Rubbish!

The most memorable words of my freshman year came from my acting teacher: “Don’t think that you can impress me ... I’ve seen Helen Mirren, the greatest living actress in the world, perform in London from a front-row seat.” \nAside from the assumption that all acting students are prone to vain delusions like these, my beef with this piece of “advice” concerns the pervasive American habit of upholding the ideas, opinions and qualities of someone with a British accent above those of the slack-jawed everyman (i.e., you and me). \nThe veneration of Helen Mirren, however little her acting ability has to do with it, is understandable. English elocution is not only clearer and more resonant than the average American’s, it is more elegant and confident in its intonation – its sound evokes an appreciation for the language far less common on “our side of the pond.” Pop stars, sports heroes and our president are not exclusively at fault here.\nUpright, educated Britons can hardly be accused of taking their words for granted or abusing them to the extent we do, even when dishing out the slang that has endeared them to us. Laurence Olivier’s performance as Hamlet endures largely because the diction needed to speak and animate Shakespeare’s lines was a way of life for him. For Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, the stars of “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz,” the timing and placement of profanities peculiar to the British Isles comes just as naturally.\nWhile Helen Mirren’s displays on the stage and screen are by no means negligible, her fawning admirers (from the Academy Awards to my former professor) are not primarily concerned with talent, dramatic presence or even the sound of her voice. They are breathing new life into the stereotype that a national or regional dialect is synonymous with intelligence, sophistication, respectability – and sometimes superiority. \nAmericans can be dumb. So can the Brits. Neither country has a monopoly on idiocy. The difference lies in our perceptions and presumptions. \nThe perception that the British, on the whole, sound more articulate and more intelligent than we do has at least some truth to it. They are more likely to modulate their tone, pitch, and inflection for the sake of correctness. Their subtleties and proprieties of speech continue to influence us.\nTheir actors also hail from an entirely different set of traditions than ours, which were redefined by Marlon Brando (who, in “A Streetcar Named Desire,” proved that great acting and speaking were two clearly different things).\nI ran into the presumption while interviewing to work at a local video store. The manager was interested to know I lived in Kent, England for a year. “Is that where all this is coming from?” she asked, gently mocking my frenetic hand gestures, a nervous tic. “Because everything over there, I hear, is more ... sophisticated ...” She then trailed off in the way most people do when they start to realize they don’t know what they’re talking about.