March 14, 2010
Auto coloniZation
Michael Smythe posted 10 Mar 2010, 03:08 PM / edited 11 Mar 2010, 09:58 AM
John’s review of He Reo Aroha includes the following question:
(I realise I may be alone in having my delight in their music spoiled by their compulsive and apparently obligatory recourse to American accents when singing their original and sincerely-felt love songs in English. Do they sing the Maori songs with American accents too, just because they are pop songs?)
It will not surprise readers to know that I, who share the same genes as John, am also distracted and bewildered by this phenomenon. Are we alone? Does anyone care? Does it matter? What is the source of this self-imposed cultural colonization (z intentional)? It’s not something we can (or should) legislate for, but I suggest it is evidence of insecurity and desperate ‘me-too’ behaviour.
Is it significant that the Beatles became more successful after they dropped the American accent and allowed their own Liverpudlian voice to peek through? Did Split Enz’ lack of an American accent contribute to their success?
The Topp Twins are an interesting case – they built their career on country music, then created some great Kiwi characters, but can only sing with an American accent – unless they are signing in Maori. Then there was The Flight of the Conchords – proudly Kiwi when speaking but compulsively American when singing.
It’s a puzzlement. Someone should do a doctoral thesis on this fascinating topic!
John Smythe posted 10 Mar 2010, 03:15 PM / edited 6 Dec 2011, 02:25 PM
I do not agree that The Flight of the Conchords are “compulsively American when singing”. They only do that when they are singing “pastiche” – likewise the odd song with an English accent. Most of the time they are naturally Kiwi, celebrating their point of difference.
Michael Downey posted 11 Mar 2010, 07:35 AM
When I listen to a Fleetwood Mac album, they sound American and they sound good. When I listen to a Rolling Stones (who are English), album, they sound American, but it still sounds good. I liked the first Front Lawn Album- they’re New Zealanders and they sounded like New Zealanders. Good for them. I liked that record by The Mint Chicks. They’re a new Zealand band but to me they actually sound English, however maybe they sound a little more “Kiwi” on certain tracks…doesn’t matter, I still liked the record.
My point is that artists make stylistic choices. As long as I like the music, I don’t care. Besides, there are grey areas.- a local band may use American vowels, for example, but their own accent is still recognizable. Bands and Artists sound the way they do as the result of their infleunces, their origin, and possibly even if they have a speech impediment. There’s no “Auto-Colonization” by stealth or otherwise, no conspiracy, no desperate “me too(ness)”. Stuff just happens and stuff just sounds the way it does as a result. I would suggest that it happens all over the world, not just here. And not everyone sounds the same as a result. If every band here used broad kiwi accents it would drive me mad- same as if they all sounded American.
“Is it significant that the Beatles became more successful after they dropped the American accent and allowed their own Liverpudlian voice to peek through? Did Split Enz’ lack of an American accent contribute to their success?”
It really didn’t happen like that with the Beatles, Michael. They sounded American before, during and after their success. Sure, on certain songs they sounded quite English, but then again on certain ones they sounded quite American. In general, their vowels sounded American though. Actually, at a press conference in th U.S in 1964 a reporter asked “Why do you sound English when you talk, but American when you sing? And I think they replied something along the lines of -“So we can make more money!”
The Beatles success, both in the U.K and then worldwide was due to hard work, talent, timing and marketing.
And its funny you should mention Split Enz and their lack of an American accent contributing to their success- didn’t work for them in America though, did it?
John Smythe posted 11 Mar 2010, 09:51 AM / edited 6 Dec 2011, 02:26 PM
I agree it happens all over the world, Michael D – The Rolling Stones are a great example. I do not agree that it is always a stylistic choice.
When children pretend to be rock-singers, holding their hair brushes in front of the bedroom mirror, they automatically sing in American accents. Likewise musicians who do cover versions of American pop-songs. They are imitating. Fair enough.
My assertion is that in some cases this habit continues because the artists don’t mature enough to own their own identities. They think it only sounds ‘real’ in American in the same way actors used to think they had to sound upper-class English to play Shakespeare (even when it was set in Denmark, Venice, Italy, etc). In shows like Te Reo Aroha, where identity and authenticity matters, and feeling alienated in America is part of the show, it seems especially important to think this question through and find an authentic voice for the true (and original) love songs.
As for the “make more money” rationale, I think the world is beginning to move on. If Flight of the Conchords had pretended to be American the minute they stepped offshore, they would never have achieved distinction. It would have been laughable for Slim Dusty to sing his Australian country songs in an American accent (Topp Twins please note). The Lonesome Buckwhips have proved that we too can use our own voices (not “broad kiwi accents” by the way) to sing great original songs that sound fantastic.
Yes the Americans persist in taking top quality ‘foreign’ films and TV shows and remaking them as American. We should pity them. They are the poorer for denying themselves access to the wider world. And maybe we should fear the xenophobia this engenders. What we don’t need to do, is buy into their ‘cultural imperialism’ and disenfranchise ourselves in the process.
Dane Giraud posted 11 Mar 2010, 10:57 PM
… the Artists don’t mature enough to own their own identities…? So speaking or singing with a tight jaw with flat vowels stuck in the back of the throat is a sign of artistic maturity?
Any time I have been called upon to sing on stage I’ve had some pretty handy musical directors or experienced singers around to support me. ALL of them have warned of the traps of our accent – how it struggles to reach the back of theatres and invariably needs modifying. Due to the tight jaw synonomous with our accent, any trained singer would sound markedly different due to their extended mouth shape.
And your attack on American arts culture is incredibly misguided. What exactly are they denying themselves? Are you insinuating we have a more diverse arts scene that the U.S? Are you insinuating they are a more insular culture than we are?!
Michael Smythe posted 12 Mar 2010, 10:24 AM
Crikey – the cultural cringe is alive and well! If God invented the American accent to make us heard when singing how come those who use that accent mostly sing through amplifiers?
Dane Giraud posted 12 Mar 2010, 12:26 PM
Volume is a small part of it. Diction and placement is what helps the voice travel. Directors will often ask for less volume more clarity.
The culteral cringe idea is a fallacy, Michael. It never existed. It was created by apologists to excuse substandard work.
John Smythe posted 12 Mar 2010, 03:30 PM / edited 12 Mar 2010, 03:35 PM
Jeeze Dane … If you are too young to have experienced the cultural cringe*, count yourself lucky but let me tell you, it happened. Why else did radio announcers, TV news readers and newsreel narrators adopt those absurd accents, ‘more English than the English’? The ‘colonies’ have long since moved on from that but let’s not forget, lest we repeat.
The classic Kiwi accent – think Barry Crump, Lynn of Tawa, Fred Dagg, Billy T James, Rena Owen (in Once Were Warriors and What Becomes of the Broken Hearted), The Topp Twins (speaking) – is actually well placed and produced for singing. It is easier for a Kiwi (and an Australian, for that matter) to become an opera singer than for an upper class English person to because such English voices are placed well back in the throat. We naturally use the mouth and nasal resonators, although some of us don’t articulate well with jaws, lips and tongue.
By ‘culture’ I mean way of life, customs, means of self-expression, etc (not just the ‘arts scene’). Of course there are many Americans travelling abroad and broadening their minds. But when at home – and for the vast majority that stay at home – their movie and television screens, radios and other sound media rarely allow them to hear non-American voices. I say they are the poorer for that by way of saying I am not suggesting we should aspire to such insularity.
All I am espousing is the importance of our telling our stories and singing our songs in our own voices (which are not necessarily ‘broad Kiwi’). And I believe that claiming the right and developing the capacity to do that has everything to do with maturity for each individual, community and nation.
*cultural cringe a New Zealand attitude characterised by deference to the cultural achievements of other countries and the disparagement of New Zealand culture (New Zealand Oxford Paperback Dictionary, OUP, 1998, p186).
Simon Taylor posted 12 Mar 2010, 04:49 PM / edited 12 Mar 2010, 05:52 PM
John: [re: cultural cringe] Why else did radio announcers, TV news readers and newsreel narrators adopt those absurd accents, ‘more English than the English’?
You are possibly referring to RP, received pronunciation, while making recourse to RI, received ideas.
Best,
Simon Taylor
John Smythe posted 12 Mar 2010, 05:26 PM
No Simon, RP is relatively neutral. I mean the extremely elocuted voices we used to hear in the 50s and before which used to raise the eyebrows of British.
Dane Giraud posted 12 Mar 2010, 05:38 PM / edited 12 Mar 2010, 05:51 PM
We hardly need to aspire to insularity, John.
nik smythe posted 12 Mar 2010, 11:54 PM / edited 12 Mar 2010, 11:57 PM
I agree about the concern of xenophobia the American remakes engender… John doesn’t imply they aren’t capable of originality, rather that they can’t relate to any other cultures. I realise this sounds generalistic, because it is… America has produced a great deal of my own favourite original works. But there’s no purpose I can imagine to remaking Life On Mars or Outrageous Fortune except to make their audience able to accept it. It recalls Pat Boone’s whitebread covers of leading black rock’n’roller’s hits in the 50s…
As for accents, there’s no real defence for the use of American accents. What is the point? We are us, not them. Let’s be us. Go on!
Dane Giraud posted 13 Mar 2010, 09:47 AM / edited 13 Mar 2010, 09:47 AM
The example you give of Americans remaking foreign shows as proof of their
xenophobia is incorrect.
If an American producer saw and liked Outrageous Fortune and felt
passionate about bringing it to American T.V. screens, I’m sure he
could buy it for $500 an episode and screen it over there.
Problem – How is he making money off that?
If he repackages it for a domestic audience, he gets a production
budget i.e. millions and millions of dollars to make it. It’s
business, guys, no conspiracy. We do it here all the time. Every
reality show you see on TV is a rip-off, we could screen the English
versions, or we could get $70, 000 an ep to make it ourselves.
