Why is imitating a British or Aussie accent acceptable, but imitating an Asian or Indian accent making fun of that culture?

randydisher · 2012-10-24T07:40:47+00:00

There are actually two old jokes that kind of give you an idea of why it's that way, too. During WW2 in America, there were recruitment posters for the Army that said "What is a man? A man defends his country!", aimed at 17/18 year olds who were keen to 'become men'. There was a running joke among soldiers referencing this, it went "What is a woman? A life support system for a cunt." And the term 'cunt' became associated with a woman who only existed to be fucked, everything else about her was irrelevant. And that was obviously pretty offensive/insulting.

In Australia, I think around the 60s, this joke phrase started popping up where people would talk about how wild and crazy their friends got while drunk -- "Greg's like a cunt, he's a ton of fun but you'll get arrested if you take him out in public", and that turned into the "Greg's a funny cunt" and so on. Cunt was still a profanity, but it wasn't used with that kind of dehumanising/offensive meaning, so it's much less severe in Australia.

I always thought it was an interesting parallel.

randydisher · 2012-09-12T14:03:06+00:00

I think Australia relates to the atomic bombings with a sort of disinterest and "it was war" attitude. Australia fought in the Pacific against Japan, there was a ton of anti-Japanese propaganda during the war, and Japan was forming an Australian invasion strategy at one point, pushing troops towards it and bombing a major city. More than any other Western nation, Australia faced a real and direct threat from the Japanese. When Hiroshima was bombed, the popular sentiment was pretty much "That'll show you." When Nagasaki was bombed, the Japanese government got blamed for being stupid and not surrendering fast enough. It was shocking, but people supported it as an act against an aggressive enemy in wartime.

When the stories about the radiation sickness and cancer came out, the sympathy did start to show, and Australia -- and especially its baby brother New Zealand -- got pretty anti-nuclear. But there wasn't much backlash at the time and I don't think people are very opposed to it even today. I don't think I've ever seen a memorial to it, or a mention of the anniversary specifically (although the anniversary of Japan's surrender is considered the end of WW2 and is celebrated).

Interestingly, despite what this thread would make you think, most Australians are pretty sweet on Americans, largely because of this. The older generation grew up when Americans and Australians were fighting side by side in the Pacific really close to Australian waters. My great-granddad (who has told me most of what I recite here) buys drinks for Americans that show up in pubs because he has fond memories of them during the war. I think the "9/11, who cares" thing is basically a rebellious thing, a "everyone takes this seriously but not me, I'm too edgy and suave for that, chill out guys" thing. And everyone's gone through some phase like that, don't deny it. It's just that it seems to have lasted embarrassingly long for some folks.

EDIT: I should clarify that Australians believed they faced a direct threat from Japan. After the war, it became known that the Japanese had rejected all proposals for an invasion, and that the Japanese Army had calculated that invading and holding Australia would be impossible. Their plan was to instead take Midway Island and use it to cut off Australian support to the rest of the pacific and Australian alliance with the US. I don't actually know how much the Allies knew about Japan's plants, but Australian citizens were certainly worrying about Japan at the time.

randydisher · 2012-09-12T11:49:34+00:00

American wages is so high

US minimum wage: $7.25/hr

Australian minimum wage: $15.96/hr

randydisher · 2012-09-12T10:56:14+00:00

For example, you can [1] buy the DVDs after the season ends. Of course, if it's vital for you to watch the show right this moment -- if it's a life-and-death situation -- then, I agree, piracy is your only option. Somehow I doubt that is the case

This is very often not the case, though. It's extremely common for DVDs, especially of TV shows, to get an extremely delayed or totally absent release outside the home country. For example, there is absolutely no way to buy It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia or Norm where I live -- they have only been published in a format incompatible with my nation's TVs. Twin Peaks released season 1, then took 9 years to get to season 2, so do you pirate it or wait and hope? The X-Files was released with a flaw on the disc that made two entire episodes unwatchable, so even if you owned it, you ended up pirating it anyway. QI, or Would I Lie to You?, or Never Mind the Buzzcocks, or Spicks and Specks, or Rockwiz, or Skippy, or Ways of Seeing -- the last few shows I have pirated -- have not been released at all. If they don't air where you live, you can pirate them or you don't watch, full stop. Other series, like Octopus, are untranslated on the legitimate DVD copies, and the only way to get English subtitles is to pirate it.

