[UA] Re: American attitudes and things

[Mike Lake]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Simon RJB" <psi.breaker at yahoo.co.uk>
To: "The Unknown Armies RPG Mailing List" <ua at lists.unknown-armies.com>
Sent: Friday, January 12, 2007 6:27 AM
Subject: Re: [UA] Re: American attitudes and things

> It's weird. When you watch an all American cast you
> hardly notice the accent. As soon as you put an
> American amongst British actors the the differences,
> in accent at least, become glaringly obvious.

    It's funny how some actors are completely convincing in speaking another 
dialect, while others are...not.  And there's no direct correlation between 
mimicry skill and acting skill.  Minnie Driver and Damian Lewis never made a 
blip on my auditory radar, and Bob Hoskins is so good at the Brooklyn accent 
that his native speech sounds fake to me.  But Ewan McGregor sounds 
ridiculous when he tries American.
    I'm sure it works the other way, too.  Even we Yanks know that nobody on 
earth speaks like Dick Van Dyke in "Mary Poppins."

> I guess the reverse of this is that English
> stereotypes...
    Don't forget the hunky, slightly repressed gentleman, a staple of chick 
flicks.

> I can
> imagine that visiting London for the first time, or
> America (or anywhere other than the popular holiday
> resorts dotted around Spain) would probably be a
> complete culture shock.
    We took a 9-day London trip a few years ago, and felt no culture shock 
at all.  The strongest impression I came away with was a reminder that 
London is a living city, and not so dependent on tourism that it's pickled 
itself into a huge museum.