Simon Taylor posted 13 Mar 2010, 12:24 PM / edited 13 Mar 2010, 05:53 PM
No John, RP is not relatively neutral. It is exactly in the field of cultural politics opened up by this topic that its neutrality ought to be called into question. RP, or Standard English, was instituted as a standard in NZ broadcasting particularly in reaction to both the excessive ‘Englishness’ of accent, to which John refers, and to the excesses of ‘Kiwiness’ – upward inflection, for example – (which becomes in John’s credo, ‘broad Kiwi’): it was, in other words, an institutional standard and thereby ‘guilty’ of bias – an accent towards the Queen’s English, and HM’s England.
RI, however, would refer to the assumption of and that there exists some sort of moral highground allowing one to make such confessions of faith as John’s
All I am espousing is the importance of our telling our stories and singing our songs in our own voices (which are not necessarily ‘broad Kiwi’). And I believe that claiming the right and developing the capacity to do that has everything to do with maturity for each individual, community and nation.
The received idea of a moral highground is there to circumvent the necessity for critical enquiry and, regardless of the potential for embarrassment in its public espousal by an erstwhile critic, is programmatic not of ‘Auto coloniZation’ but of neoliberalism, from which we may derive neocolonialism.
It is in neocolonialism that ‘our’ complicity becomes optative: i.e. we choose; we are victims of culture as mediated by capital as much as our elected representatives, allowing them to invoke – again – the National Debt as the reason, which a reasonable citizenry ought to accept, for funding cuts in the arts. We become complicit; in other words, we espouse the importance of our telling our stories and singing our songs in our own voices (which are not necessarlly ‘ours’). John’s credo serves the neoliberal programme as well as the spoiler on his delight at He Reo Aroha,
compulsive and apparently obligatory recourse to American accents when singing their original and sincerely-felt love songs in English
Or rather, the implication drawn from that spoilt delight: maturity, for “each individual, community and nation” [sic], has “everything to do” with “claiming the right and developing the capacity” to assert political identity – no? – in the minutiae of cultural expression. To use ‘our’ accent has become a moral issue, on which the highground can be assumed/presumed (according to RI), with cutlural political ramifications, rather than a cultural politcal issue with a particular and complex past and provenance.
If there were an argument here, and not a programme of belief, an overt espousal of ideology, RI, Auto coloniZation (or auto-sodomy), it would collapse under the weight of considering our cultural export. I mean, somebody should tell Peter Jackson, Jane Campion and Richard Taylor that they wallow in IMMATURITY for not “telling our stories and singing our songs in our own voices”!
Best,
Simon Taylor
Corin Havers posted 13 Mar 2010, 02:26 PM / edited 13 Mar 2010, 02:45 PM
If an accent is being adopted deliberately for comic reasons or because the song’s lyrics or style cry out for a particular accent that’s fine, obviously. Many Irish songs fall into all these categories, for instance. But if an NZer’s natural speaking accent morphs for no apparent reason into American when they sing, we are right to doubt their sincerity. Singing with an American accent and trying to speak posh British have long been two classic signs of the cultural cringe, and I agree with others above that it’s well time we saw the back of both of them.
John Smythe posted 13 Mar 2010, 02:43 PM / edited 13 Mar 2010, 02:46 PM
While I find most of your latest serving indigestible, Simon, the final dollop cannot go unremarked: “I mean, somebody should tell Peter Jackson, Jane Campion and Richard Taylor that they wallow in IMMATURITY for not ‘telling our stories and singing our songs in our own voices’!”
Come on: you’re attacking me for something I have never said. They tell the stories they choose to film in the appropriate voices. When it comes to Hobbits et al, Jackson chose not to devise a Hobbiton dialect for Lord of the Rings but let each actor speak in his own voice. And where have I said anything that suggests Campion’s Bright Star should have been made in Kiwi accents? Ridiculous.
I am very aware that our constant exposure to the full spectrum of American, British and Australian voices, and the requirement for our actors to perfect them if they wish to work on stage in relatively well-paid productions, means we are eminently employable when it comes to working in international films and TV series (although getting a speaking role in such a production is rare). That is a plus.
The question of how NZ actors should approach international plays is also clear for me, although the answer is rather complex.
If it is translated from Russian, Norwegian, Spanish, etc., or (as with many Shakespeare plays) set in a foreign land but written in English, it makes no sense for us to use anything other than our own voices in playing it (Sir Tyrone Guthrie articulated that principle for our part of the world in 1970, much to the horror of conservative subscribers in Sydney and Melbourne).
I generally oppose, however, relocating English, America and Australian plays in New Zealand because it tricks us into thinking this is ‘our story’ when it has come from a different cultural context. I applaud NZ actors who are able to rise to the challenge of achieving authenticity in a different voice, and am irritated when actors from elsewhere are not able to reciprocate when they act in NZ plays (e.g. the time an American actor played a Moa in an American accent). But if it comes down to a choice between striving and failing to get the accent or dialect right, and finding an authentic voice for the play, I’d rather ‘own voices’ were used.
Thank you, Corin, for your concisely expressed contribution.
Simon Taylor posted 13 Mar 2010, 03:33 PM
Oh, it’s not a criticism, John. Thank you for your opinion.
Best,
Simon Taylor
Dane Giraud posted 13 Mar 2010, 04:55 PM
I thank you, Simon. You made some very good points. It is political, and it’s frightening that many in the arts community don’t catch this dimension. We have a strange arts community, possibly the only one in the world where the nation’s electricians and refrigeration engineers are actually more insightful?!
John Smythe posted 13 Mar 2010, 05:08 PM
Just heard an international singer at WOMAD expressing concern at the ‘world music’ concept, given each piece of music comes from somewhere specific and has its own reason for being. He sounded pretty politically switched on and I don’t think he moonlights as an electrician or refrigeration engineer.
Dane Giraud posted 13 Mar 2010, 05:36 PM
You’re a smart man, John. I can’t believe you could so grossly mis-read my post.
John, I think you should address some of the points Simon brought up. Is not the concept of ‘telling our stories’ just a cynical, fatuous slogan used to justify the very existence of our funding bodies?
John Smythe posted 13 Mar 2010, 05:43 PM
Frankly, Dane, I have much more important and rewarding things to do that attempt to decode Simon’s dense academic treatise (has he really got nothing better to do than pick over my words in search of a suspect thought or five?) or reply to your posts, which I find abusive and destructive of any attempt to conduct a rational debate on this topic. I’ve said all I want to say and would only repeat myself if I were to continue. Others are very welcome to keep this alive.
Michael Smythe posted 13 Mar 2010, 05:46 PM / edited 13 Mar 2010, 05:53 PM
[The ball, lads, play the ball!]
Q: What is the highest selling New Zealand record of all time?
A: How Bizarre – OMC 1995
Pauly ‘sang’ his song in his own voice. His brother Tony is quoted as saying “How Bizarre was the type of person he was. The lyrics didn’t really mean anything, it was his comment on life around him, what he saw.” Sure the backing vocals had an American accent, but the video showed Pauly and his mates interacting with American dominated popular culture from their own position in the South Pacific. Was this personal authenticity in any way related to the commercial success of the record?
Aaron Alexander posted 13 Mar 2010, 06:12 PM
“When it comes to Hobbits et al, Jackson…let each actor speak in his own voice”
Thereby finally liberating Sean Astin from years of having to put on a Californian dialect and allowing him to finally express his native Cornish soul on the big screen.
It’s more convincing when you are arguments are less transparently false, John.
As far as Jamie McCaskill is concerned, how many plays has he written and performed in now? How many of his own songs has he sung? He strikes me as someone tremendously assured of his own creative voice. If he makes a choice to sing in a particular way, I have ample reason to believe he’s excercising his conscious artistic will, and I respect that. I don’t believe he is in any way shackled as a performer, somehow lacking in the confidence to be 100% himself on stage, speaking and singing his own work.
The moment Jamie starts changing what he does because a commentator literally tells him what his artistic voice ‘should’ sound like, that’s when I’ll start cringing.
Michael Downey posted 13 Mar 2010, 07:30 PM
Regarding O.M.C-
I don’t think you can say it was definitely related to that. The history of Rock/Pop music is littered with examples of artists bursting with personal authenticity, (as well as catchy songs) but who then failed to fire. “How Bizzare” was a catchy song with elements of personal authenticity that charted really well. But it could just as well have stiffed. Timing, radio play and record industry support are factors that are just as important, if not more so- which is why a really crap, derivative song can be a hit.
Re Dane’s point. Phrases like “Telling our stories”, “Our Voices” and that little pearler that I saw someone use in an online article recently, “Listening to Us” are indeed slogans. Empty, partronising slogans that sound like they were made up by a committee in Wellington -because they probably were. They are all too recognizable, and are closely related to what Steve Braunais once refferred to as “The flat, inhuman code of governmental policy documents.”
nik smythe posted 13 Mar 2010, 07:57 PM / edited 13 Mar 2010, 11:49 PM
I don’t believe anyone’s saying anyone ‘should’ perform any certain way, but as with anything if something seems lacking to an audience member they will search for explanations. So if a song sounds in some way disingenuous, and the singer has a fake accent, it’s quite easy to draw the parallel. Michael S’s original post here is not moot; it is a series of questions. Important ones.
People getting their hackles up about it to my mind undermine the defences they offer, behaving as though it’s some kind of outrage that the debate is (again) being raised at all. I appreciate Michael D’s argument given he’s simply offering a considered rebuttal with no evidence of ego-trip style gainsaying. In fact his point reinforces mine above: If it’s good, we don’t mind. If it’s substandard or confusing, we will ask questions and search for answers to satisfy our own philosophies.
To briefly address the off-topic sideline: Of course xenophobia is the extreme end of the syndrome suggested by the remaking of foreign works. I’m aware many countries do it. The reality show example does nothing to my opinion as they generally constitute the most unwatchable garbage on our screens. Of course it’s a business, which only makes the whole debate entirely political; the classic age old battle between art and commerce. But that’s another tangent… I don’t believe such activity is based on any conspiracy to develop xenophobia and/or insulate American cultures against the rest of the world’s’ but it’s still a potential outcome worthy of examination.
As for ‘telling our stories’ I don’t understand yet why the encouragement to do so is patronising?
Michael Downey posted 13 Mar 2010, 08:15 PM / edited 13 Mar 2010, 08:16 PM
Because it sounds patronising. We don’t need to be told to ‘Tell our own stories.” We either do or we don’t.