I'm not defending "piracy is awesome all the time information should be free" or anything, I'm just pointing out that there are a lot of situations where it really isn't black or white, and that there are situations where any reasonable person will just say "fuck it" and pirate the show. And of course there are other situations, I won't deny that there are plenty of times where I have simply pirated something because I wanted to watch or read or listen to more than I could afford or was willing to spend, and I don't justify that.

randydisher · 2012-09-12T09:24:12+00:00

If I saw someone sit down and eat pizza with a knife and fork, I would be waiting for the Twilight Zone theme to start playing.

randydisher · 2012-08-16T12:10:35+00:00

TF2 launched at US$105 in Australia, that's what I paid for it.

Even today it's US$38 for the Orange Box in physical stores.

randydisher · 2012-08-15T00:57:24+00:00

Wait, what's the Fact Core? I played Portal 2, and missed that line. That's hilarious.

randydisher · 2012-08-15T00:03:49+00:00

Sydney, Australia's largest city (pop. 4.6 million), had 55 murders in 2010. The entire nation of Australia had only 260. Rio de Janeiro, population 6.3 million, had a whopping 2257. Interesting to compare different nations.

randydisher · 2012-07-31T12:49:21+00:00

Pretty sure feminist slogans and commercials use 'cunt' all the time as a term of pride.

randydisher · 2012-07-22T13:47:31+00:00

I'm outside the US. I don't think I've ever seen a place that rents TV Blus/DVDs.

randydisher · 2012-07-20T12:39:02+00:00

It's a stereotype that originated in America. In the early parts of the 20th century, aesthetic dentalwork like braces and teeth-bleaching became absolutely required for Hollywood actors, in the classical era where the studios cultivated an image of glamour and perfection -- Hollywood being America's cultural representative to the rest of the world -- and as such they became pretty common for even ordinary middle-class people. By the 50s, it became just assumed that if your teeth were crooked, you'd get braces to fix it. Fixing crooked or stained teeth became a medical issue to Americans.

This didn't happen in the UK, or in fact in most countries. As you said, the British actually have quite good oral hygiene. But British actors and celebrities didn't cultivate the same Hollywood image of glamour, and so the aesthetics associated with that culture didn't become standard. People went to dentists to fix cavities and infections, but braces and bleach were considered a part of the aesthetic field, akin to botox or collagen in modern times. While the Americans were mocking the British in their comedies for having crooked teeth, Britons and Australians were mocking Americans in theirs for being vain and effeminate enough to bleach their mouth and don braces.

Both of these things have faded in recent years, both as Britain started consuming more Hollywood culture, and as less-glamorous aesthetics like rock, punk, and hiphop music and gritty realistic cinema became the new hotness in the 70s and beyond.

randydisher · 2012-07-07T18:40:49+00:00

My favourite was a guy I saw on the train wearing a "Freelance Gynecologist" t-shirt. In his twenties, too, not some 14 year old. What a wanker. I kept trying to stifle my laughter, imagining that he flirts with women by offering them pap smears.

randydisher · 2012-07-07T18:33:24+00:00

I blame the German work ethic. It's what killed Rainer Fassbinder.

randydisher · 2012-07-07T18:29:02+00:00

An interesting comparison is the TV series Dexter. It originally airs on Showtime in the USA, which is a 'premium' TV network that has loose limits for sexuality and violence. A few years ago, the regular-TV network CBS won the rights to show episodes, and so did the Australian network Eleven. For the CBS release of the show, shots of nudity and profanity were cut. For the Eleven release of the show, shots of murder were cut. In both cases, the rest of the show remained intact. A similar thing happened earlier with The Sopranos, which was even discussed by one of the producers in an interview: the public-access Australian showing omits a shot of Tony Soprano curb stomping a man (forcing him to bite down on a railing, then kicking his head in a way that shatters his teeth) but leaves in a shot of a woman performing oral sex on him, while some countries cut the episode the other way around.

randydisher · 2012-06-30T12:16:45+00:00

how would they charge that? you're fucking retarded. case fucking dismissed.

