Lazy, lazy, lazy

Just seen 'One If By Clam, Two If By Sea'. All very funny and all, but I really would have thought that the writers were above resorting the tired old cliched stereotype of the British. Ha ha! Bad teeth! Ha ha! Every person has either a very posh accent, or a 19th Century Cockerneee accent. Ha ha! Warm lager! Ha ha! All British women are ugly! Ha ha! The term 'British' only ever used to refer to people from England! Or indeed, London! Oh, my aching sides!

It's as if one person from the US visited London for a week in 1896, went back home, told everyone he knew of his experiences, and from that one man, the entire nation formed their opinion of the British for the next 105 years.

It's bad enough when the Simpsons get Harry Shearer to do his 'British' accent (which sounds like someone doing a bad Australian accent - how come he did a perfectly good accent in Spinal Tap, but can't any more? Eh?), but I'm pretty surprised that someone with the intelligence of Hugh Laurie put up with it. Or indeed, that his character in Family Guy sounded uncannily like - yes! - someone doing a bad Australian accent.

Here's a quick checklist of common misconceptions of the UK:

Everyone is English. - Apart from the Scots, Northern Irish and Welsh (meta-point: there's never a representation of Welsh people on US TV. That's because no-one in the US knows what a Welsh accent sounds like, and they can't work it out from listening to Tom Jones, Anthony Hopkins and Catherine Zeta-Jones.)

Everyone is from London. - Or (very occasionally) from 'the North' (cue a bad approximation of a Yorkshire/Manchester hybrid accent).

Everyone has bad teeth. - No, just the Queen Mother.

Everyone loves the Royal family. - No. The Queen Mum's 101st birthday was the other day. Very, very few people gave a flying shit.

Beer is warm. - No, it isn't. We know how to drink alcohol. We do it more often than everyone else. Oh, apart from the Irish (flame guard on).

Everyone has either a plummy posh accent or a cockerneeeeee drawl. - No. The UK has a rich and varied selection of regional variances in speech. So there.

All British women are ugly. - No, they aren't. Although, we'd think the same of your women if the only US programming we saw was the Jerry Springer show.

All British people are intelligent. - Ha ha! Dear me, no! Come over here and watch ITV for a week, read the Daily Mail, listen to the reaction over the Brass Eye Special, you'll soon see the error of your ways.

Never mind, eh? Let's hope this gets a few people posting. First person to mention:

(a) "The War". (b) "The French". (c) "Soccer vs. American Sports - which is better".

loses the argument by default.

Cheers, Mark X --- http://www.gamebroth.co.uk - The gaming site that cares, dammit. http://www.familyguy.da.ru - UK Family Guy: The Uncut Transcripts. http://www.xbollox.com/family.htm - The same, sans annoying frame.

That WAS the joke....everyone was a complete stereotype....like every other character on Family Guy. Too bad it went over your head.

On Sun, 5 Aug 2001 14:16:39 -0500, "Sweet Zombie Jesus" wrote:

Greg is correct dude. They were just having fun., that's all. FG is an equal opportunity offender. Everyone get's roasted sooner or later. This isn't the history channel, its a comedy cartoon show.

Geez!

I don't think you took this episode in quite the right spirit...yeah they played on some old British stereotypes for laughs, but Family Guy makes fun of dumb Americans more than any other race, so it's not like they singled out the Brits for punishment. Witness Peter's reaction on finding a British pub..."We're in a gay bar!". The joke is on him, not the Brits. I thought it was really funny how they took these British stereotypes, but exaggerated them to an insane level, like Nigel with his ridiculous teeth and mannerisms. Its funny precisely because the stereotype is so old and dated. Well that's my take anyway.

[email] (Ickyboy1) wrote in message news:...

Yeah, but I'd say that it's been done too often (by other programmes), tongue-in-cheek or not. At least think up some new ways to take the piss out of us. Like (to refer to Family Guy), the British chap stating that most British comedy relied on men dressing as women. Funny and original (the writers had possibly been watching League of Gentlemen, I suppose). I agree that Family Guy handled the subject a lot more intelligently than (say) The Simpsons or Married With Children did. Although the latter did feature Bill Oddie, so forgiven.

Maybe I was just in a bad mood because I'd been browsing other newsgroups where tedious UK/US flame wars had been going on. To redress the balance, here's some lazy, stupid and idiotic points British morons use to 'diss' the States, and the people therein.

