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this just caused an incensed somewhat outraged discussion in our house, because glahhhhh. it just feels like an insult when we're already so steeped in american culture.
I grew up with american television. at a guess i'd say that 80% of shows on australian commercial television are american, with about 10% each of british and australian making up the whole. it is a rare occassion that a 'foreign film' - australian or british - makes it into the cinema. rarer still that many people see it. only since lotr have american studios been putting the costume dramas into british accents.
i might not know the exact locations of each of american states to the other, but i know and understand perfectly a whole range of american accents. i was boggled when american visitors came here and couldn't understand my very low-key australian accent. i grew up with sesame street and so adopted a bunch of americanisms from there - "zee" instead of "zed" is one. my spellchecker on my computer doesn't have an english option other than 'american english', and so there are always little squiggly lines when i type 'realise' or 'colour'.
someone asked if people outside the US found american accents sexy. the answer is: most definitely not. most of the time i find them brash and offensive. the american accent for me isn't exotic the same way my australian accent seems to be for a bunch of americans. the american accent grates on my nerves and reminds me of the aggressiveness of the american culture and media into australia's culture, makes me bitter to think of how clingy and fawning australia seems to be towards american culture, reminds me of the attitudes of close-mindedness or superiority to other cultures, and the pseudo-sincerity and somewhat pitiful, disdainful air i get from the american media and american people i'm exposed to via the media.
and often by fic, which is a main part of the reason that![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
drop_the_u makes me gnash my teeth so. i get offended the way that american writers so frequently come across as unwilling to research into other cultures and mannerisms when they're writing characters from other cultures, with mannerisms other than american. more than that, it's not so much that i'm offended by the decision of an american writer not to use, say, britishisms when writing a british character, but the fact that sometimes it doesn't even seem that the writer is aware that there's a culture other than their own. i mean, i can understand that interpersonal relationships between characters of different cultures are often a difficult thing to perceive and grasp (for example, the disgusting, abject, ridiculous humour of the british vs. the cynicism of american sense of humour; or america's uber-sincerity vs. australia's heavy reliance on sarcasm), but when dom thinks back to when his mom gives him a quarter to go to the corner store? that just really gets on my nerves. because the author knows that part of dom's childhood was in germany, and dom's family is actually british. do these american authors just not realise that there is an actual difference in both physical fact (eg. a quarter vs. a pound) and phrase and culture surrounding it? mom is not mum. the things from your childhood, the dialogue phrases you use every day, would not exist for people in other cultures. people who you are supposedly meant to be writing convincingly. there's nothing that jerks me sickeningly out of a fic more than realising that an author has written this story while thinking of these british, scottish, or australian characters with an american accent, conjuring up american histories for them.
i guess i'm sick both of the way that in australian culture, anyway, american culture is elevated to the status that it's above australian culture, or all other culture, something which it perpetuates itself. i'm not saying i hate america. i just can't stand the way american culture portrays and considers itself superior to all other cultures, to the point where it considers all other cultures dismissable.
er... disclaimer: i'm not trying to attack any americans reading this; i know that not all americans are stupid and close-minded and i know there are stupid and close-minded people in australian society too. none of this has been written deliberately to cause offense; the things i've stated above do have a basis in reality for both me and many of my non-american peers. just calling it as i'm seeing it, folks.
I grew up with american television. at a guess i'd say that 80% of shows on australian commercial television are american, with about 10% each of british and australian making up the whole. it is a rare occassion that a 'foreign film' - australian or british - makes it into the cinema. rarer still that many people see it. only since lotr have american studios been putting the costume dramas into british accents.
i might not know the exact locations of each of american states to the other, but i know and understand perfectly a whole range of american accents. i was boggled when american visitors came here and couldn't understand my very low-key australian accent. i grew up with sesame street and so adopted a bunch of americanisms from there - "zee" instead of "zed" is one. my spellchecker on my computer doesn't have an english option other than 'american english', and so there are always little squiggly lines when i type 'realise' or 'colour'.
