Sunday, April 17, 2011

The Sole Remaining Acceptable Stereotype

Mark Steyn, student of culture, edumacatin' the young ones:
Yesterday I took the kids to see Rio, a dreary and formulaic film from the makers of Ice Age. As the title suggests, it’s set in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and features all the local tourist stops – Corcovado, Carnaval – while lumbering through a lame plot about a couple of rare macaws trying to shake off the bad guys with the help of various toucans, red-crested cardinals, etc.

Afterwards, my kids asked why, in a story whose dramatis personae were otherwise Brazilian, the evil bird was a cockatoo with a sneering English accent called Nigel, and I tried to explain that the more society tiptoes around on multiculti eggshells, the more the English, as the sole remaining acceptable stereotype, have a hammerlock on perfidy and duplicity. Who else would you expect to be decimating the rare species of the Brazilian rain forest? Pedro the cockatoo? Lashawn the cockatoo? Ahmed the cockatoo? Whoa, don’t go there.
Only now, when the dreaded PC police can confiscate your script the moment it leaves your stereotypewriter, has the hideous sound of the English accent been used to signify evil.

Once Britain falls to the Muslamofascist hordes I expect New Zealanders to get all the Nazi roles.

10 comments:

mikey said...

Someone called R Lance Hill many years ago wrote a book called "The Evil that Men Do". It was later made into a truly atrocious film starring Charles Bronson, but the book was truly a classic of the genre.

And the villain was an englishman. Of course...

Hamish Mack said...

I thought that the last acceptable minority that you could pick on white men? Bob Owens told me so!
Also cold and malicious master criminals a speciality right here! warner brothers and sir M.jackson have ensured that kiwis will work cheap too!

Substance McGravitas said...

I think it's becoming clear that cartoon bad guys need to be played by scruffy types with goofy glasses.

Smut Clyde said...

scruffy types with goofy glasses.

I RESENT THAT REMARK.

Smut Clyde said...

Presumably Mr Levin has by now been apprised of the fact that Jermaine does not have a British accent, and could not do a British accent if you paid him real money, and the only thing in common between his accent and a British one is that they are not US accents.
So now he must choose between (1) scrubbing a post in which he ignored the reality of a movie in order to project his own stereotype onto it, so he could castigate Hollywood for holding that stereotype; or (2) shrugging off the embarrassment, knowing that none of his readership give a damn.

My money's on (2)

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

I will add to the pile of Smut's money on (2).

Baby needs a brand new pair of shoes!
~

Dr.KennethNoisewater said...

Jemaine plays the "Brit?" I'm with Smut in wondering how good that accent would actually be.

BTW, I'm all for David Cross playing all villains. Actually, I'm for David Cross playing all parts, ever.

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

Awful lot of handwringing for a second rate cartoon.

I suppose the only acceptable movie is now Atlas Shrugged. And, of course, the Two Minutes Hate, which seems to have been going on for decades now.

guitarist manqué said...

Americans don't lavish the attention on accent differentiation that Islamocommie British empirites do? I'm shocked.

That that doesn't stop them making half-assed self re-inforcing unbaked conclusions out of said lack of attention? Unsurprising as well.

Substance McGravitas said...

Americans don't lavish the attention on accent differentiation that Islamocommie British empirites do?

Regrettably I must claim Steyn as one of my own. We sent him south.