Another Braunais quote- “Our sories, our stories, our endless bloody stories!”
nik smythe posted 13 Mar 2010, 11:46 PM
What’s the matter with our stories exactly?
John Smythe posted 14 Mar 2010, 07:07 AM
How strange is this stew we’ve got ourselves into …
Point of clarification, Michael D. Sometimes we are known to tell our own stories. Why? Because it is as natural to humans as breathing. Even the fabled Braunias does it. And when we do – be it in drama or song – does in make any sense not to do so in our own voices?
That is the question: one of simple logic expressed in simple language. Why get in a stew about that?
Dane Giraud posted 14 Mar 2010, 08:19 AM
Michael D never said we shouldn’t speak in ‘our own voices’ John. What he started off saying was that an artist should speak in whatever voice they choose. You originally questioned a young lady’s recent singing in an American accent. All he is saying is that it is not a question. I am in agreement. I don’t nessacariy like the sound of our accent, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t use it myself or would ban the use of it in theatrical productions! What I resent is the implication it SHOULD be used. As do the rest of the irrational, abusive posters on this thread.
Simon Taylor posted 14 Mar 2010, 10:19 AM / edited 14 Mar 2010, 03:20 PM
The problem I see here is that this is a private site pretending to perform a public service. It does, could do it better, but the tension is there: a conflict of interests. Not a P.P.P. but a P.P.P.P. – where one of the P’s is for pretension. Unfortunately it does not stand for professionalism. This, despite the natty red hypertext-linked underlined nametags that the Smythes have, that refer to their ‘professional’ status, but only inhouse. Because it is a matter of pretense. And pretension when it comes to theatre-reviewing or moderating an onsite forum. It makes the latter a mess of family loyalties and unprofessional attitudinizing, where questioning John’s integrity is seen as an ad hominem attack.
“Meanwhile John is the owner, managing editor and senior critic for the website Theatreview: the New Zealand Performing Arts Review & Directory”
The Smythes seems to believe their own hype, and have taken on a self-importance which is indeed quite strange, possibly absurd, often ridiculous. I see a couple of ads in the side bar but I imagine that they are – or at least John is – rewarded in self-publicity and promotion. Perhaps not. The circle is however complete, since the ‘stew’ (John has his food metaphors) encourages visits to this site, which additional traffic is encouraging for advertisers.
Meanwhile, Michael has his sporting metaphors, however inane: I have played the ball here, Oh Smythes. Michael introduced this topic in directly academic terms. John won’t read my academic treatise? Why participate in this forum? If Michael was being jocular, how patronising to his readership (and sexist his metaphor, Lads!)! And how pretentious.
Corin Havers posted 14 Mar 2010, 01:01 PM
Dane, you’ve just proved my point. Anyone who ‘over-plays an NZ accent’ is being just as phony as someone who adopts an American one – unless the part calls for it, of course. And I agree, radio plays very often offend in this way.
Michael Smythe posted 10 Mar 2010, 03:08 PM / edited 11 Mar 2010, 09:58 AM
John’s review of He Reo Aroha includes the following question:
(I realise I may be alone in having my delight in their music spoiled by their compulsive and apparently obligatory recourse to American accents when singing their original and sincerely-felt love songs in English. Do they sing the Maori songs with American accents too, just because they are pop songs?)
It will not surprise readers to know that I, who share the same genes as John, am also distracted and bewildered by this phenomenon. Are we alone? Does anyone care? Does it matter? What is the source of this self-imposed cultural colonization (z intentional)? It’s not something we can (or should) legislate for, but I suggest it is evidence of insecurity and desperate ‘me-too’ behaviour.
Is it significant that the Beatles became more successful after they dropped the American accent and allowed their own Liverpudlian voice to peek through? Did Split Enz’ lack of an American accent contribute to their success?
The Topp Twins are an interesting case – they built their career on country music, then created some great Kiwi characters, but can only sing with an American accent – unless they are signing in Maori. Then there was The Flight of the Conchords – proudly Kiwi when speaking but compulsively American when singing.
It’s a puzzlement. Someone should do a doctoral thesis on this fascinating topic!
John Smythe posted 10 Mar 2010, 03:15 PM / edited 6 Dec 2011, 02:25 PM
I do not agree that The Flight of the Conchords are “compulsively American when singing”. They only do that when they are singing “pastiche” – likewise the odd song with an English accent. Most of the time they are naturally Kiwi, celebrating their point of difference.
Michael Downey posted 11 Mar 2010, 07:35 AM
When I listen to a Fleetwood Mac album, they sound American and they sound good. When I listen to a Rolling Stones (who are English), album, they sound American, but it still sounds good. I liked the first Front Lawn Album- they’re New Zealanders and they sounded like New Zealanders. Good for them. I liked that record by The Mint Chicks. They’re a new Zealand band but to me they actually sound English, however maybe they sound a little more “Kiwi” on certain tracks…doesn’t matter, I still liked the record.
My point is that artists make stylistic choices. As long as I like the music, I don’t care. Besides, there are grey areas.- a local band may use American vowels, for example, but their own accent is still recognizable. Bands and Artists sound the way they do as the result of their infleunces, their origin, and possibly even if they have a speech impediment. There’s no “Auto-Colonization” by stealth or otherwise, no conspiracy, no desperate “me too(ness)”. Stuff just happens and stuff just sounds the way it does as a result. I would suggest that it happens all over the world, not just here. And not everyone sounds the same as a result. If every band here used broad kiwi accents it would drive me mad- same as if they all sounded American.
“Is it significant that the Beatles became more successful after they dropped the American accent and allowed their own Liverpudlian voice to peek through? Did Split Enz’ lack of an American accent contribute to their success?”
It really didn’t happen like that with the Beatles, Michael. They sounded American before, during and after their success. Sure, on certain songs they sounded quite English, but then again on certain ones they sounded quite American. In general, their vowels sounded American though. Actually, at a press conference in th U.S in 1964 a reporter asked “Why do you sound English when you talk, but American when you sing? And I think they replied something along the lines of -“So we can make more money!”
The Beatles success, both in the U.K and then worldwide was due to hard work, talent, timing and marketing.
And its funny you should mention Split Enz and their lack of an American accent contributing to their success- didn’t work for them in America though, did it?
John Smythe posted 11 Mar 2010, 09:51 AM / edited 6 Dec 2011, 02:26 PM
I agree it happens all over the world, Michael D – The Rolling Stones are a great example. I do not agree that it is always a stylistic choice.
When children pretend to be rock-singers, holding their hair brushes in front of the bedroom mirror, they automatically sing in American accents. Likewise musicians who do cover versions of American pop-songs. They are imitating. Fair enough.
My assertion is that in some cases this habit continues because the artists don’t mature enough to own their own identities. They think it only sounds ‘real’ in American in the same way actors used to think they had to sound upper-class English to play Shakespeare (even when it was set in Denmark, Venice, Italy, etc). In shows like Te Reo Aroha, where identity and authenticity matters, and feeling alienated in America is part of the show, it seems especially important to think this question through and find an authentic voice for the true (and original) love songs.
As for the “make more money” rationale, I think the world is beginning to move on. If Flight of the Conchords had pretended to be American the minute they stepped offshore, they would never have achieved distinction. It would have been laughable for Slim Dusty to sing his Australian country songs in an American accent (Topp Twins please note). The Lonesome Buckwhips have proved that we too can use our own voices (not “broad kiwi accents” by the way) to sing great original songs that sound fantastic.
Yes the Americans persist in taking top quality ‘foreign’ films and TV shows and remaking them as American. We should pity them. They are the poorer for denying themselves access to the wider world. And maybe we should fear the xenophobia this engenders. What we don’t need to do, is buy into their ‘cultural imperialism’ and disenfranchise ourselves in the process.
Dane Giraud posted 11 Mar 2010, 10:57 PM
… the Artists don’t mature enough to own their own identities…? So speaking or singing with a tight jaw with flat vowels stuck in the back of the throat is a sign of artistic maturity?
Any time I have been called upon to sing on stage I’ve had some pretty handy musical directors or experienced singers around to support me. ALL of them have warned of the traps of our accent – how it struggles to reach the back of theatres and invariably needs modifying. Due to the tight jaw synonomous with our accent, any trained singer would sound markedly different due to their extended mouth shape.
And your attack on American arts culture is incredibly misguided. What exactly are they denying themselves? Are you insinuating we have a more diverse arts scene that the U.S? Are you insinuating they are a more insular culture than we are?!
Michael Smythe posted 12 Mar 2010, 10:24 AM
Crikey – the cultural cringe is alive and well! If God invented the American accent to make us heard when singing how come those who use that accent mostly sing through amplifiers?
Dane Giraud posted 12 Mar 2010, 12:26 PM
Volume is a small part of it. Diction and placement is what helps the voice travel. Directors will often ask for less volume more clarity.
The culteral cringe idea is a fallacy, Michael. It never existed. It was created by apologists to excuse substandard work.
John Smythe posted 12 Mar 2010, 03:30 PM / edited 12 Mar 2010, 03:35 PM
Jeeze Dane … If you are too young to have experienced the cultural cringe*, count yourself lucky but let me tell you, it happened. Why else did radio announcers, TV news readers and newsreel narrators adopt those absurd accents, ‘more English than the English’? The ‘colonies’ have long since moved on from that but let’s not forget, lest we repeat.
The classic Kiwi accent – think Barry Crump, Lynn of Tawa, Fred Dagg, Billy T James, Rena Owen (in Once Were Warriors and What Becomes of the Broken Hearted), The Topp Twins (speaking) – is actually well placed and produced for singing. It is easier for a Kiwi (and an Australian, for that matter) to become an opera singer than for an upper class English person to because such English voices are placed well back in the throat. We naturally use the mouth and nasal resonators, although some of us don’t articulate well with jaws, lips and tongue.
By ‘culture’ I mean way of life, customs, means of self-expression, etc (not just the ‘arts scene’). Of course there are many Americans travelling abroad and broadening their minds. But when at home – and for the vast majority that stay at home – their movie and television screens, radios and other sound media rarely allow them to hear non-American voices. I say they are the poorer for that by way of saying I am not suggesting we should aspire to such insularity.