someone asked if people outside the US found american accents sexy. the answer is: most definitely not. most of the time i find them brash and offensive. the american accent for me isn't exotic the same way my australian accent seems to be for a bunch of americans. the american accent grates on my nerves and reminds me of the aggressiveness of the american culture and media into australia's culture, makes me bitter to think of how clingy and fawning australia seems to be towards american culture, reminds me of the attitudes of close-mindedness or superiority to other cultures, and the pseudo-sincerity and somewhat pitiful, disdainful air i get from the american media and american people i'm exposed to via the media.
and often by fic, which is a main part of the reason that
drop_the_u makes me gnash my teeth so. i get offended the way that american writers so frequently come across as unwilling to research into other cultures and mannerisms when they're writing characters from other cultures, with mannerisms other than american. more than that, it's not so much that i'm offended by the decision of an american writer not to use, say, britishisms when writing a british character, but the fact that sometimes it doesn't even seem that the writer is aware that there's a culture other than their own. i mean, i can understand that interpersonal relationships between characters of different cultures are often a difficult thing to perceive and grasp (for example, the disgusting, abject, ridiculous humour of the british vs. the cynicism of american sense of humour; or america's uber-sincerity vs. australia's heavy reliance on sarcasm), but when dom thinks back to when his mom gives him a quarter to go to the corner store? that just really gets on my nerves. because the author knows that part of dom's childhood was in germany, and dom's family is actually british. do these american authors just not realise that there is an actual difference in both physical fact (eg. a quarter vs. a pound) and phrase and culture surrounding it? mom is not mum. the things from your childhood, the dialogue phrases you use every day, would not exist for people in other cultures. people who you are supposedly meant to be writing convincingly. there's nothing that jerks me sickeningly out of a fic more than realising that an author has written this story while thinking of these british, scottish, or australian characters with an american accent, conjuring up american histories for them.i guess i'm sick both of the way that in australian culture, anyway, american culture is elevated to the status that it's above australian culture, or all other culture, something which it perpetuates itself. i'm not saying i hate america. i just can't stand the way american culture portrays and considers itself superior to all other cultures, to the point where it considers all other cultures dismissable.
er... disclaimer: i'm not trying to attack any americans reading this; i know that not all americans are stupid and close-minded and i know there are stupid and close-minded people in australian society too. none of this has been written deliberately to cause offense; the things i've stated above do have a basis in reality for both me and many of my non-american peers. just calling it as i'm seeing it, folks.
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Sing out, sister.
And having Dom and Billy use Americanisms like "y'all" or "Want me to come with?" and, and... I'm sure there are craploads more. There's one other specific one that bugs the shit out of me when I encounter it, but I can't remember what it is. And yeah. Quarters. Having Cheetos and Ben & Jerry's in New Zealand. Filling up with gas. All the different names we all use for stuff. And I really don't think Dom would find Billy's accent incomprehensible, because if you're English you're surrounded by other British accents and would learn to understand them pretty damn quickly.
I mean, all of us have picked up *some* Americanisms, and that would include Brits as well - as you say, we can't help that because our culture is so heavily influenced by it. But I've never, never heard a British person say "y'all" and I grew up with an English parent and grandparents, watch way more English than US TV, and have English friends and colleagues.
Etc. Maybe they need another community? :) I know there are a lot of English and Scottish betas that help out authors to make their fics sound less Yankified.
*waits for someone to get outraged at me using the word Yankified to describe ALL AMERICANS, because. well. IT'S BEEN THAT KIND OF WEEK*
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But I type it on LJ.
Picked it up from Daisy, I believe.
Most people who *do* use the term "y'all" would be APPALLED to hear it described as Yankified because those Damned Yankees North of the Mason-Dixon have got NOTHING to do with the community-sense and love and suppport and courteous behavior indicated by the term.
It's an interesting discussion. I look forward to carrying it on, in person? I'm wondering what I'll sound like, to your ears, both you and hope. ANd will it be different as a result of me having spent the previous five weeks in Puerto Rico, speaking Spanish half the time?
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Speaking as an American, I find it JARRING when Dom asks his mom for a quarter as well.
But also speaking as an American? It would never have occured to me to check and see if there was another, more-appropriate-to-his-language term for "corner store."
