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How a Fake British Accent Took Old Hollywood by Storm

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Re: How a Fake British Accent Took Old Hollywood by Storm

#51

Post by arethuza »

stonogo wrote: post #47
jomamaxx wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Star Wars villains in the first series use such accents. A) The Imperial Navy is a euphimism for the British Navy / Empire. B) It was filmed in the UK with almost all UK actors. The new Star Wars - none of the accents are posh really. Just English accents, again actors, filming etc. - although - I think there was some attempt by JJ to keep it UK-ish in that manner, though I'm not sure.

Ah, yes, the notable villain Obi Wan Kenobi.

Played by Guinness who was half Scottish and educated in Edinburgh and Mcregor who seems completely Scottish.

Do we Scots get an exemption from the "evil Brit" trope - (OK apart from Begby or Fred the Shred, but there aren't really people like that in Scotland, honest).

;-)

Re: How a Fake British Accent Took Old Hollywood by Storm

#52

Post by dmreedy »

ajlburke wrote: post #6
zeitgeb3r wrote: post #2

Why does all Star Wars movies use aristocratic British accent?

The original Star Wars movies were largely shot in Britain, and used British actors for many of the roles, especially the Imperial officers and officials. Carrie Fisher's family had worked in Hollywood during the "golden age" of the mid-Atlantic accent and she had been sent to an elocution school in the U.K. just before being cast for Star Wars - although she admits that her accent changed a lot in the first Star War…

This is true, but there was also a significant amount of ADR/Overdubbing work with american actors, especially for the minor roles.

One of the most notable exceptions, of course, being Red Leader, a British actor doing a fantastic rendition of a midwestern american cowboy

Re: How a Fake British Accent Took Old Hollywood by Storm

#53

Post by BellsOnSunday »

mc32 wrote: post #46
matt4077 wrote: post #8

Whenever I'm traveling in areas where people speak with an accent (either english or my native language), I can't stop myself from imitating it. Really badly. After a week or so I'm terribly annoyed by the sound of my own voice. It has even happened when someone was visiting, and acting in some sort of leadership role with a lot of speaking time. So I could imagine a single Hollywood director could possibly start a t…

I think it was John Cleese once, who was speaking of a fellow actor who could do great impressions of others and do many accents --he said, "He never had his own voice". Not sure if Cleese had a point, but it's an interesting take on his fellow actor and that he finds "having one's own voice" important, to some extent.

I don't know who John Cleese was talking about but the great comic actor Ronnie Barker (of The Two Ronnies, for you Americans) was like that. Always playing a Cockney barrow boy, Welsh housewife, upper class patrician, so when you heard him on a chat show actually being "himself" it seemed very weird. He was a notoriously private person so those masks might have been part of that. It worked for him anyway, and he must have made at least as many people laugh as did Cleese.

Re: How a Fake British Accent Took Old Hollywood by Storm

#54

Post by openasocket »

CapitalistCartr wrote: post #13

" . . . sometimes called the Mid-Atlantic Accent, which is deeply offensive to those, like me, from the actual Mid-Atlantic . . . " " . . . elocution class is wildly offensive to most of the modern linguists . . . " What is it with this childish writing, being "deeply, wildly" offended at, instead of disagreeing with? Its the wrinting caliber of a young teen, and it seems to be popular.

Offensive can also mean something inducing disgust, as in "an offensive odor." That's actually the older usage for it. I've been reading some older novels lately and saw "offensive" used in that way a lot.

Re: How a Fake British Accent Took Old Hollywood by Storm

#55

Post by oldmanjay »

CapitalistCartr wrote: post #13

" . . . sometimes called the Mid-Atlantic Accent, which is deeply offensive to those, like me, from the actual Mid-Atlantic . . . " " . . . elocution class is wildly offensive to most of the modern linguists . . . " What is it with this childish writing, being "deeply, wildly" offended at, instead of disagreeing with? Its the wrinting caliber of a young teen, and it seems to be popular.

It's just straight up bad writing. At least we weren't told to be horrified by anything.