All I am espousing is the importance of our telling our stories and singing our songs in our own voices (which are not necessarily ‘broad Kiwi’). And I believe that claiming the right and developing the capacity to do that has everything to do with maturity for each individual, community and nation.
*cultural cringe a New Zealand attitude characterised by deference to the cultural achievements of other countries and the disparagement of New Zealand culture (New Zealand Oxford Paperback Dictionary, OUP, 1998, p186).
Simon Taylor posted 12 Mar 2010, 04:49 PM / edited 12 Mar 2010, 05:52 PM
John: [re: cultural cringe] Why else did radio announcers, TV news readers and newsreel narrators adopt those absurd accents, ‘more English than the English’?
You are possibly referring to RP, received pronunciation, while making recourse to RI, received ideas.
Best,
Simon Taylor
John Smythe posted 12 Mar 2010, 05:26 PM
No Simon, RP is relatively neutral. I mean the extremely elocuted voices we used to hear in the 50s and before which used to raise the eyebrows of British.
Dane Giraud posted 12 Mar 2010, 05:38 PM / edited 12 Mar 2010, 05:51 PM
We hardly need to aspire to insularity, John.
nik smythe posted 12 Mar 2010, 11:54 PM / edited 12 Mar 2010, 11:57 PM
I agree about the concern of xenophobia the American remakes engender… John doesn’t imply they aren’t capable of originality, rather that they can’t relate to any other cultures. I realise this sounds generalistic, because it is… America has produced a great deal of my own favourite original works. But there’s no purpose I can imagine to remaking Life On Mars or Outrageous Fortune except to make their audience able to accept it. It recalls Pat Boone’s whitebread covers of leading black rock’n’roller’s hits in the 50s…
As for accents, there’s no real defence for the use of American accents. What is the point? We are us, not them. Let’s be us. Go on!
Dane Giraud posted 13 Mar 2010, 09:47 AM / edited 13 Mar 2010, 09:47 AM
The example you give of Americans remaking foreign shows as proof of their xenophobia is incorrect.
If an American producer saw and liked Outrageous Fortune and felt passionate about bringing it to American T.V. screens, I’m sure he could buy it for $500 an episode and screen it over there.
Problem – How is he making money off that?
If he repackages it for a domestic audience, he gets a production budget i.e. millions and millions of dollars to make it. It’s business, guys, no conspiracy. We do it here all the time. Every reality show you see on TV is a rip-off, we could screen the English versions, or we could get $70, 000 an ep to make it ourselves.
Simon Taylor posted 13 Mar 2010, 12:24 PM / edited 13 Mar 2010, 05:53 PM
No John, RP is not relatively neutral. It is exactly in the field of cultural politics opened up by this topic that its neutrality ought to be called into question. RP, or Standard English, was instituted as a standard in NZ broadcasting particularly in reaction to both the excessive ‘Englishness’ of accent, to which John refers, and to the excesses of ‘Kiwiness’ – upward inflection, for example – (which becomes in John’s credo, ‘broad Kiwi’): it was, in other words, an institutional standard and thereby ‘guilty’ of bias – an accent towards the Queen’s English, and HM’s England.
RI, however, would refer to the assumption of and that there exists some sort of moral highground allowing one to make such confessions of faith as John’s
All I am espousing is the importance of our telling our stories and singing our songs in our own voices (which are not necessarily ‘broad Kiwi’). And I believe that claiming the right and developing the capacity to do that has everything to do with maturity for each individual, community and nation.
The received idea of a moral highground is there to circumvent the necessity for critical enquiry and, regardless of the potential for embarrassment in its public espousal by an erstwhile critic, is programmatic not of ‘Auto coloniZation’ but of neoliberalism, from which we may derive neocolonialism.
It is in neocolonialism that ‘our’ complicity becomes optative: i.e. we choose; we are victims of culture as mediated by capital as much as our elected representatives, allowing them to invoke – again – the National Debt as the reason, which a reasonable citizenry ought to accept, for funding cuts in the arts. We become complicit; in other words, we espouse the importance of our telling our stories and singing our songs in our own voices (which are not necessarlly ‘ours’). John’s credo serves the neoliberal programme as well as the spoiler on his delight at He Reo Aroha,
compulsive and apparently obligatory recourse to American accents when singing their original and sincerely-felt love songs in English
Or rather, the implication drawn from that spoilt delight: maturity, for “each individual, community and nation” [sic], has “everything to do” with “claiming the right and developing the capacity” to assert political identity – no? – in the minutiae of cultural expression. To use ‘our’ accent has become a moral issue, on which the highground can be assumed/presumed (according to RI), with cutlural political ramifications, rather than a cultural politcal issue with a particular and complex past and provenance.
If there were an argument here, and not a programme of belief, an overt espousal of ideology, RI, Auto coloniZation (or auto-sodomy), it would collapse under the weight of considering our cultural export. I mean, somebody should tell Peter Jackson, Jane Campion and Richard Taylor that they wallow in IMMATURITY for not “telling our stories and singing our songs in our own voices”!
Best,
Simon Taylor
Corin Havers posted 13 Mar 2010, 02:26 PM / edited 13 Mar 2010, 02:45 PM
If an accent is being adopted deliberately for comic reasons or because the song’s lyrics or style cry out for a particular accent that’s fine, obviously. Many Irish songs fall into all these categories, for instance. But if an NZer’s natural speaking accent morphs for no apparent reason into American when they sing, we are right to doubt their sincerity. Singing with an American accent and trying to speak posh British have long been two classic signs of the cultural cringe, and I agree with others above that it’s well time we saw the back of both of them.
John Smythe posted 13 Mar 2010, 02:43 PM / edited 13 Mar 2010, 02:46 PM
While I find most of your latest serving indigestible, Simon, the final dollop cannot go unremarked: “I mean, somebody should tell Peter Jackson, Jane Campion and Richard Taylor that they wallow in IMMATURITY for not ‘telling our stories and singing our songs in our own voices’!”
Come on: you’re attacking me for something I have never said. They tell the stories they choose to film in the appropriate voices. When it comes to Hobbits et al, Jackson chose not to devise a Hobbiton dialect for Lord of the Rings but let each actor speak in his own voice. And where have I said anything that suggests Campion’s Bright Star should have been made in Kiwi accents? Ridiculous.
I am very aware that our constant exposure to the full spectrum of American, British and Australian voices, and the requirement for our actors to perfect them if they wish to work on stage in relatively well-paid productions, means we are eminently employable when it comes to working in international films and TV series (although getting a speaking role in such a production is rare). That is a plus.
The question of how NZ actors should approach international plays is also clear for me, although the answer is rather complex.
If it is translated from Russian, Norwegian, Spanish, etc., or (as with many Shakespeare plays) set in a foreign land but written in English, it makes no sense for us to use anything other than our own voices in playing it (Sir Tyrone Guthrie articulated that principle for our part of the world in 1970, much to the horror of conservative subscribers in Sydney and Melbourne).
I generally oppose, however, relocating English, America and Australian plays in New Zealand because it tricks us into thinking this is ‘our story’ when it has come from a different cultural context. I applaud NZ actors who are able to rise to the challenge of achieving authenticity in a different voice, and am irritated when actors from elsewhere are not able to reciprocate when they act in NZ plays (e.g. the time an American actor played a Moa in an American accent). But if it comes down to a choice between striving and failing to get the accent or dialect right, and finding an authentic voice for the play, I’d rather ‘own voices’ were used.
Thank you, Corin, for your concisely expressed contribution.
Simon Taylor posted 13 Mar 2010, 03:33 PM
Oh, it’s not a criticism, John. Thank you for your opinion.
Best,
Simon Taylor
Dane Giraud posted 13 Mar 2010, 04:55 PM
I thank you, Simon. You made some very good points. It is political, and it’s frightening that many in the arts community don’t catch this dimension. We have a strange arts community, possibly the only one in the world where the nation’s electricians and refrigeration engineers are actually more insightful?!
John Smythe posted 13 Mar 2010, 05:08 PM
Just heard an international singer at WOMAD expressing concern at the ‘world music’ concept, given each piece of music comes from somewhere specific and has its own reason for being. He sounded pretty politically switched on and I don’t think he moonlights as an electrician or refrigeration engineer.
Dane Giraud posted 13 Mar 2010, 05:36 PM
You’re a smart man, John. I can’t believe you could so grossly mis-read my post.
John, I think you should address some of the points Simon brought up. Is not the concept of ‘telling our stories’ just a cynical, fatuous slogan used to justify the very existence of our funding bodies?
John Smythe posted 13 Mar 2010, 05:43 PM
Frankly, Dane, I have much more important and rewarding things to do that attempt to decode Simon’s dense academic treatise (has he really got nothing better to do than pick over my words in search of a suspect thought or five?) or reply to your posts, which I find abusive and destructive of any attempt to conduct a rational debate on this topic. I’ve said all I want to say and would only repeat myself if I were to continue. Others are very welcome to keep this alive.
Michael Smythe posted 13 Mar 2010, 05:46 PM / edited 13 Mar 2010, 05:53 PM
[The ball, lads, play the ball!]
Q: What is the highest selling New Zealand record of all time?
A: How Bizarre – OMC 1995
Pauly ‘sang’ his song in his own voice. His brother Tony is quoted as saying “How Bizarre was the type of person he was. The lyrics didn’t really mean anything, it was his comment on life around him, what he saw.” Sure the backing vocals had an American accent, but the video showed Pauly and his mates interacting with American dominated popular culture from their own position in the South Pacific. Was this personal authenticity in any way related to the commercial success of the record?
Aaron Alexander posted 13 Mar 2010, 06:12 PM
“When it comes to Hobbits et al, Jackson…let each actor speak in his own voice”
Thereby finally liberating Sean Astin from years of having to put on a Californian dialect and allowing him to finally express his native Cornish soul on the big screen.
It’s more convincing when you are arguments are less transparently false, John.
As far as Jamie McCaskill is concerned, how many plays has he written and performed in now? How many of his own songs has he sung? He strikes me as someone tremendously assured of his own creative voice. If he makes a choice to sing in a particular way, I have ample reason to believe he’s excercising his conscious artistic will, and I respect that. I don’t believe he is in any way shackled as a performer, somehow lacking in the confidence to be 100% himself on stage, speaking and singing his own work.
