h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This entry is riddled with condescending generalisations about Americans. Is it referring to the entire population of the USA? All inhabitants of North America or just the perceived stereotypes of the US? Are we expected to believe that film makers are only driven by "received pronunciation" in picking intelligent characters? That British character actors were the only choice for villains?

Once again the myopic, old club atmosphere of hootoo has produced another pat on it's own back.

I had a few of the same thoughts. (And I cop to having picked this entry for showcasing.)

I think it's interesting, though, that this entry can still stir up controversy after so long. After all, we don't have to agree, but it sets us thinking, dunnit?

For instance, I can think of at least three actors in the US who have taken advantage of the 'Brits as baddies' idea to pretend to be British: Daniel Davis of Kentucky, who played Moriarty on the Star Trek holodeck, James Marsters, who played Spike in 'Buffy, the Vampire Slayer' (with a, to me, hilarious send-up of a Brit rock singer), and Juliet Landau in the same series, who obviously fell in love with the 'I fink' school of talking... Never mind the way we buy Tim Roth as a superbrain wif a Cockney h'accent.

As my native accent is considered by people in the US to be a marker of extremely low intelligence, I enjoy all this talk.

Try to imagine an evil genius who talks like a country music singer or NASCAR driver.

'Mash me that-air button, willya, Igor? I wanna blow sum'in' up.'

Works for me!

People watch Rambo etc. for fun. The fun is made up of foreign people with funny accents being destroyed in great numbers while the man with the American accent kills them, survives and gets a medal/kiss/money (delete as appropriate). This is a stereotype which Americans create about themselves, which causes a lot of unease in many places outside America.

Occasionally a stereotype is useful, but not often.

"Once again the myopic, old club atmosphere of hootoo has produced another pat on it's own back."

"Created: 15th January 2003"

Yeah. Some proper up-to-date Yank-bashing from the h2g2 Old Boys' Club here.

Or, an anachronism.

But don't let little things like publication dates of a tongue-in-cheek article put you off your rant.

Vestboy, I know what you mean about 'Rambo'. I watched it. But it wasn't fun.

These days, courtesy of Netflix, we are watching the 1960s series 'Mission:Impossible'. We are watching it for fun, it makes us laugh. The actors are good, and the plots ridiculous. We spend our evenings spotting ludicrous signs in made-up languages. The prop guys boldly place umlauts where no umlauts have gone before...

Now, the actors make up all sorts of crazy, phony accents, but Peter Graves' attempt to sound British was positively painful. Minnesota Received Pronunciation just isn't 'classy'.

Mr603-
Reposting an entry makes it current, since it hasn't been repudiated by replies, editing or letting it rot in the back shed. DG has already mentioned how it had the potential to create controversy.

I call my post condemnation, you call it misguided. I stand by it.

Quite right, too. The Guide isn't a museum, it's an ongoing dialogue about life, etc.

What I appreciate about comments and responses is that h2g2ers can take just about anything in our experience as a jumping-off point for discussion.

And, of course, we could ask that the entry be updated. We're not flies in amber...hey, wait, wasn't that 'Jurassic Park'?...

What accent did the fly have?

Protoindoeuropean? Protozoan?

You're not trying to stereotype are you?
Uxbridge English Dictionary Definition
Stereotyping: The acto of pounding the keyboard with both speakers.

acto = act

This entry certainly has its flaws.

For example, it says that George Sanders as the bad guy in "Rebecca" had an English accent. But this is a film set in England, in which all the actors had English accents, so it is not really relevant.

Since Anthony Hopkins in 'The Silence of the Lambs' spoke with a Boston accent which is American, but the author couldn't hear the difference between this and an English accent, he just treated it as if it was English, and even added a footnote to explain this.

The central thesis of the Entry is still valid, though. American movies do like to give the baddies posh English accents, more often than you'd expect.

Mistaking Bah-stun for British...this is funny on so many levels...

You're right. They do it all the time. One critic, I can't remember who, said Hollywood used 'thin-lipped Brits' to play bad guys. That is, the actors had to have the requisite accent and physiognomy.

Hmmm. So if I could lose a little lipfat I may have a career in Hollywood. Bwahahaaaa!
Does anyone have a lip exercise machine I could borrow?

I believe Demosthenes had some marbles he was selling on ebay.

It's a rant guys. It's saying 'Why are you picking on me?' even though you aren't.

A more sinister trend surely is the tendency to portray intelligent people as inherently unreliable. There may be an Entry about this, there is certainly material for it. Going back to the rotten treatment the studios gave Orson Welles, RKO even advertising (after they had sacked him) 'Showmanship instead of Genius'.

I was disgusted when an antisocial character in an otherwise thoroughly forgettable film (What's Up Doc) was identified as a kooky composer (he pinged tuning forks on rocks to test their resonance) who admired Sean Gage, that name being a thin disguise for the most admirable American composer John Cage.

Well that's curious. I thought I had managed to forget 'What's Up Doc?' but its name came back to me as I typed. I just checked it on wiki, and the musicologist character played by Ryan O'Neal isn't apparently meant to be antisocial, just idiotic. I really hated that movie, but it won a Writers Guild of America award for Best Comedy Written Directly for the Screen. Sheesh.