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Aug. 17th, 2011 01:24 pm
The voice doesn't match the face
During the year in the early 80s when my parents were giving cable television a try (over our objections they ultimately decided it wasn't worth the money), I watched a lot of Nickelodeon. My favourite show was a British juvenile scifi series called The Tomorrow People. The premise was that the "next step in human eevolution" was psychic powers and that there existed an organisation devoted to finding children exhibiting these and giving them training and support.
As you might expect, this setup allowed for a diversity of casting choices. One of my favourite characters was Scottish, but I also remember a Romany boy and a Black girl. One time, I was watching the show in the company of a baby sitter, and she was struck by the last of these. "I just never heard a black person talk like that." I recall finding her reaction odd, which suggests that it must never occurred to me there was anything unusual about someone who looked African having an English accent. After all, the black people on American television (mostly) sounded the same as the white people on those shows. Why wouldn't it be the same on English television?
Later, I did have a similar reaction, only in reverse, the first time I met a white person who spoke AAVE. It wasn't the first time I'd heard this; hearing whites "talk black" for comic effect was common enough when I was growing up. (Recall, for instance, the elderly white lady in Airplane! who tells the stewardess, "I speak jive" and proceeds to interpret for two black passengers.) What I found unusual, however, was that there would be someone who wasn't black who apparently spoke this way without having to put it on.
Can you all think of other examples where the accent doesn't fit the stereotype? While at the student mailroom in college, I overheard a conversation between a Japanese-American coworker and one of her Asian friends about a mutual acquaintance of theirs, also Asian-American but from the Deep South. They both found this person's strong Southern drawl remarkable. "Asians aren't supposed to have accents!" said my coworker--ironically, in what I would eventually learn to recognise as a fairly characteristic educated Chicago accent.
Some years later, I went to visit my college friend![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ladytiamat and was greeted at the door by her Korean-American roommate, who had a startlingly rural Midwestern twang to her speech. I learned that she was an adoptee raised in central Iowa. Her accent was one I wouldn't have found the least bit out of the ordinary coming from a Caucasian. Thinking back, I suspect it was her manner that took me aback as much as her speech. There were a lot of Koreans at my college, some American-born and some Korean-born, but most with similar ways of comporting themselves. The women tended to be shy and quiet, and this girl was anything but.
What prompted me to think of this was a friend's neighbour, who comes from the Chinese community in Peru. I wonder how most Americans read people like him, as "Hispanic" or as "Asian"? And what about Japanese-Brazilians? I'm guessing appearance trumps accent, but I could be wrong about that.
As you might expect, this setup allowed for a diversity of casting choices. One of my favourite characters was Scottish, but I also remember a Romany boy and a Black girl. One time, I was watching the show in the company of a baby sitter, and she was struck by the last of these. "I just never heard a black person talk like that." I recall finding her reaction odd, which suggests that it must never occurred to me there was anything unusual about someone who looked African having an English accent. After all, the black people on American television (mostly) sounded the same as the white people on those shows. Why wouldn't it be the same on English television?
Later, I did have a similar reaction, only in reverse, the first time I met a white person who spoke AAVE. It wasn't the first time I'd heard this; hearing whites "talk black" for comic effect was common enough when I was growing up. (Recall, for instance, the elderly white lady in Airplane! who tells the stewardess, "I speak jive" and proceeds to interpret for two black passengers.) What I found unusual, however, was that there would be someone who wasn't black who apparently spoke this way without having to put it on.
Can you all think of other examples where the accent doesn't fit the stereotype? While at the student mailroom in college, I overheard a conversation between a Japanese-American coworker and one of her Asian friends about a mutual acquaintance of theirs, also Asian-American but from the Deep South. They both found this person's strong Southern drawl remarkable. "Asians aren't supposed to have accents!" said my coworker--ironically, in what I would eventually learn to recognise as a fairly characteristic educated Chicago accent.
Some years later, I went to visit my college friend
ladytiamat and was greeted at the door by her Korean-American roommate, who had a startlingly rural Midwestern twang to her speech. I learned that she was an adoptee raised in central Iowa. Her accent was one I wouldn't have found the least bit out of the ordinary coming from a Caucasian. Thinking back, I suspect it was her manner that took me aback as much as her speech. There were a lot of Koreans at my college, some American-born and some Korean-born, but most with similar ways of comporting themselves. The women tended to be shy and quiet, and this girl was anything but.What prompted me to think of this was a friend's neighbour, who comes from the Chinese community in Peru. I wonder how most Americans read people like him, as "Hispanic" or as "Asian"? And what about Japanese-Brazilians? I'm guessing appearance trumps accent, but I could be wrong about that.