The moment Jamie starts changing what he does because a commentator literally tells him what his artistic voice ‘should’ sound like, that’s when I’ll start cringing.
Michael Downey posted 13 Mar 2010, 07:30 PM
Regarding O.M.C-
I don’t think you can say it was definitely related to that. The history of Rock/Pop music is littered with examples of artists bursting with personal authenticity, (as well as catchy songs) but who then failed to fire. “How Bizzare” was a catchy song with elements of personal authenticity that charted really well. But it could just as well have stiffed. Timing, radio play and record industry support are factors that are just as important, if not more so- which is why a really crap, derivative song can be a hit.
Re Dane’s point. Phrases like “Telling our stories”, “Our Voices” and that little pearler that I saw someone use in an online article recently, “Listening to Us” are indeed slogans. Empty, partronising slogans that sound like they were made up by a committee in Wellington -because they probably were. They are all too recognizable, and are closely related to what Steve Braunais once refferred to as “The flat, inhuman code of governmental policy documents.”
nik smythe posted 13 Mar 2010, 07:57 PM / edited 13 Mar 2010, 11:49 PM
I don’t believe anyone’s saying anyone ‘should’ perform any certain way, but as with anything if something seems lacking to an audience member they will search for explanations. So if a song sounds in some way disingenuous, and the singer has a fake accent, it’s quite easy to draw the parallel. Michael S’s original post here is not moot; it is a series of questions. Important ones.
People getting their hackles up about it to my mind undermine the defences they offer, behaving as though it’s some kind of outrage that the debate is (again) being raised at all. I appreciate Michael D’s argument given he’s simply offering a considered rebuttal with no evidence of ego-trip style gainsaying. In fact his point reinforces mine above: If it’s good, we don’t mind. If it’s substandard or confusing, we will ask questions and search for answers to satisfy our own philosophies.
To briefly address the off-topic sideline: Of course xenophobia is the extreme end of the syndrome suggested by the remaking of foreign works. I’m aware many countries do it. The reality show example does nothing to my opinion as they generally constitute the most unwatchable garbage on our screens. Of course it’s a business, which only makes the whole debate entirely political; the classic age old battle between art and commerce. But that’s another tangent… I don’t believe such activity is based on any conspiracy to develop xenophobia and/or insulate American cultures against the rest of the world’s’ but it’s still a potential outcome worthy of examination.
As for ‘telling our stories’ I don’t understand yet why the encouragement to do so is patronising?
Michael Downey posted 13 Mar 2010, 08:15 PM / edited 13 Mar 2010, 08:16 PM
Because it sounds patronising. We don’t need to be told to ‘Tell our own stories.” We either do or we don’t.
Another Braunais quote- “Our sories, our stories, our endless bloody stories!”
nik smythe posted 13 Mar 2010, 11:46 PM
What’s the matter with our stories exactly?
John Smythe posted 14 Mar 2010, 07:07 AM
How strange is this stew we’ve got ourselves into …
Point of clarification, Michael D. Sometimes we are known to tell our own stories. Why? Because it is as natural to humans as breathing. Even the fabled Braunias does it. And when we do – be it in drama or song – does in make any sense not to do so in our own voices?
That is the question: one of simple logic expressed in simple language. Why get in a stew about that?
Dane Giraud posted 14 Mar 2010, 08:19 AM
Michael D never said we shouldn’t speak in ‘our own voices’ John. What he started off saying was that an artist should speak in whatever voice they choose. You originally questioned a young lady’s recent singing in an American accent. All he is saying is that it is not a question. I am in agreement. I don’t nessacariy like the sound of our accent, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t use it myself or would ban the use of it in theatrical productions! What I resent is the implication it SHOULD be used. As do the rest of the irrational, abusive posters on this thread.
Simon Taylor posted 14 Mar 2010, 10:19 AM / edited 14 Mar 2010, 03:20 PM
The problem I see here is that this is a private site pretending to perform a public service. It does, could do it better, but the tension is there: a conflict of interests. Not a P.P.P. but a P.P.P.P. – where one of the P’s is for pretension. Unfortunately it does not stand for professionalism. This, despite the natty red hypertext-linked underlined nametags that the Smythes have, that refer to their ‘professional’ status, but only inhouse. Because it is a matter of pretense. And pretension when it comes to theatre-reviewing or moderating an onsite forum. It makes the latter a mess of family loyalties and unprofessional attitudinizing, where questioning John’s integrity is seen as an ad hominem attack.
“Meanwhile John is the owner, managing editor and senior critic for the website Theatreview: the New Zealand Performing Arts Review & Directory”
The Smythes seems to believe their own hype, and have taken on a self-importance which is indeed quite strange, possibly absurd, often ridiculous. I see a couple of ads in the side bar but I imagine that they are – or at least John is – rewarded in self-publicity and promotion. Perhaps not. The circle is however complete, since the ‘stew’ (John has his food metaphors) encourages visits to this site, which additional traffic is encouraging for advertisers.
Meanwhile, Michael has his sporting metaphors, however inane: I have played the ball here, Oh Smythes. Michael introduced this topic in directly academic terms. John won’t read my academic treatise? Why participate in this forum? If Michael was being jocular, how patronising to his readership (and sexist his metaphor, Lads!)! And how pretentious.
As for our own stories, own voices, I liked your comment Aaron, and Michael D. This is how I put it in a letter to our Prime Minister in 2000, subsequently posted on Square White World:
“As that seminal statement of nationalistic kitsch and puerility puts it – “To tell our own stories in our own words.”
“This pious proprietaryness obviously counterindicates the complete pervasion of the commercial agenda in the cultural sphere, yet, strangely, it manifests the same ideological pietism with which the issue and problem of free-market economics is currently handled in the arts. The implications of the latter includes the evaporation into the market miasma of cultural as distinct from commercial value, along with the deliquescence, thinning and final evaporation of cultural identity, in general, and national identity, in particular. As a faith followed without an understanding of its motives, meaning or implications, the ideology being practised while free-market policy is being mouthed results in banality and hypocrisy.”
As far as singing our own songs in our own voices is concerned, perhaps we should follow the example of our current PM: our songs would then be shorter, for lacking vowels.
Best,
Simon Taylor
Corin Havers posted 14 Mar 2010, 10:27 AM
Dane Giraud – I can’t find an implication here that we all speak with NZ accents, just the suggestion that it’s wise not to adopt someone else’s accent just because we feel it might give us more authority. Performers who do risk being dismissed as phony and ashamed of who they really are. The plea is for authenticity and confidence, that’s all.
Michael Downey posted 14 Mar 2010, 10:27 AM
Of course we “tell our own stories” I have, you have, many of my friends have. That is what is happening when I see a New Zealand play, read a New Zealand poem or even watch something like Sensing Murder. Sometimes I love it and other times I want to scream.
But the phrase itself , (and ones similar to it like “Our Voices, Our Country “and “Sounds like Us”) seem to have only emerged in the last ten years or so, entering the public discourse and crowding particularly thickly around things like Government sponsored media campaigns and funding documents.
And I don’t like it. Because it sounds like I am four years old and am being asked to sit down on the mat and tell a little story. Or, if it is used as a confirmation, that we have all sat around the fireside with our cocoa and teddy bears and told our lovely stories. It is usually accompanied (if it is an electronic media campaign) by a moronic, childlike voiceover. This is what Braunias was parodying.
That is why R.N.Z’s “Sounds like Us” campaign failed so miserably a couple of years ago. It was well considered and well meaning, (and this was confirmed to me by a R.N.Z employee) but it sounded preachy and self-conscious and people hated it- especially Kim Hill!
It is simple logic, expressed in simple language, you’re right- perhaps that is part of my problem with it. It is stating the bleeding obvious. It is a slippery concept, I accept, and a generalistic one that has been out there for a few years now- for instance no one used it to describe those seminal, harrowing films Sleeping Dogs and Smash Palace. Those works spoke for themselves.
Dane Giraud posted 14 Mar 2010, 11:46 AM
Performers who do risk being accused of being phoney by you maybe Corin, but I feel that most unfair. Over-playing a NZ accent (try most Radio NZ plays! I have never heard an actual Kiwi pronouce Bloody, Bill-Uddy! Wasn’t he one of the Goodies?) is more phoney is it not? If performing Shakespeare in R.P. is considered phoney how would performing it in a NZ accent be any more real?! Add to this that theatre is a construction anyway and you expose that this is all just a political argument, not artistic argument at all.
Michael Smythe posted 14 Mar 2010, 12:08 PM / edited 14 Mar 2010, 11:05 PM
I fully accept the legitimancy of the cringe created by phrases like ‘telling our own stories’. If I may be permitted to draw a parallel (since Simon finds the use of metaphors distracting) – it echoes the reaction to the Wellywood sign. We wince at the notion of Wellington being saddled with a try-hard, me-too sign with a short shelf life. But that does not mean we do not value the enormous contribution that Wellington’s film industry makes to economic, social and cultural [dangerous word?] growth. It’s just that we want to present ourselves as engaging in this global industry in our own way, not as a pale imitation of the dominant player.
So here is an interesting question. Are those who are not distracted when a New Zealand actor presenting a New Zealand work changes nationality when shifting from the spoken voice to the singing voice supporters of the Wellywwod sign?
Simon – I can’t quite bring myself to apologise for being a Smythe or to worry that it might upset you. I am a designer who has written quite a lot about New Zealand design and the same issues arise – although the global design ‘accent’ has been European or Scandinavian rather than American. I find discussions aboout identity interesting – as it was on Q+A this morning. Maybe being an identical twin has made issues of identity loom larger. I hope we can rise above a point scoring bun-fight. (Oops, that metaphor insinuated itself in spite of your efforts to raise my awareness.)
nik smythe posted 14 Mar 2010, 12:36 PM / edited 14 Mar 2010, 12:40 PM
To state some more obvious, it’s a matter of opinion. Why am I not patronised by a pithy slogan? Because if they think I’m a four year old who needs hands-on coaching that’s ultimately their problem. But perhaps it’s these reactions my controversial surname that’s trained me not to take other peoples’ hang-ups personally.