This is one of the things that just drives me batty about the whole separated-by-a-common-language thing. Unless I can spend a few years in the culture in question, how am I to know the colloquialisms of that culture. I don't seek to be crass, intentionally, but I also cannot always catch my characters' errors.
American media is not only ubiquitous in locations outside America; it's also a problem of British media being quite rare, and Australian media being virtually nonexistent in the U.S.
Even Canadian and Mexican culture are difficult to find represented in the U.S. media, and geez.
I guess my message is, even well intentioned Americans suffer under the weight of the commercial media's AMERICAMERICAMERICA BIAS. I agree with your analysis above. I don't find accents which differ from my own particularly sexy, but I do find them fascinating. I find my culture's dominance in media highly limiting.
But...
...but it's also (*guilty*) sometimes nice to know that if I go travel the world, chances are I can find something that my kids will recognise (yep used that s on purpose) as something from home, something they know, something that makes them feel a little more okay about travelling the world with me.
just my tuppence?
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having travelled the would as a youth myself, i can recognise that urge, but i also think it can be overdone! like when in LA, we stayed in a precinct of hotels that consisted almost entirely of australians? we barely spoke to any americans.
and a few months ago i was on a tram travelling through glorious melbourne, city of gorgeous, tucked-away coffee nooks and polished-wood cafes and arcades and alleyways chock-full of tables and chairs, infused with the smell of fresh coffee, when i overhead an american tourist say to their travelling partner: "thank christ! a starbucks! i was worried they didn't have them here."
i know it's great to have reminders of home (travelling through europe, it was euphoric to find someone who spoke english with an australian accent), but i just can't understand the people who travel all over the world to 'soak up other cultures' and then eat at mcdonalds and starbucks more often than not.
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Anyway. Yes. Bye.
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There are, and on pay-tv as well, I think (or on certain pay TV channels, at least). Hence the wonderful practice of cutting a few minutes of certain American documentaries, reality shows, etc, so they can whack a few minutes of Georgie Parker or Jennifer Keyte in there "introducing" us to the show. That fills their Australian content quota without there having to be any Australian *content* at all! Gah.
The free trade agreement is going to be pretty crappy for a lot of industries in this country, alas :(
...
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(Anonymous) 2004-07-31 08:58 pm (UTC)(link)-Lindsey
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asidfasfn!!!! Hope, I'm sorry. I'M SORRY! I won't curse at your trolls anymore.
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pay tv here is just a re-hashing of the american music shows, heh.
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Yes, I am an American. I think the way our society has made us believe that "we're NUMBER ONE!" shit is stupid. I think television and the media have made our cracked out country the arbiter for popular lowbrow culture, and I avoid television as much as possible. Especially now that it is election season. Bleah.
Bad or NO research on a character or a locale is sloppy and lazy, and I'll stop reading something if the fic is full of inaccuracies. Dom asking his mother for a quarter is asinine, but so is the Uncle Tom-ish convention of writing Billy's voice in a phonetic patois- yeah, that sounds more authentic! Writing Elijah's voice has to be the most difficult of all since he's all mixed up now. :)
But yes, I'd encourage people to SEND THEIR FICS TO BETA, GOD DAMMIT! and to research what/where/who they're writing about and to remember that not everyone lives in the same place, and the USA is not the only place on Earth.
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the 'brash and offensive' is something that comes from years and years of having american culture both shoved down my throat and raised above all other cultures, i'm afraid! i'm offended by the effect it has in my own country, not by the people themselves who i know who speak in it. *licks
Writing Elijah's voice has to be the most difficult of all since he's all mixed up now.
i've played with the idea several times of phonetically writing out all the american accents in my fics, hee. i think i've actually written about american accents when writing from a british person's pov as well anyway.
Bad or NO research on a character or a locale is sloppy and lazy
i agree, but what gets to me most about that kind of thing is not just that it was done in the first place, but that it seems that people think it's perfectly acceptable, even preferable, to write it that way. someone comments below about how australian programs, books, etc, exported to america have had some of their key cultural references in them changed so americans 'understand it'. suggesting that they oughtn't even make an effort to understand or learn about a culture other than their own, something which we're basically forced to do.
vanessa and i have spoken a bit about making sites/guides etc for american writers who just don't have a clue about cultural, geographical and dialectic differences, but i'm not sure that people would bother using it.