All Americans are stupid. - Except clearly not. Anyone refusing to use items invented by Americans would soon be dead.

All Americans are egotistical maniacs. - No. But the loudest ones on certain newsgroups are. And matched for largeness of ego and smallness of brain by their European counterparts, normally.

WORLD Series? WORLD Series? Even though only American teams are in it? - Possibly a new one to any Americans reading this, but it's a fantastically laboured point made by certain Brits trying to prove a humourous point about sport. Don't worry, anyone with any intelligence on this side of the pond knows that there are non-American teams in it. Probably. I'm not bothered, to be honest.

The War, eh? You Americans... (cut hours of drivel) - Another newsgroup favourite. Newsgroup rule #1: anyone trying to prove a point by mentioning a war, deserves to be kicked in the knee. Very hard.

Ah, to hell with it. I'm far too tired to carry on making vague anti-racism points to a load of people who probably agree with me in principle anyway. And seeing as I'm not even English, I shouldn't even be so miffed. But anyway.

Oh, at least they didn't wheel out Eric 'I'll do anything to remain famous' Idle for the British voices, I suppose.

Oh, and (last point) is it me, or was Hugh Laurie doing the Schwarzenegger voice in the action period drama. It sure sounded like him.

Cheers, Mark X --- http://www.gamebroth.co.uk - The gaming site that cares, dammit. http://www.familyguy.da.ru - UK Family Guy: The Uncut Transcripts. http://www.xbollox.com/family.htm - The same, sans annoying frame.

Quick replies out of order:

Not sure, but it was a great scene. Though not related directly, it made me think about all of the wonderful upper class English homosexuality jokes in "Stiff Upper Lips", a great movie if anyone's interested...

Or Michael Caine, for that matter. :)

Yeah, screw it, let's all get along and hoist a beer in the opposing country's honor this evening. :)

--Shi Bao Nai

England is a country, not a race. The inhabitants of England came from Northern Germany and Southern Denmark over 1,000 years ago and they were called the Angles,Saxons,and Jutes... Making fun of a country has nothing to do with race.

I'm sick of people who try to use the word "Race" and "Racism" for everything without even knowing what it means.

On 06 Aug 2001 17:41:46 GMT, [email] (Ickyboy1) wrote:

Just like the old "i'm not gay, I'm just British" line

--- To send email replace "antispam" with "sprint"

Given the accurate portrayal of babies and dogs in the show, I find it abominable that they would treat Englishmen that way. ;) There is another important point, though, in that American entertainment tends to shy away from anything that might possibly offend any minority group, which at this point in history includes a lot of different people. For instance, it's culturally acceptable to make fun of Canadians, but not Mexicans. With the British, perhaps we're just an angry adolescent nation that's rebelling against one of our parent countries. ;)

Quick note: Both "Notting Hill" and "The Replacements" featured Rhys Ifans with his great Welsh accent, and one of those movies was extremely popular over here. (The other, not so much, but it did have the great line when the coaches were talking about recruiting Ifans as a kicker: "Is he in shape?" "By Welsh standards.") If the Welsh incarnation of Riverdance ever emerges from the collective creative unconscious, then everyone will be thrilled to learn words that contain far more than the Recommended Daily Allowance of ls, ws, and fs,

Granted, it's not TV, but then again, there's not very many British characters on TV shows produced here, and the British imports that are successful tend to be those that emphasize a lot of your listed misconceptions: Absolutely Fabulous, Monty Python, Are You Being Served?, etc., or appeal to old people and English teachers, like any BBC production based on the works of Agatha Christie, Jane Austen, or Charles Dickens.

A lot of British comedy has been wildly popular over here, but then there are many notable performers who haven't been as successful, like Spike Milligan, Billy Connolly, and Jasper Carrot, who are mainly unheard of in the States (yes, we all know Billy Connolly from his role in the TV series Head of the Class, but few know anything about his great banjo playing/folk singing and hilarious standup routines). With Carrot, his humor is great, but a lot of it tends to play on regional eccentricities that don't carry over as well to an American audience. Likewise, I'm sure British people wouldn't get as much of a kick out of a Kansas comedian telling jokes about those damned Nebraskans. :)

As regards point B, I still love the South Park episode with Pip, the British boy, in which Cartman keeps thinking Pip is French and says things like, "Damnit, French people piss me off!"