I have no parochial agenda here; I can’t conceive any purpose to back up my relatives on the basis of any kind of gain. What do you suppose we Smythes acheive on occasions where we agree? Money? Political clout? Social status? Get real.
Sleeping Dogs, Smash Palace… Great great works (The latter remains my favourite kiwi flick). Not made to any specific cultural form as such yet instrumental in forming the identity of our film industry. And did Mr. Donaldson ever make anything half as good in Hollywood? Has Mr. Jackson made a better film than Heavenly Creatures? HAs Mr. Murphy surpassed the Quiet Earth? Tamahori Once Were Warriors? (etc) Nope. Doesn’t prove anything but increases my desire for authentic homegrown work because it generally tends to be better, historically. Of course there are misfires such as Under the Mountain, but the best told stories are still ours.
nik smythe posted 14 Mar 2010, 12:39 PM
It just occured to me that the biggest issue for me with Under The Mountain (the film obviously) is it’s obvious attempt to be manufactured in a kind of Hollywood-meets-Dr Who style. It’s our story, but it’s not in our voice.
Corin Havers posted 14 Mar 2010, 01:01 PM
Dane, you’ve just proved my point. Anyone who ‘over-plays an NZ accent’ is being just as phony as someone who adopts an American one – unless the part calls for it, of course. And I agree, radio plays very often offend in this way.
Michael Smythe posted 10 Mar 2010, 03:08 PM / edited 11 Mar 2010, 09:58 AM
John’s review of He Reo Aroha includes the following question:
(I realise I may be alone in having my delight in their music spoiled by their compulsive and apparently obligatory recourse to American accents when singing their original and sincerely-felt love songs in English. Do they sing the Maori songs with American accents too, just because they are pop songs?)
It will not surprise readers to know that I, who share the same genes as John, am also distracted and bewildered by this phenomenon. Are we alone? Does anyone care? Does it matter? What is the source of this self-imposed cultural colonization (z intentional)? It’s not something we can (or should) legislate for, but I suggest it is evidence of insecurity and desperate ‘me-too’ behaviour.
Is it significant that the Beatles became more successful after they dropped the American accent and allowed their own Liverpudlian voice to peek through? Did Split Enz’ lack of an American accent contribute to their success?
The Topp Twins are an interesting case – they built their career on country music, then created some great Kiwi characters, but can only sing with an American accent – unless they are signing in Maori. Then there was The Flight of the Conchords – proudly Kiwi when speaking but compulsively American when singing.
It’s a puzzlement. Someone should do a doctoral thesis on this fascinating topic!
John Smythe posted 10 Mar 2010, 03:15 PM / edited 6 Dec 2011, 02:25 PM
I do not agree that The Flight of the Conchords are “compulsively American when singing”. They only do that when they are singing “pastiche” – likewise the odd song with an English accent. Most of the time they are naturally Kiwi, celebrating their point of difference.
Michael Downey posted 11 Mar 2010, 07:35 AM
When I listen to a Fleetwood Mac album, they sound American and they sound good. When I listen to a Rolling Stones (who are English), album, they sound American, but it still sounds good. I liked the first Front Lawn Album- they’re New Zealanders and they sounded like New Zealanders. Good for them. I liked that record by The Mint Chicks. They’re a new Zealand band but to me they actually sound English, however maybe they sound a little more “Kiwi” on certain tracks…doesn’t matter, I still liked the record.
My point is that artists make stylistic choices. As long as I like the music, I don’t care. Besides, there are grey areas.- a local band may use American vowels, for example, but their own accent is still recognizable. Bands and Artists sound the way they do as the result of their infleunces, their origin, and possibly even if they have a speech impediment. There’s no “Auto-Colonization” by stealth or otherwise, no conspiracy, no desperate “me too(ness)”. Stuff just happens and stuff just sounds the way it does as a result. I would suggest that it happens all over the world, not just here. And not everyone sounds the same as a result. If every band here used broad kiwi accents it would drive me mad- same as if they all sounded American.
“Is it significant that the Beatles became more successful after they dropped the American accent and allowed their own Liverpudlian voice to peek through? Did Split Enz’ lack of an American accent contribute to their success?”
It really didn’t happen like that with the Beatles, Michael. They sounded American before, during and after their success. Sure, on certain songs they sounded quite English, but then again on certain ones they sounded quite American. In general, their vowels sounded American though. Actually, at a press conference in th U.S in 1964 a reporter asked “Why do you sound English when you talk, but American when you sing? And I think they replied something along the lines of -“So we can make more money!”
The Beatles success, both in the U.K and then worldwide was due to hard work, talent, timing and marketing.
And its funny you should mention Split Enz and their lack of an American accent contributing to their success- didn’t work for them in America though, did it?
John Smythe posted 11 Mar 2010, 09:51 AM / edited 6 Dec 2011, 02:26 PM
I agree it happens all over the world, Michael D – The Rolling Stones are a great example. I do not agree that it is always a stylistic choice.
When children pretend to be rock-singers, holding their hair brushes in front of the bedroom mirror, they automatically sing in American accents. Likewise musicians who do cover versions of American pop-songs. They are imitating. Fair enough.
My assertion is that in some cases this habit continues because the artists don’t mature enough to own their own identities. They think it only sounds ‘real’ in American in the same way actors used to think they had to sound upper-class English to play Shakespeare (even when it was set in Denmark, Venice, Italy, etc). In shows like Te Reo Aroha, where identity and authenticity matters, and feeling alienated in America is part of the show, it seems especially important to think this question through and find an authentic voice for the true (and original) love songs.
As for the “make more money” rationale, I think the world is beginning to move on. If Flight of the Conchords had pretended to be American the minute they stepped offshore, they would never have achieved distinction. It would have been laughable for Slim Dusty to sing his Australian country songs in an American accent (Topp Twins please note). The Lonesome Buckwhips have proved that we too can use our own voices (not “broad kiwi accents” by the way) to sing great original songs that sound fantastic.
Yes the Americans persist in taking top quality ‘foreign’ films and TV shows and remaking them as American. We should pity them. They are the poorer for denying themselves access to the wider world. And maybe we should fear the xenophobia this engenders. What we don’t need to do, is buy into their ‘cultural imperialism’ and disenfranchise ourselves in the process.
Dane Giraud posted 11 Mar 2010, 10:57 PM
… the Artists don’t mature enough to own their own identities…? So speaking or singing with a tight jaw with flat vowels stuck in the back of the throat is a sign of artistic maturity?
Any time I have been called upon to sing on stage I’ve had some pretty handy musical directors or experienced singers around to support me. ALL of them have warned of the traps of our accent – how it struggles to reach the back of theatres and invariably needs modifying. Due to the tight jaw synonomous with our accent, any trained singer would sound markedly different due to their extended mouth shape.
And your attack on American arts culture is incredibly misguided. What exactly are they denying themselves? Are you insinuating we have a more diverse arts scene that the U.S? Are you insinuating they are a more insular culture than we are?!
Michael Smythe posted 12 Mar 2010, 10:24 AM
Crikey – the cultural cringe is alive and well! If God invented the American accent to make us heard when singing how come those who use that accent mostly sing through amplifiers?
Dane Giraud posted 12 Mar 2010, 12:26 PM
Volume is a small part of it. Diction and placement is what helps the voice travel. Directors will often ask for less volume more clarity.
The culteral cringe idea is a fallacy, Michael. It never existed. It was created by apologists to excuse substandard work.
John Smythe posted 12 Mar 2010, 03:30 PM / edited 12 Mar 2010, 03:35 PM
Jeeze Dane … If you are too young to have experienced the cultural cringe*, count yourself lucky but let me tell you, it happened. Why else did radio announcers, TV news readers and newsreel narrators adopt those absurd accents, ‘more English than the English’? The ‘colonies’ have long since moved on from that but let’s not forget, lest we repeat.
The classic Kiwi accent – think Barry Crump, Lynn of Tawa, Fred Dagg, Billy T James, Rena Owen (in Once Were Warriors and What Becomes of the Broken Hearted), The Topp Twins (speaking) – is actually well placed and produced for singing. It is easier for a Kiwi (and an Australian, for that matter) to become an opera singer than for an upper class English person to because such English voices are placed well back in the throat. We naturally use the mouth and nasal resonators, although some of us don’t articulate well with jaws, lips and tongue.
By ‘culture’ I mean way of life, customs, means of self-expression, etc (not just the ‘arts scene’). Of course there are many Americans travelling abroad and broadening their minds. But when at home – and for the vast majority that stay at home – their movie and television screens, radios and other sound media rarely allow them to hear non-American voices. I say they are the poorer for that by way of saying I am not suggesting we should aspire to such insularity.
All I am espousing is the importance of our telling our stories and singing our songs in our own voices (which are not necessarily ‘broad Kiwi’). And I believe that claiming the right and developing the capacity to do that has everything to do with maturity for each individual, community and nation.
*cultural cringe a New Zealand attitude characterised by deference to the cultural achievements of other countries and the disparagement of New Zealand culture (New Zealand Oxford Paperback Dictionary, OUP, 1998, p186).
Simon Taylor posted 12 Mar 2010, 04:49 PM / edited 12 Mar 2010, 05:52 PM
John: [re: cultural cringe] Why else did radio announcers, TV news readers and newsreel narrators adopt those absurd accents, ‘more English than the English’?
You are possibly referring to RP, received pronunciation, while making recourse to RI, received ideas.
Best,
Simon Taylor
John Smythe posted 12 Mar 2010, 05:26 PM
No Simon, RP is relatively neutral. I mean the extremely elocuted voices we used to hear in the 50s and before which used to raise the eyebrows of British.
Dane Giraud posted 12 Mar 2010, 05:38 PM / edited 12 Mar 2010, 05:51 PM
We hardly need to aspire to insularity, John.
nik smythe posted 12 Mar 2010, 11:54 PM / edited 12 Mar 2010, 11:57 PM
I agree about the concern of xenophobia the American remakes engender… John doesn’t imply they aren’t capable of originality, rather that they can’t relate to any other cultures. I realise this sounds generalistic, because it is… America has produced a great deal of my own favourite original works. But there’s no purpose I can imagine to remaking Life On Mars or Outrageous Fortune except to make their audience able to accept it. It recalls Pat Boone’s whitebread covers of leading black rock’n’roller’s hits in the 50s…
As for accents, there’s no real defence for the use of American accents. What is the point? We are us, not them. Let’s be us. Go on!
