen, the funding for her help is cut off and she returns to Louise's care. Soon, it comes to the point where Louise does not know how to handle Katie herself and Katie gets placed in another foster home. One day, Katie is physically punished for vomiting and responds by never eating or speaking because she was afraid if she opened her mouth she would vomit and be punished again.
Sandra does all that she can to make sure that Katie is handled in the proper way and even has Norman help her. Katie is taken back to Children's Hospital, and Sandra is suggested by social services to have Katie live with her. Before any decisions are made about this, Louise takes Katie out of the hospital and puts her in another foster home. Sandra isn't allowed to say goodbye to Katie. Louise even threatens to take legal action on Sandra if she ever sees Katie again.
Sandra finally asks Louise why Katie was placed in extreme isolation before her discovery. Louise tells the entire story; Wes loved his mother very much, and when she died due to an accident, he projected his feelings for her onto Katie. After a doctor examined Katie sometime later, she was diagnosed as being retarded and Wes locked her up, afraid that the doctors might take her away, and because Louise was starting to go blind, Wes took care of Katie.
Sandra then leaves the house, running into Judy again. It is now clear that she knew Louise for a long time. Sandra and Judy have a quick argument, after which Judy enters Louise's house, leaving Sandra almost crying. At this point, different kinds of footage of Katie appear on screen; Sandra looks at tape recordings of Katie on her TV. She then is seen writing something on a typewriter, while her voice addresses the viewers; she's hoping to see Katie once more. The camera then turns to her and her boyfriend, now holding a baby of their own. The screen fades while she sings the "Hush, Little Baby" lullaby. The screen fades, and footage of Katie on the beach can be seen.
Messages appear, saying what has happened to everyone after the movie: Judy continues to harass the "Katie Team" until her death in 1988; Louise, who is now once again blind, resides in a South-Californian nursing home; Sandra Tannen is now a professor of linguistics at the UCLA and has two teenage daughters, however, she is still not allowed to have any contact with Katie, who lives in a foster home nearby. The last message before the screen turns black and the credits appear, reads: "Katie's inability to learn a language proved the legitimacy of the Critical Period Hypothesis".

Review: We spent two years researching this subject and enlisted the service of Dr Susan Curtiss (named Sandra Tannen in the film) who was, as you will know from your research, present at all but the early stages of Genie/Katie's life starting a few months after she arrived at Children's hospital.
That is to say, we felt that all the lawsuits which followed the child's return to her mother belonged in another story.I used many other sources, including "sealed" records from the Los Angeles courthouses, Dr Rigler, Dr Jay Shurley, John Miner, the child's onelime legal guardian, Dr Kay Natali and a host of others who were actually personally acquainted with the child and her situation for many years in the 1960s 70's and 80's.I suspect that you have read Russ Rymer's book and New Yorker articles -- documents much derided by the actual participants in the true story because of their massive inaccuracies and because his primary contact was the child's mother, Irene (now deceased by the way).
Have you read Dr Susan Curtiss' own book on the subject, I wonder: `Genie - A Psycholinguistic Study of a Modern-Day `Wild Child'So you see, I simply can't let you get away with the broad statement at the top of your comments "It's not accurate".
You may have studied this case in class, but I spent three solid years on this killing myself to do justice to the story and to make it as accurately and elegantly as possible, and -- my God -- to actually manage to get a film made about such a risky and difficult subject.I am saddened that you chose only to respond to the verisimilitude of the film.
I really believe, that I can't say this was a good film, because the story is just too sad and too real.
At the end of the movie, they had text on the screen telling what happened to each character.
The main theme centered on a girl (Katie), and the terrible conditions she was put into early in life, some trauma, and how people tried to help work through her disabilities.
We also saw an interesting fact that the shades were made out of newspapers ( a source to the outside world) yet Katie was totally isolated, and oblivious to all that was going on outside of that dark dim room.Katie was born with a mental disability.
The question is how different Katie could have been if she had not been put into the abusive conditions she was so early in life.
Even though Katie may have had a legitimate mental disability, we believe that given the proper care, treatment, and love Katie could have lived through a different set of variations that were brought to her.
She was working just to make Katie learn as fast as possible, and not caring about the pace or her understanding of what it was she was learning.The title Mockingbird don't sing is a perfect title for this film.
The people in this movie that were working with Katie were like the mother singing.
When Katie ( the mockingbird )was not singing they were moving on a bit away from her with getting upset with her, and not going at a pace that would have helped her actually understand what she was doing rather than just mocking or doing what she was doing..
This awful story of child abuse aired in the UK on the True Movies channel (I believe).
Mockingbird Don't Sing seemed to portray a very close comparison to the life Katie has lived.
His last letter said "The world will never understand." It raises the question if he maybe had a good reason for excluding his daughter from society and all it has to offer.