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speaking as an non-american, i just have to say: in my experience this is so not true. i've only moved from new york state to maryland, and the differences i've found between up-state new yorkers and marylanders are just about as profound as the differences between upstate new yorkers and the irish. i think the fact that by and large americans all speak the same language and fly the same flag implies a homogeny that doesn't really exist. just because you don't need to produce your passport to cross a state line doesn't mean you haven't gone somewhere different.
there's a million things i want to say on this subject, but they all summarize as: there are negative stereotypes of americans, just as there are of every national, racial, religious etc group. and those stereotypes so easily color our interactions with each other. yes, it's easy to get prickly when a loud american complains about the lack of ice. about as easy as it is for americans to get prickly about the snotty irish girl (me) who walked away from her table leaving her tray and dishes just lying there, because where she comes from tables are bussed everywhere, including college dining halls and mcdonalds.
yes, there are things about the 'american character' that i don't like. but, god, there's also a hopefulness and a faith in the future and a willingness to believe that people can just turn their lives around that i never experienced in europe, and that makes me love these people so much.
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And, of course, the spellchecker tells me it's 'globaliZation'. Bah.
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It was so much fun to write Elijah because his language is familiar for me (briticisms included).
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I wince when I read the negative things you have to say about American accents, but it's not a surprise. For most people sexy=exotic, and there's nothing exotic about American culture; most of the world is way too familiar with it. And you're certainly not the first to associate a whole set of negative traits to someone's accent. I'm firmly convinced that the main reason Barack Obama (http://www.obamablog.com/index.php) is the hope and pride of the Democratic party is that he's a black guy who doesn't sound black, and thus is palatable to white America.
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thankyou for the advice. in discussions like this it's difficult for me (for most people, i think) to define for the reader the difference between overall problems with a culture, society, or attitude and the people (victims?) whom it is played out by.
i don't mean any of this as a personal offence, but it's all part of the issue that many americans don't even realise it's a problem - and i mean that in both readings; that this is going on at all and that it is actually a *problem*. in this whole discussion i'm talking about the bigger picture because more often than not not the fault of the individuals who perpetrate it; perhaps i shouldn't have used fanfiction as my apt example.
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Anyway, one night we were
a little drunksitting around the house talkingand drinking; well, not me per se, but the othersand our Australian friend mentioned he could fix something that was broken (we lived in a very .... broken house) if he had a spanner. My Russian roommate said, "What's a spanner?" So our Australian friend explained it to him. "Oh," said our Russian roommate. "What do you call an apple? What about a car?" And so on. Interesting conversation (made less so by my occassional, "Well, in Virginia, we called those ....."), but not one many of my co-workers at the time had.Americans = the Borg at times, and not all of us are happy about it. (I know I did not travel to Egypt so I could eat at Pizza Hut and drink Coke, but I could, if I wanted to; oh, the stories I have about the tour group I was with - they made me want to move to Scotland or Brazil or anyplace else.)
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it must get frustrating to be talked-down to like that. the repercussions of it here, though (ie. changing our cultural identities and signposts so 'americans don't have to think' when they watch our movies), are quite resentful.
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It does jar awfully when dialogue and references are not "in-culture" for a particular point of view. HP is terrific - there is a
And some things are very subtle. I've been living here for three years now, and I still ask people (read: the wifey) about slang and phrasing and whatnot. BUT conversely, I over-brit sometimes when it comes to writing americans, and so I think the best thing is to get someone of all dialects to beta. Ideally for lotrips there would be a dialect community, in which I could smack-down people for their crapness at NZ knowledge/slang/phrasing, and others could do likewise.
The point of this was: there are other communities that *correct* americans of their wayward errors. Just, er, not in lotrips.
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do you think it's worth creating one?
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This sort of thing has always irritated me -- possibly dating all the way back to 1969, when the headmaster of a school in Adelaide allowed some of my classmates to mark "center" as correct in our weekly spelling test, and then justified his decision on the basis that American culture would inevitably be an increasing influence over our lives in coming years.