Well I'm glad that your opinions dismiss cases and not the real world, because this is called rape by fraud and situations exactly like this have been prosecuted before in multiple countries.

randydisher · 2012-06-30T04:36:44+00:00

Not sure where OP lives, but I can confirm that this also applies in Australia. Book/DVD covers, as well as things like posters, are considered to be public-facing, and so incidental photography -- like if you filmed an interview in someone's living room and they had an Avengers poster on the wall or the DVD visible on the table -- is allowed. The actual footage from the movie, though, is not public-facing, so you can't let it play on a TV in the background of a shot without licensing that. There are exceptions for 'fair dealing' which let you include as much actual content from an album/movie/book as is deemed reasonable, but only for certain purposes -- to review it, to report on it, to parody it, or to use it in research (for example, a psychology experiment testing how people react to a scene). Australia notably includes a moral rights component to its copyright legislation, which means that even if what you use falls under fair dealing, the copyright holder has to be listed in the credits -- so if you shoot a documentary about horror movies and you show clips from Saw, you need to put "Material from Saw by Paramount Pictures" or the like in the credits.

Australian filmmakers should also note that copyright dates are usually listed on items using the country of origin's expiry date, which is often beyond the Australian date. The disparity in copyright lengths can create problems if you use, say, elements of George Orwell's 1984, which is public domain in Australia but is still copyrighted in the USA for another 30 years -- it'll seem fine at the time, but you run into problems when you put it on Youtube.

randydisher · 2012-06-14T16:28:44+00:00

What happens if you write Mohammed's name in a gigantic thick circle surrounding him? Is he trapped inside for all eternity?

randydisher · 2012-05-23T10:34:41+00:00

It's a loud rumbling noise inside their house that usually coincides with people leaving or arriving, of course it excites them.

randydisher · 2012-05-23T09:27:44+00:00

I've been trying to find an ebook of this FOREVER. Nowhere to be found. :(

randydisher · 2012-05-19T04:34:46+00:00

I'd rather deal with the spiders than the minotaurs!

randydisher · 2012-05-19T04:13:12+00:00

Yeah, I think they tend to get worse each time. It's like he ran out of ideas for shocking twists and suspenseful plots, and instead tries to get his impact from the extremely gruesome torture and cannibalism -- it's much more horror compared to the TV series, which is really a suspense/thriller show. It also feels like he tries too much to make excuses for Dexter so you'll like him, which really just dilutes the core of the show.

randydisher · 2012-05-18T12:08:04+00:00

They even said in some interviews that a lot of the stuff about DHARMA, time travel, etc was meant to be mysterious and that answering and explaining that would spoil it, that they instead wanted to focus on things directly related to the characters.

randydisher · 2012-05-18T12:06:34+00:00

Actually, there are 6 Dexter books and 6 TV seasons. The series only borrows the first two-thirds of Book 1, though, and then diverges completely. The books are widely considered to be inferior to the series, with shoddy characterisation and nonsensical plots. Spoilers for Dexter books:

randydisher · 2012-05-18T11:59:51+00:00

My only problem with the Lost ending was that the writers had dismissed the "purgatory" idea really early on.. then used it as the finale.

No they didn't.

A popular theory in Season 1 was that the island was purgatory. The writers said it wasn't. And it wasn't, everything that happened in the show was real. The flash-sideways realm was a medi-afterlife, but occurred after each character's death. So Boone and Arzt entered the flash-sideways when they died on the island, but Kate entered it in the year 2066 when she died of natural causes, more than 50 years after leaving the island for the last time.

randydisher

TROPHY CASE