Clichéd ‘British’ tones are still the norm, but some changes are beginning to emerge.
There’s no logical reason for a character in a movie who is from ancient Rome or ancient Egypt to speak in a British accent. And yet, since basically the dawn of movies with sound, that’s been the default. The Queen’s English isn’t only the go-to for historical characters, but also villains, obviously… and indeed practically anyone who needs a bit of gravitas or a sinister undertone. Sometimes these accents are provided by actors who are actually from the United Kingdom, and other times they are not – a wonderful example being James Earl Jones’ Darth Vader voice, which will forever be remembered as “Loook, eye am yore faather!” At least we’ve ditched the “Mid-Atlantic accent,” so-called as it sounded like something that evolved in some spot in a parallel universe where the US East Coast and the outskirts of London border each other… but in this universe would be in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. This affected British accent was famously used by radio newscasters in America – and by most US movie stars since the first “talkies” arrived in 1927. The Mid-Atlantic or Transatlantic accent only fell out of style roughly following the end of the Second World War. Katharine Hepburn was born in Hartford, Connecticut in 1907, while Gregory Peck was born in 1916 in California. But watching most of either actor’s films you’d assume they were born in London… especially if you have no real idea of what people from London sound like.
When it comes to historical dramas or TV series, again, the de-facto speech pattern has been to go with British accents. Although a recent hit American Bible TV show called The Chosen has chosen to affect ‘Middle Eastern’ accents for main characters such as Jesus and his disciples but strangely, many of the Roman soldiers and officers speak in plain ‘American,’ and despite cognitively understanding that there’s no reason why a first-century Roman needs to speak English with a British accent… it’s still jarring. The accents in the TV show The Chosen are, it might be fair to say hit-and-miss, although, on the whole, they do bring a bit of a feeling of authenticity. After you get used to it, hearing the characters speak essentially the way a modern Israeli speaks English today fits quite well. The British accent stereotype is so well ingrained that it will probably take many decades to completely undo. Imagine watching Gladiator and hearing Russell Crowe intone, “Are you not entertained??” in an American-from-Ohio voice. It just wouldn’t work. But why? There’s no reason why… it’s just what we’re used to.
Even Middle-Earth and Westeros are British. The hobbits in The Lord of the Rings speak in what has been called a ‘rural Gloucestershire’ accent… except, of course, Frodo and Bilbo who are ‘notables’ and therefore speak with a more ‘proper’ British accent. To be fair, Lord of the Rings was written by an Englishman who was born in South Africa. Among the most amusing early attempts to break out of this stereotype was the 1991 action-adventure film Robin Hood Prince of Thieves starring Kevin Costner as Robin Hood. Bizarrely, considering Robin Hood is set in the British Isles, Costner does not affect a British accent and the effect is downright strange and wasn’t all that well received. The star of that movie arguably was the late Alan Rickman (Rickman passed away on January 14, 2016 – four days after British musical icon and sometime actor David Bowie). Rickman played Robin Hood’s villain with his wonderful native British accent, a wonderfully villainous voice he also showcased in Die Hard, and the Harry Potter series.
A few movies have offered varieties on the standard British accent that have been a nice twist. Sir Ben Kingsley (who was not, as some believe, born in India but rather the UK) does an awesome cockney accent in the film Sexy Beast, and all the bad guys in Guy Ritchie’s Snatch speak with beautifully degenerate cockney accents – and if we’re going to mention Snatch then Brad Pitt deserves recognition for his pretty much impossible-to-understand “UK-gypsy” accent. Stereotypes die hard, but there is change on the horizon. Sci-Fi has long been okay with American accents. It’s a bit imperialistic to imagine that the future will be dominated by Americans, but Star Trek (except of course for the French Jean Luc Picard, who speaks in a British accent) generally seems to hold that view. More recently the 2021 adaptation of Dune has both UK and US accents side by side and they meld well. It’s probably never going to be popular to have a Roman soldier speaking in a Texas twang, as was the case in the 1965 film The Greatest Story Ever Told when John Wayne as a Roman soldier stands at the crucifixion and drawls, “Shurrelee this maaan was thu Suun of Gaad.” But recent television shows such as The Chosen opting for faux ‘native’ accents is an interesting development that could lead to more directors being willing to try something other than BBC-speak.