I didn't realise quite how horribly prophetic that headmaster's comment had been until my father was writing his first book in the mid 1990s. He was horrified when he was told by someone evaluating his book for publication that he'd have to change the spelling of the word "gaol" to "jail" if it was ever to be published. Apparently no reader today is capable as reading the former as anything other than "goal". There was no way he could make this particular substitution, so he ended up substituting alternative words for "gaol" instead, which, when all is said and done, were less true to the characters he was writing about -- but at least they weren't as offensive to him as "jail" would have been -- my father's book is set in Adelaide in the 1940s, so using American spelling and words is inappropriate, and just plain wrong when you think about it seriously. And yet, when 'New Idea' published one of the discarded chapters from his book as a short story in their issue commemorating the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II, they took it upon themselves to convert the whole thing to American spelling. :(
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i think it's just always a bad idea to modify art and literature to suit the audience like that. like painting hamburgers over the last supper because people don't eat unleavened bread and wine for dinner in the contemporary western world any more! each world is chosen and crafted by the author, just as each colour is chosen deliberately by the artist. it shouldn't be changed for *any* culture. (and translation is always problematic, isn't it?)
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Disregarding Southern accents, I think American accents are just sort of...plain. British, Australian, Irish accents...they make me think of loopy, cursive writing, decorative or rushed, letters flowing into each other and short-cuts, double-crossing t's and words that run together. In comparison, American accents are like big block letters printed with a worn-down pencil. Stark and more than a little uncouth.
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i think the negative and obnoxious connotations it has for me comes from associating it with... well, with all of the above! the blanket of american media i've grown up with.
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Even diversity gets put into a package. We have an understanding of Australia here. It has something to do with Koalas tanning on the beach with superhip, croc hunting adventurers and bikinied surfer chicks. We have the Middle East here. It has something to do with oil selling, Jew hating, insane terrorists who hate us for our freedom. We have England here. It has something to do with football hooligans in tall fuzzy hats refusing to smile while they do drugs with Ewan McGregor.
Of course we love the diversity within our spectacular culture. Those black folks singing their rap tunes and gettin' the bling bling that is finally their due, and all those industrious asians who are so good at math, and all those wholesome white folks who bake apple pies and work their arse ( see I'm not completely ignorant of non-american slang) off to buy big wheels for the kiddies.
You shouldn't be mad at Americans for pushing their culture. You should pity us because we've already had our culture shoved down our throats. At least you all still have a chance if you quit buying our stuff.
*falls to the ground in exhaustion at having had to tax my American sheep mentality to think that deeply*
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i disagree. i don't think my stopping purchasing 'american' products or watching 'american' media will make much of a difference to the influence america has on my cultural experience - because in terms of products etc, australia has its own range of things, both material and food etc; and i am quite selective with the films i watch and watch them generally because they're films, not because they're *american* films, if you follow me. i very rarely watch television.
but i work and interact with the public and the government, and i go to university and have to interact with other students and academics and staff members... and basically, it's pretty obvious in my life that it's not the fact that aspects of american culture appear in australia via film or fast food chains, but that american culture is placed above australian culture (or any other western culture), revered and preferred. mainly because i think politically, and this has cultural run-off as well, the western world has been put into a position where it has to align itself with america or suffer. like i quoted above, "you're either with us or against us".
sure, those white pre-pubescent boys in the suburbs purchase the american style and brand of baggy trousers and overembellished bling, but they do it because they're the decorations of an *american* cultural trend - the unique african american history and culture. they don't adopt the culture because they've bought the pants.
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One of the great things about the Lotrips fandom, at least for me, is that I've had the opportunity to learn so much about several other cultures that I might not have pursued otherwise. I knew next-to-nothing about New Zealand before getting into the fandom, and only the broadest stereotypes about Australia. I've really enjoyed being able to connect with people from those places and others, and learn more by a sort of osmosis, since I'm not just reading a textbook or guidebook but rather picking up things from posts about everyday life. When I took a college course in International Studies last semester, I found myself perking up at the bits about Australia and New Zealand (and similarly, asking about the too-frequent absence of those countries in several of the discussions). It's helped me to feel like much less of an ignorant American (which I really hate), and even though I've unfortunately never left my country, I feel a bit more worldly.