Don't get me wrong, I don't disagree with your post. Americans have a lot of weird ideas when it comes to the British, but the British are guilty as well. There's more to America than New York and Los Angeles (with a scattering of heavily armed cowboys in between), and not all Americans speak in the flat Midwestern tone used in TV and films.

In closing, "Can't we all just get along?" :)

--Shi Bao Nai

<snip>

In fact, most Canadians like it when we're featured in American shows like Family Guy, regardless of how we're portrayed. The stupider it is, the funnier. Case in point Peter's comments on 'the more you know' about "Those Freeloading Canadians...Canada sucks" or something to that effect... hilarious!! Or the Simpsons episode where they go to Tokyo and the game show features "Canadians who are deathly afraid of scorpions." "Ohh. oww that hurts eh?" "Hahaha those crazy canucks" The point is, and there is a point, why the hell would anyone be offended by the way something is portrayed in Family Guy? Perhaps these people just haven't watched the show enough to realize that everything and everybody is open to criticism. It's rather ironic and totally hypocritical that one would laugh at all the jokes about Indians, Communists, and the disabled, and then take offence to a joke about the British, just because that person's British. If you can't laugh at yourself, you're pretty much just a stuck up snotty brit.

Shi Bao Nai wrote in message news:...

Hurrah. Just that last one sentence has made we want to go out and rent The Replacements - a straight-to-video title over here. That, and the fact that there's an outside chance the soundtrack might feature TMBG's 'We're The Replacements'.

Growing up near a very touristy part of North Wales, it was always a delight to hear people from all over the world try to pronounce the likes of Llanuwchllyn, Llanfairtnghornwy and Llanddewi Rhydderch. Not so much fun having to address letters to such places, however.

Diolch, Mark X --- www.gamebroth.co.uk - The gaming site that has no amusing sig. www.xbollox.com - Family Guy Uncensored. And stuff.

Sorry, the music pretty much sucked. The movie is very formulaic and predictable, though it has a great deal of completely wasted talent. Ifans is worth the rental, though, especially the scene in the locker room with the reporters. :) I don't know if it's a known cliche over in Europe--the use of European "soccer" players to serve as kickers on American football teams. They really don't participate in any other part of the game (weighing less than half of what the other average players weigh), and aren't ever particularly popular or well known. Adam Sandler even had an excellent Bruce Springsteen-style song about "The Lonesome Kicker" with some unpronounceable Czech name.

I remember reading the Lloyd Alexander books when I was young, and marveling at the bard named "Fflewddur Fflam" (my spelling's probably way off). Welsh is also the source for one of my favorite Scrabble words, "cwm". It's some sort of mountain lake, right?

--Shi Bao Nai

Shi Bao Nai wrote in message news:...

Haven't really heard of any well known European footballers doing this, but didn't Tony Meola (the goalkeeper of the US side that hilariously tonked England 2-0 in the early 90's) do this. Not very successfully, if I recall correctly, but I'm very susceptible to be corrected.

If my recollection of Welsh lessons in school is correct, it's Welsh for 'valley'. Plus, it sounds vaguely rude, which is always a bonus.

Cheers, Mark X --- www.gamebroth.co.uk - The gaming site that has no amusing sig. www.xbollox.com - Family Guy Uncensored. And stuff.

[email] (Mark X) wrote in message news:...

Everyone's a victim of stereotyping, Americans included. No one really thinks these things are as common or widespread as they are portrayed in comedy.

[email] (Mark X) wrote in message news:...

A half hour animated sitcom didn't give an indepth, intelligent look at modern England? It used hoary stereotypes to generate humor? The hell you say!! I shall scurry to the internet this very minute to register my disgust!

[email] (Scot) wrote in message news:...

Me-chuffing-ow. I was just a bit disappointed that for a show that tends to really 'push the envelope' (man), falling back onto a lazy, clich�d, done-a-million-times-before stereotype, was just a bit too easy, that's all.

But with good councilling, a selection of prescription drugs and a little time, I've learned to live with it. Now if you'll excuse me... (dons cape and top hat, grabs cane, and turns to leave before realising that all he's doing is reinforcing a received view of people who reside in the British Isles. Turns and shakes fist comically.) Bah!

Cheers, Mark X --- www.gamebroth.co.uk - The gaming site that has no amusing sig. www.xbollox.com - Family Guy Uncensored. And stuff.

The Butler on 'Upstairs Downstairs' was Welsh, so is Terry Jones from Monty Python. So there!

The War!

Alex

Mark X wrote in message news:[email]...