Re: How a Fake British Accent Took Old Hollywood by Storm

#56

Post by BellsOnSunday »

douche wrote: post #41
ewzimm wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did the same thing when I was younger. There's still some of it left over, but the embarrassment of being a teenager definitely normalized it. I learned to read when I was pretty young, before I was exposed to a lot of words in speech. I also watched a lot of TV, and people spoke with different accents. Since there wasn't any authoritative way to say things, I preferred to say them how they looked on paper.

I was in college before I learned how hyperbole is supposed to be pronounced. I'd never actually heard a person say that (it's a little beyond typical small-town Maine vocabulary), so I worked for years under the assumption that it was hyper-bowl, rather than hi-per-boll-ee. I knew hyper, and I knew what the bole of a tree was...

I found out how to pronounce sal volatile just the other day, perhaps thirty years after first reading it (crops up quite a lot in Victorian novels). Fortunately, I never once had occasion to say it out loud in the intervening time.

Re: How a Fake British Accent Took Old Hollywood by Storm

#57

Post by GirlsCanCode »

neffy wrote: post #21
CapitalistCartr wrote: post #13

" . . . sometimes called the Mid-Atlantic Accent, which is deeply offensive to those, like me, from the actual Mid-Atlantic . . . " " . . . elocution class is wildly offensive to most of the modern linguists . . . " What is it with this childish writing, being "deeply, wildly" offended at, instead of disagreeing with? Its the wrinting caliber of a young teen, and it seems to be popular.

Mermaid infiltration style? Colour me also more than slightly intrigued by this idea of being from the "actual Mid-Atlantic"- which was an ocean last time anybody checked.

If you actually read the article, you would have seen that the author explains mid-Atlantic exactly that way.

Why do you criticize articles you haven't read?

@dang: Ban this guy.

Re: How a Fake British Accent Took Old Hollywood by Storm

#58

Post by BellsOnSunday »

arethuza wrote: post #51
stonogo wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, yes, the notable villain Obi Wan Kenobi.

Played by Guinness who was half Scottish and educated in Edinburgh and Mcregor who seems completely Scottish. Do we Scots get an exemption from the "evil Brit" trope - (OK apart from Begby or Fred the Shred, but there aren't really people like that in Scotland, honest). ;-)

It doesn't matter where Alec Guinness was born, he sounded about as Scottish as the Queen. Ewan McGregor's English accent OTOH sounds fake.

Re: How a Fake British Accent Took Old Hollywood by Storm

#59

Post by tluyben2 »

openasocket wrote: post #54
CapitalistCartr wrote: post #13

" . . . sometimes called the Mid-Atlantic Accent, which is deeply offensive to those, like me, from the actual Mid-Atlantic . . . " " . . . elocution class is wildly offensive to most of the modern linguists . . . " What is it with this childish writing, being "deeply, wildly" offended at, instead of disagreeing with? Its the wrinting caliber of a young teen, and it seems to be popular.

Offensive can also mean something inducing disgust, as in "an offensive odor." That's actually the older usage for it. I've been reading some older novels lately and saw "offensive" used in that way a lot.

Hmm. That's the meaning I usually hear it used for. What other meaning are you talking about?

Re: How a Fake British Accent Took Old Hollywood by Storm

#60

Post by lucozade »

openasocket wrote: post #54
CapitalistCartr wrote: post #13

" . . . sometimes called the Mid-Atlantic Accent, which is deeply offensive to those, like me, from the actual Mid-Atlantic . . . " " . . . elocution class is wildly offensive to most of the modern linguists . . . " What is it with this childish writing, being "deeply, wildly" offended at, instead of disagreeing with? Its the wrinting caliber of a young teen, and it seems to be popular.

Offensive can also mean something inducing disgust, as in "an offensive odor." That's actually the older usage for it. I've been reading some older novels lately and saw "offensive" used in that way a lot.

I always took that usage to come from the idea of offending one's sensibilities.

That's also how I took the author's use of offensive i.e. it offended his sensibility that mid-Atlantic has two meanings (or whatever it was that he was offended by).

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