I would fully support the creation of a community to help Lotrips writers with getting cultural and linguistic details right in their fics. And really, it wouldn't even necessarily have to be specifically for a fic - I wouldn't mind just being able to watch the community and learn on my own. Hopefully, it would catch on as well as the HP equivalent (I've forgotten its name), because god knows a lot of writers here (including myself) need it. And I do hope that you (and other Australians/New Zealanders/Brits/etc) realize that we don't mean to use it in a vaguely fetishistic way, to ooh and aah over the strange, exotic foreigners in the fandom with the funny accents or anything like that. I'm sure some will, but I'd like to think that the majority would be respectful and simply inquisitive.
Thank you for this post - judging by some of the responses (and by some of the unspoken responses I can only imagine hovering on the boundaries), there are more than a few Americans out there who needed a bit of a reality check.
My 2 ..er, insert proper coin type.. worth
I'm an American. Georgia, actually. (Yankified my arse! lol) Although now I live in Ok. I wasn't offended by your post. In fact, I do agree with most of it. Most Americans have no clue how much we overwhelm the rest of the world. I majored in Anthropology in school, so I have some concept of other cultures.
I ask my friends from various parts of the world tons of questions about their cultures all the time. I had a great Aussie friend come for a month long visit a couple of years ago. She loves American accents. I find that funny, 'cause I always thought Aussie & British dialects were much nicer than ours, By ours, I mean any dialects in the US. Although, I will say I love traditional southern to anything else here.
(oh- and traditional does not mean the abrasive country slang people like Jeff Foxworthy have. I mean the soft Southern speech people like my great-grandmother has.)
Eck- drifting. Sorry. The point is, most Americans don't realize what we are doing. And while I agree we ARE doing it, I don't think it is *all* our fault.
One post was about capitalism and how it isn't American culture that is the problem, but American products. I think you disagreed. I believe this person was right. If most of the TV shows are American, but must be because people are watching them. Let me explain. New shows premiere each fall here in the US. I HATE it when I find a new show I like and then it is gone by the next season. Why? Because its ratings were so low it was taken off the air. If NO one in Australia is *watching* the US shows, they would be taken off the air. Unfortunately, money makes the world go 'round. And if it isn't making money, it will be dropped.
(I may be a bit soapbox-y about this because it touches on my major point of rage in America- the 'its not my fault' 'not my responsibility' problem we have in the US.)
Is it America's fault that the number of people who watch US shows or buy US products is high enough in Australia that the these shows and products are still being played and bought? I don't think so.
I think it is a shame and wrong that native culture is being pushed out and the globalization of the world is 'American'- but I don't necessarily think that means its completely 'our' fault.
As for fic, that is a completely different thing. If you have a very British character- lets say HP's Severus Snape- screaming out things like 'What the hell is this shit? You asshole!' Pluuuuueeezzzeee. Let's say OUT OF CHARACTER!!!! Soo wrong. And I think if you are writing about a character from a place other than your own culture you should have enough respect for your work to get a beta that can check for any culture issues.
As for the 'corner store' thing. I would never have known this was inappropriate. But not because I don't care or am too stupid to think beyond my own culture- it is like I would never think to call the sky anything other than the sky. I'm not sure I can explain that any better.
Someone else posted about 'gaol' instead of 'jail'. I wish I could agree with this. I do. I sympathize with it, but I can't agree. Why? Because I've seen that word before and until this post I had NO idea it was another world for jail! I thought goal was spelled wrong and it was very confusing. This isn't a matter of us having different usage of words- that would be about a word we in the US simply do NOT have. Like.. 'holiday' and 'vacation'. We have both of these words, but we use them differently than people in Aus. or Eng. do. But we still have them. 'Gaol' simply isn't a world over here. It would be the same as someone leaving in French words in a story and expecting a non-French speaker to understand them.
And as far as spelling things one way or the other- I’m not a writer, but when I post if spellcheck doesn’t get it, then I won’t. I’m sure there are others like that, and they don’t spell things the ‘American’ way intentionally.