Dane Giraud posted 13 Mar 2010, 09:47 AM / edited 13 Mar 2010, 09:47 AM
The example you give of Americans remaking foreign shows as proof of their xenophobia is incorrect.
If an American producer saw and liked Outrageous Fortune and felt passionate about bringing it to American T.V. screens, I’m sure he could buy it for $500 an episode and screen it over there.
Problem – How is he making money off that?
If he repackages it for a domestic audience, he gets a production budget i.e. millions and millions of dollars to make it. It’s business, guys, no conspiracy. We do it here all the time. Every reality show you see on TV is a rip-off, we could screen the English versions, or we could get $70, 000 an ep to make it ourselves.
Simon Taylor posted 13 Mar 2010, 12:24 PM / edited 13 Mar 2010, 05:53 PM
No John, RP is not relatively neutral. It is exactly in the field of cultural politics opened up by this topic that its neutrality ought to be called into question. RP, or Standard English, was instituted as a standard in NZ broadcasting particularly in reaction to both the excessive ‘Englishness’ of accent, to which John refers, and to the excesses of ‘Kiwiness’ – upward inflection, for example – (which becomes in John’s credo, ‘broad Kiwi’): it was, in other words, an institutional standard and thereby ‘guilty’ of bias – an accent towards the Queen’s English, and HM’s England.
RI, however, would refer to the assumption of and that there exists some sort of moral highground allowing one to make such confessions of faith as John’s
All I am espousing is the importance of our telling our stories and singing our songs in our own voices (which are not necessarily ‘broad Kiwi’). And I believe that claiming the right and developing the capacity to do that has everything to do with maturity for each individual, community and nation.
The received idea of a moral highground is there to circumvent the necessity for critical enquiry and, regardless of the potential for embarrassment in its public espousal by an erstwhile critic, is programmatic not of ‘Auto coloniZation’ but of neoliberalism, from which we may derive neocolonialism.
It is in neocolonialism that ‘our’ complicity becomes optative: i.e. we choose; we are victims of culture as mediated by capital as much as our elected representatives, allowing them to invoke – again – the National Debt as the reason, which a reasonable citizenry ought to accept, for funding cuts in the arts. We become complicit; in other words, we espouse the importance of our telling our stories and singing our songs in our own voices (which are not necessarlly ‘ours’). John’s credo serves the neoliberal programme as well as the spoiler on his delight at He Reo Aroha,
compulsive and apparently obligatory recourse to American accents when singing their original and sincerely-felt love songs in English
Or rather, the implication drawn from that spoilt delight: maturity, for “each individual, community and nation” [sic], has “everything to do” with “claiming the right and developing the capacity” to assert political identity – no? – in the minutiae of cultural expression. To use ‘our’ accent has become a moral issue, on which the highground can be assumed/presumed (according to RI), with cutlural political ramifications, rather than a cultural politcal issue with a particular and complex past and provenance.
If there were an argument here, and not a programme of belief, an overt espousal of ideology, RI, Auto coloniZation (or auto-sodomy), it would collapse under the weight of considering our cultural export. I mean, somebody should tell Peter Jackson, Jane Campion and Richard Taylor that they wallow in IMMATURITY for not “telling our stories and singing our songs in our own voices”!
Best,
Simon Taylor
Corin Havers posted 13 Mar 2010, 02:26 PM / edited 13 Mar 2010, 02:45 PM
If an accent is being adopted deliberately for comic reasons or because the song’s lyrics or style cry out for a particular accent that’s fine, obviously. Many Irish songs fall into all these categories, for instance. But if an NZer’s natural speaking accent morphs for no apparent reason into American when they sing, we are right to doubt their sincerity. Singing with an American accent and trying to speak posh British have long been two classic signs of the cultural cringe, and I agree with others above that it’s well time we saw the back of both of them.
John Smythe posted 13 Mar 2010, 02:43 PM / edited 13 Mar 2010, 02:46 PM
While I find most of your latest serving indigestible, Simon, the final dollop cannot go unremarked: “I mean, somebody should tell Peter Jackson, Jane Campion and Richard Taylor that they wallow in IMMATURITY for not ‘telling our stories and singing our songs in our own voices’!”
Come on: you’re attacking me for something I have never said. They tell the stories they choose to film in the appropriate voices. When it comes to Hobbits et al, Jackson chose not to devise a Hobbiton dialect for Lord of the Rings but let each actor speak in his own voice. And where have I said anything that suggests Campion’s Bright Star should have been made in Kiwi accents? Ridiculous.
I am very aware that our constant exposure to the full spectrum of American, British and Australian voices, and the requirement for our actors to perfect them if they wish to work on stage in relatively well-paid productions, means we are eminently employable when it comes to working in international films and TV series (although getting a speaking role in such a production is rare). That is a plus.
The question of how NZ actors should approach international plays is also clear for me, although the answer is rather complex.
If it is translated from Russian, Norwegian, Spanish, etc., or (as with many Shakespeare plays) set in a foreign land but written in English, it makes no sense for us to use anything other than our own voices in playing it (Sir Tyrone Guthrie articulated that principle for our part of the world in 1970, much to the horror of conservative subscribers in Sydney and Melbourne).
I generally oppose, however, relocating English, America and Australian plays in New Zealand because it tricks us into thinking this is ‘our story’ when it has come from a different cultural context. I applaud NZ actors who are able to rise to the challenge of achieving authenticity in a different voice, and am irritated when actors from elsewhere are not able to reciprocate when they act in NZ plays (e.g. the time an American actor played a Moa in an American accent). But if it comes down to a choice between striving and failing to get the accent or dialect right, and finding an authentic voice for the play, I’d rather ‘own voices’ were used.
Thank you, Corin, for your concisely expressed contribution.
Simon Taylor posted 13 Mar 2010, 03:33 PM
Oh, it’s not a criticism, John. Thank you for your opinion.
Best,
Simon Taylor
Dane Giraud posted 13 Mar 2010, 04:55 PM
I thank you, Simon. You made some very good points. It is political, and it’s frightening that many in the arts community don’t catch this dimension. We have a strange arts community, possibly the only one in the world where the nation’s electricians and refrigeration engineers are actually more insightful?!
John Smythe posted 13 Mar 2010, 05:08 PM
Just heard an international singer at WOMAD expressing concern at the ‘world music’ concept, given each piece of music comes from somewhere specific and has its own reason for being. He sounded pretty politically switched on and I don’t think he moonlights as an electrician or refrigeration engineer.
Dane Giraud posted 13 Mar 2010, 05:36 PM
You’re a smart man, John. I can’t believe you could so grossly mis-read my post.
John, I think you should address some of the points Simon brought up. Is not the concept of ‘telling our stories’ just a cynical, fatuous slogan used to justify the very existence of our funding bodies?
John Smythe posted 13 Mar 2010, 05:43 PM
Frankly, Dane, I have much more important and rewarding things to do that attempt to decode Simon’s dense academic treatise (has he really got nothing better to do than pick over my words in search of a suspect thought or five?) or reply to your posts, which I find abusive and destructive of any attempt to conduct a rational debate on this topic. I’ve said all I want to say and would only repeat myself if I were to continue. Others are very welcome to keep this alive.
Michael Smythe posted 13 Mar 2010, 05:46 PM / edited 13 Mar 2010, 05:53 PM
[The ball, lads, play the ball!]
Q: What is the highest selling New Zealand record of all time?
A: How Bizarre – OMC 1995
Pauly ‘sang’ his song in his own voice. His brother Tony is quoted as saying “How Bizarre was the type of person he was. The lyrics didn’t really mean anything, it was his comment on life around him, what he saw.” Sure the backing vocals had an American accent, but the video showed Pauly and his mates interacting with American dominated popular culture from their own position in the South Pacific. Was this personal authenticity in any way related to the commercial success of the record?
Aaron Alexander posted 13 Mar 2010, 06:12 PM
“When it comes to Hobbits et al, Jackson…let each actor speak in his own voice”
Thereby finally liberating Sean Astin from years of having to put on a Californian dialect and allowing him to finally express his native Cornish soul on the big screen.
It’s more convincing when you are arguments are less transparently false, John.
As far as Jamie McCaskill is concerned, how many plays has he written and performed in now? How many of his own songs has he sung? He strikes me as someone tremendously assured of his own creative voice. If he makes a choice to sing in a particular way, I have ample reason to believe he’s excercising his conscious artistic will, and I respect that. I don’t believe he is in any way shackled as a performer, somehow lacking in the confidence to be 100% himself on stage, speaking and singing his own work.
The moment Jamie starts changing what he does because a commentator literally tells him what his artistic voice ‘should’ sound like, that’s when I’ll start cringing.
Michael Downey posted 13 Mar 2010, 07:30 PM
Regarding O.M.C-
I don’t think you can say it was definitely related to that. The history of Rock/Pop music is littered with examples of artists bursting with personal authenticity, (as well as catchy songs) but who then failed to fire. “How Bizzare” was a catchy song with elements of personal authenticity that charted really well. But it could just as well have stiffed. Timing, radio play and record industry support are factors that are just as important, if not more so- which is why a really crap, derivative song can be a hit.
Re Dane’s point. Phrases like “Telling our stories”, “Our Voices” and that little pearler that I saw someone use in an online article recently, “Listening to Us” are indeed slogans. Empty, partronising slogans that sound like they were made up by a committee in Wellington -because they probably were. They are all too recognizable, and are closely related to what Steve Braunais once refferred to as “The flat, inhuman code of governmental policy documents.”
nik smythe posted 13 Mar 2010, 07:57 PM / edited 13 Mar 2010, 11:49 PM
I don’t believe anyone’s saying anyone ‘should’ perform any certain way, but as with anything if something seems lacking to an audience member they will search for explanations. So if a song sounds in some way disingenuous, and the singer has a fake accent, it’s quite easy to draw the parallel. Michael S’s original post here is not moot; it is a series of questions. Important ones.