The fact is that if the girl was born retarded or not, Katie was deprived of her childhood and civilization which lead to her problems and abnormalities.
As the film came to a close, there wasn't a smile on my face, but I think the objective of the movie is to acknowledge the idea that a life is very precious and often turns out the way it has been molded..
Although she was born with a slight mental disability, being harassed and locked away in a room for 12 years would definitely have a major impact on her life and how to would interpret things in the future.
Because she was never exposed to a normal life, so she had no way of knowing what was wrong or right, or try to get help for herself.
Afterwards she went to live with a doctor which allowed her to both learn new things and spend time in a normal household with a family structure.When she was forced to move in with her mother she felt the pain she had felt when she had lived in the house a few years before.
This movie should by no means be rated on it's entertainment value as some do as the true case is way too serious to consider for entertainment purposes.I stumbled across it on a movie channel and just went along feeling more and more sad and frustrated over the total failure of the authorities to secure the interests of this poor, wretched human experiencing for 13 years a fate much worse than death and later being less than ideally where the therapists, teachers and researches take care of no.
this is a fantastic movie for a psychology student as it is such a scientifically based film.
this is a fantastic movie for anyone interested in how people work, and for anyone who likes films with a real story behind them.
Genie has been a person of whom the first time I heard about her I was intrigued, in this however her name is changed to Katie.
When I knew what it was I only knew one thing - I was as excited as hell to see this movie, even though I know the ending I wanted to see it.One thing that also pushed me further is Harry Bromley Davenport's review that pretty much says "this movie is as accurate as you can get it" I then wanted to see this as much as possible.Once thinking this is an independent film you would think that there would be no faces that you would recognize - well Sean Young and Michael Lerner is in this movie.One question I would like to ask is why isn't Tarra Steele in anything else aside from this.
Her performance as Katie was amazing, I would have thought that she would have been in other stuff - even if it is just small but after this she has been in nothing and this is her second movie.This paragraph is a response to Harry Bromely Davenport's review.
In this I found a few things extremely accurate - and some stuff I didn't even know so that was really impressive - Harry - well done.My only complaint I have with this movie is the fact that sometimes Davenport demonises characters - I am fine with this in fiction films but in movies based on a true story it shouldn't happen.
Although some characters in this movie are impossible to humanize (Wes - Katie's father - anyone?) so to some extent I might stick up for it.Now at the ending of the film may seem as something to say "Katie/Genie didn't have a good life" I have found out exactly what has happened to her.
She is still in an institution - but from what I have heard - she isn't the same person as the ending of the movie, also - at least she is happy, that's all that matters after the pain that she went through, I hope this comforts people who want to know what happened..
Once I started watching this movie it drew me in right away and made me wonder what happened to Katie.
The Forbidden Experiment is the main point of the story, describing how does a person being isolated learn the basic needs without being taught.
Because Katie had been isolated from the world, it would have been better if she just focused on using her hands to communicate with people.
Was Katie mentally challenged from her being isolated and having limited to no socialization, or from birth?
The doctors had said she was mentally challenged from when she was an infant, but having no contact with people could have caused retardation.www.everythingispointless.com/2006/12/forbidden-experiment.html.
I thank you for staying true to the facts and portraying this movie in such a way that we all could feel how emotional involved you were in this case.This brings me to why I liked this movie so much.
In this movie Katie is held captive for 13 years by her parents where she didn't know how to behave with other humans she was referred to as "the wild child" in Sandra's article.
An example of this is in the movie Katie shows emotions for the bus driver.
The title does fit this story because like a mocking bird Katie is only mimicking and not learning.
In the end I think Katie learned that not all of society is nice and that more than just her parents were mean people.
The real discussion is if in the end did had Katie learned more from what she learned from the doctors or was she acting out of human nature?.
Katie, or Genie as her real name, may have been born with a mental retardation but the isolation mentally retarded her even more.
Many children are born mentally retarded and socially do fine in the real world.
Her mental capacity is unable to pass a certain point from the isolation which proves the critical period hypothesis.
In this movie we learned that the age of socialization affects your life drastically.
If you don't learn how to construct a sentence until you are twelve then based on the critical period hypothesis you will never be able to learn and not knowing the fundamentals of education you will have a tough time constructing even a basic conversation.
Also the events that happen in your socialization period will affect how you are able to act in certain situations.
There were a lot of situations that Katie had to go through when she was isolated from everything that affected her life forever.
The fact that Katie was isolated from the outside world gave her no experience to interact with other people.
Well, considering that this movie mostly talks about the social norms of our society and how abuse affects it, it was a pretty good movie.
The reality of the film and how Katie was bounced around from home to home, and how the viewers could view her confusion and frustration was key to showing her development as the movie progresses.
If the progress is not continuing, like with Katie, the state feels no need to continue spending money on a 'lost cause' so to speak.