People getting their hackles up about it to my mind undermine the defences they offer, behaving as though it’s some kind of outrage that the debate is (again) being raised at all. I appreciate Michael D’s argument given he’s simply offering a considered rebuttal with no evidence of ego-trip style gainsaying. In fact his point reinforces mine above: If it’s good, we don’t mind. If it’s substandard or confusing, we will ask questions and search for answers to satisfy our own philosophies.
To briefly address the off-topic sideline: Of course xenophobia is the extreme end of the syndrome suggested by the remaking of foreign works. I’m aware many countries do it. The reality show example does nothing to my opinion as they generally constitute the most unwatchable garbage on our screens. Of course it’s a business, which only makes the whole debate entirely political; the classic age old battle between art and commerce. But that’s another tangent… I don’t believe such activity is based on any conspiracy to develop xenophobia and/or insulate American cultures against the rest of the world’s’ but it’s still a potential outcome worthy of examination.
As for ‘telling our stories’ I don’t understand yet why the encouragement to do so is patronising?
Michael Downey posted 13 Mar 2010, 08:15 PM / edited 13 Mar 2010, 08:16 PM
Because it sounds patronising. We don’t need to be told to ‘Tell our own stories.” We either do or we don’t.
Another Braunais quote- “Our sories, our stories, our endless bloody stories!”
nik smythe posted 13 Mar 2010, 11:46 PM
What’s the matter with our stories exactly?
John Smythe posted 14 Mar 2010, 07:07 AM
How strange is this stew we’ve got ourselves into …
Point of clarification, Michael D. Sometimes we are known to tell our own stories. Why? Because it is as natural to humans as breathing. Even the fabled Braunias does it. And when we do – be it in drama or song – does in make any sense not to do so in our own voices?
That is the question: one of simple logic expressed in simple language. Why get in a stew about that?
Dane Giraud posted 14 Mar 2010, 08:19 AM
Michael D never said we shouldn’t speak in ‘our own voices’ John. What he started off saying was that an artist should speak in whatever voice they choose. You originally questioned a young lady’s recent singing in an American accent. All he is saying is that it is not a question. I am in agreement. I don’t nessacariy like the sound of our accent, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t use it myself or would ban the use of it in theatrical productions! What I resent is the implication it SHOULD be used. As do the rest of the irrational, abusive posters on this thread.
Simon Taylor posted 14 Mar 2010, 10:19 AM / edited 14 Mar 2010, 03:20 PM
The problem I see here is that this is a private site pretending to perform a public service. It does, could do it better, but the tension is there: a conflict of interests. Not a P.P.P. but a P.P.P.P. – where one of the P’s is for pretension. Unfortunately it does not stand for professionalism. This, despite the natty red hypertext-linked underlined nametags that the Smythes have, that refer to their ‘professional’ status, but only inhouse. Because it is a matter of pretense. And pretension when it comes to theatre-reviewing or moderating an onsite forum. It makes the latter a mess of family loyalties and unprofessional attitudinizing, where questioning John’s integrity is seen as an ad hominem attack.
“Meanwhile John is the owner, managing editor and senior critic for the website Theatreview: the New Zealand Performing Arts Review & Directory”
The Smythes seems to believe their own hype, and have taken on a self-importance which is indeed quite strange, possibly absurd, often ridiculous. I see a couple of ads in the side bar but I imagine that they are – or at least John is – rewarded in self-publicity and promotion. Perhaps not. The circle is however complete, since the ‘stew’ (John has his food metaphors) encourages visits to this site, which additional traffic is encouraging for advertisers.
Meanwhile, Michael has his sporting metaphors, however inane: I have played the ball here, Oh Smythes. Michael introduced this topic in directly academic terms. John won’t read my academic treatise? Why participate in this forum? If Michael was being jocular, how patronising to his readership (and sexist his metaphor, Lads!)! And how pretentious.
As for our own stories, own voices, I liked your comment Aaron, and Michael D. This is how I put it in a letter to our Prime Minister in 2000, subsequently posted on Square White World:
“As that seminal statement of nationalistic kitsch and puerility puts it – “To tell our own stories in our own words.”
“This pious proprietaryness obviously counterindicates the complete pervasion of the commercial agenda in the cultural sphere, yet, strangely, it manifests the same ideological pietism with which the issue and problem of free-market economics is currently handled in the arts. The implications of the latter includes the evaporation into the market miasma of cultural as distinct from commercial value, along with the deliquescence, thinning and final evaporation of cultural identity, in general, and national identity, in particular. As a faith followed without an understanding of its motives, meaning or implications, the ideology being practised while free-market policy is being mouthed results in banality and hypocrisy.”
As far as singing our own songs in our own voices is concerned, perhaps we should follow the example of our current PM: our songs would then be shorter, for lacking vowels.
Best,
Simon Taylor
Corin Havers posted 14 Mar 2010, 10:27 AM
Dane Giraud – I can’t find an implication here that we all speak with NZ accents, just the suggestion that it’s wise not to adopt someone else’s accent just because we feel it might give us more authority. Performers who do risk being dismissed as phony and ashamed of who they really are. The plea is for authenticity and confidence, that’s all.
Michael Downey posted 14 Mar 2010, 10:27 AM
Of course we “tell our own stories” I have, you have, many of my friends have. That is what is happening when I see a New Zealand play, read a New Zealand poem or even watch something like Sensing Murder. Sometimes I love it and other times I want to scream.
But the phrase itself , (and ones similar to it like “Our Voices, Our Country “and “Sounds like Us”) seem to have only emerged in the last ten years or so, entering the public discourse and crowding particularly thickly around things like Government sponsored media campaigns and funding documents.
And I don’t like it. Because it sounds like I am four years old and am being asked to sit down on the mat and tell a little story. Or, if it is used as a confirmation, that we have all sat around the fireside with our cocoa and teddy bears and told our lovely stories. It is usually accompanied (if it is an electronic media campaign) by a moronic, childlike voiceover. This is what Braunias was parodying.
That is why R.N.Z’s “Sounds like Us” campaign failed so miserably a couple of years ago. It was well considered and well meaning, (and this was confirmed to me by a R.N.Z employee) but it sounded preachy and self-conscious and people hated it- especially Kim Hill!
It is simple logic, expressed in simple language, you’re right- perhaps that is part of my problem with it. It is stating the bleeding obvious. It is a slippery concept, I accept, and a generalistic one that has been out there for a few years now- for instance no one used it to describe those seminal, harrowing films Sleeping Dogs and Smash Palace. Those works spoke for themselves.
Dane Giraud posted 14 Mar 2010, 11:46 AM
Performers who do risk being accused of being phoney by you maybe Corin, but I feel that most unfair. Over-playing a NZ accent (try most Radio NZ plays! I have never heard an actual Kiwi pronouce Bloody, Bill-Uddy! Wasn’t he one of the Goodies?) is more phoney is it not? If performing Shakespeare in R.P. is considered phoney how would performing it in a NZ accent be any more real?! Add to this that theatre is a construction anyway and you expose that this is all just a political argument, not artistic argument at all.
Michael Smythe posted 14 Mar 2010, 12:08 PM / edited 14 Mar 2010, 11:05 PM
I fully accept the legitimacy of the cringe created by phrases like ‘telling our own stories’. If I may be permitted to draw a parallel (since Simon finds the use of metaphors distracting) – it echoes the reaction to the Wellywood sign. We wince at the notion of Wellington being saddled with a try-hard, me-too sign with a short shelf life. But that does not mean we do not value the enormous contribution that Wellington’s film industry makes to economic, social and cultural [dangerous word?] growth. It’s just that we want to present ourselves as engaging in this global industry in our own way, not as a pale imitation of the dominant player.
So here is an interesting question. Are those who are not distracted when a New Zealand actor presenting a New Zealand work changes nationality when shifting from the spoken voice to the singing voice supporters of the Wellywood sign?
Simon – I can’t quite bring myself to apologise for being a Smythe or to worry that it might upset you. I am a designer who has written quite a lot about New Zealand design and the same issues arise – although the global design ‘accent’ has been European or Scandinavian rather than American. I find discussions about identity interesting – as it was on Q+A this morning. Maybe being an identical twin has made issues of identity loom larger. I hope we can rise above a point scoring bun-fight. (Oops, that metaphor insinuated itself in spite of your efforts to raise my awareness.)
nik smythe posted 14 Mar 2010, 12:36 PM / edited 14 Mar 2010, 12:40 PM
To state some more obvious, it’s a matter of opinion. Why am I not patronised by a pithy slogan? Because if they think I’m a four year old who needs hands-on coaching that’s ultimately their problem. But perhaps it’s these reactions my controversial surname that’s trained me not to take other peoples’ hang-ups personally.
I have no parochial agenda here; I can’t conceive any purpose to back up my relatives on the basis of any kind of gain. What do you suppose we Smythes acheive on occasions where we agree? Money? Political clout? Social status? Get real.
Sleeping Dogs, Smash Palace… Great great works (The latter remains my favourite kiwi flick). Not made to any specific cultural form as such yet instrumental in forming the identity of our film industry. And did Mr. Donaldson ever make anything half as good in Hollywood? Has Mr. Jackson made a better film than Heavenly Creatures? HAs Mr. Murphy surpassed the Quiet Earth? Tamahori Once Were Warriors? (etc) Nope. Doesn’t prove anything but increases my desire for authentic homegrown work because it generally tends to be better, historically. Of course there are misfires such as Under the Mountain, but the best told stories are still ours.
nik smythe posted 14 Mar 2010, 12:39 PM
It just occured to me that the biggest issue for me with Under The Mountain (the film obviously) is it’s obvious attempt to be manufactured in a kind of Hollywood-meets-Dr Who style. It’s our story, but it’s not in our voice.
Corin Havers posted 14 Mar 2010, 01:01 PM
Dane, you’ve just proved my point. Anyone who ‘over-plays an NZ accent’ is being just as phony as someone who adopts an American one – unless the part calls for it, of course. And I agree, radio plays very often offend in this way.
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