Fortunately, Katie may not have been able to speak properly, but she was able to learn sign language.
Katie was affected by both nature and nurture in her socialization.
This could be seen in the movie when they started taking Katie to school.
I'd like to comment on the different affects that Katie's environment had on her throughout the movie.
The theory that feral children can not learn a primitive language after going through puberty was proved true in this specific case.
You can see in the movie that if sign language would've been encouraged more she could've been much more successful with learning.
Katie had already learned how to communicate without speaking so giving her a new venue that others knew as well would have helped her throughout her lifetime..
About a girl named Kated who is mentally retarded because of physical abuse and torture for being locked up for 12 years..
This movie was a eye-opener I would say, it showed the reality and the seriousness of mental retardation related with Katie.
When you've been locked up in a single room for 12 years with no physical contact and love your body may feel like its the actual age it is but your mind has no where to improve so it doesn't have any opportunity to learn and expand so there is no chance to gain more knowledge.
When Katie was first found the people found they used her as an experiment, to try and teach a middle age child the basics of learning and living.
Everything seemed to be working except for her speaking skills which people say if your over the age of 12 it is impossible to learn a language.
After two years of trying to teach a language they finally figured out that sign language was the best possibility to communicate, this was a big step forward in Katie's life..
We just watched the movie Mockingbird Don't Sing.
We were wondering if you thought Katie was born with her disabilities or it was something that happened due to the isolation.
Katie was locked away and beaten which lead to her looking, walking and talking different.
This caused some people to fear Katie so she was avoided which led to lack of communication and socialization.
Katie could have been born with some sort of mental retardation but we can't tell because there was no record.
Unfortunately her father isolated her immediately so we don't know if her behavior is an affect of being locked up or truly having a disability from birth..
The actions the father took in this movie would be the same thing as telling a mocking bird not to sing.
This movie is an unimaginable event and i don't know who could ever do this to there little girl.
I recommend watching this to people who are especially interested in cognitive-developmental psychology, or any type of psychology for that matter, or anyone who would like to be taken on a journey through a child's life that you cannot possibly imagine the traumatic depths of.
The central character is the 13 year old victim of child abuse, Katie Standen and the women who sought to bring out of her abused state, namely her mother Mrs. Standen, child therapist Judy Bingham and psychology graduate student Sandra.
The premise would appear to be...take a 5 minute news story within which you can impart all the facts and then spin it out into a most boring and dull film.There was really no point to making this film, and even less point in my watching it through to the end.Whenever you see 'based on true facts' or similar it should start the alarm bells ringing in your head that someone somewhere has had the great idea (or more realistically, they have had no original idea) to turn an extremely sad story of child neglect into a film, give it a catchy title and some meaty trailers and let it loose on an unsuspecting public.
I do not think that Katie was mentally retarded from birth, I just think that she wasn't taught things or able to experience a normal child life.
Later on in her life she was able to develop a few communication skills, and she was she also able to learn sign language.
I think the father in his own mind maybe thought he was protecting Katie but he clearly was not which is how i label him crazy, because he was abusing his own child to an extent to her having problems learning in the future.
It wasn't in Katie's nature to behave the way she did, she was nurtured to do so..
I agree with the comment that the psychology student is portrayed as a saint, though the facts leave you wondering.In movies like these, you really need to explore very deeply each character.
It would have been nice if there were more information on whether the actual socialization of Katie caused her supposed "retardation." Though it was assumed from what the movie said, it was never clearly stated.
The movie lead one to believe that she might have been able to turn it into an actually language, and "speak" fluently in it.
The theory was proved right and the end of the movie when Katie's mother forbid the team from going near her..
Katie's isolation from the world began when she was 20 months old and went on for 13 years.
When Katie's mother took her out of isolation she had to learn all these skills.
The "Critical Period Hypothesis" is valid, Katie proved that by showing she was learning and her speaking and vocabulary was improving up until she reached puberty.
After Katie reached puberty she was unable to learn/develop the correct language, she was unable to learn things that an average person would need to achieve a normal lifestyle.
If your socialization was as severe as Katie's it would affect your entire life.
Mr. Davenport antagonistically replied to another viewer's comments which only shows that his ego likely got in the way of this movie possibly being the kind of film that creates a dialogue and inspires change.
The main question of this movie is did her environment make her mentally retarded or was she born like that?
This movie is based on a real girl whose name was "Genie", ( this was not her real name)whose parents tied her to a potty chair and basically abused her.
I honestly don't know how anyone could harm a child in such a horrible way, she was 13 when she was found and by that time she couldn't talk or dress herself little long function in normal life.
After watching this you will most likely feel sad for how the world treats people or angry that something this terrible could happen to someone.
The most confusing part of this movie we thought was how Katie's mother was able to go into the foster care place and take her daughter back.