From: thorntn@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Duncan Peter G. Thornton)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written,rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: COVINGTON CROSS
Date: 27 Aug 92 16:43:13 GMT
Organization: University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada

In <1992Aug27.142509.12806@mcs.kent.edu> mcconnel@Chaos.mcs.kent.edu (Mike McConnell) writes:

>On the subject of realism, lets talk about accents.  In article 
><1992Aug26.195005.11199@ccu.umanitoba.ca> thorntn@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Duncan Peter
> G. Thornton) writes:
>|>did it sound any
>|>worse than the daughter's supposedly real English accent? did most of
>|>the cast, in fact, graduate from the Kevin Costner School of Lousy
>|>English Accents? A good half of them didn't sound English at all -

>And what of it?  If we are talking about historical realism, what makes you
>think that British Received Pronunciation (a.k.a BBC English, Public School
>English) is any more aauuthentic as a representation of fourteenth century 
>accents than Great American English.

Nothing at all; it's the producers of the show who seem to think
that a Lousy English Accent is preferable to an American one.
My point was that they were _trying_ to do English accents in 
a very lazy and sloppy way (and indeed that the whole show was
lazy and sloppy. 

  If you want authenticity in accents, 
>you will lose understandability for the majority of listeners, even among those
> who think they can recognise an authentic medieval English accent.  Remember,
>this was even before the time of Chaucer (Aprille with her showres soot and all
>that).  At this time, authentic English would look as much like

>	Hlaford, thu clepedest me
>	Ond ic nach ne andswaredest the
>	Bute wordes slowe and slepe
>	Thole yiet, Thole a littel
>	Bute yiet and yiet is endeless
>	Ond thole a littel a long waie ist 

	Yeah; I know the difference between Old, Middle, and Modern
English. And I know that the one thing that makes American English
more "authentic" for a medieval period than modern R.P. is that
Americans (and, to an even greater extent, us Canadians) still
pronounce their Rs; the one thing the actors on CC seemed to make
a great point of dropping - making them sound not English (as
they were trying to sound) and not 14th C (which they were supposed
to be), but like Americans who needed time with a speech therapist.

>I suppose the main point I am trying to make is that attacking American Network
>television on its lack of authenticity is kind of like shooting fish in a 
>barrel.  I would like to think you can tackle more challenging, and interesting,
>topics than this.

Right; the point of my post wasn't that CC was bad because it wasn't
authentic (I never expected it would be) but because it was bad; that
if they were going to sacrifice authenticity in the name of
entertainment, they could at least provide some quality entertainment.
But the laziness of the production (as evidenced in the accents and
fight scenes) suggests that the lack of authenticity is just as likely
the result of laziness as a desire to be entertaining. I'm _not_ being
a snob; the Errol Flynn _Robin Hood_ wasn't authentic in the least,
but it was fun and well done and it's one of my favourite films. And
no one had one of those Kevin Costner accents. Did you ever see the
failed pilot for a _Three Musketeers_-style TV series called 
_Panache_? It wasn't authentic at all either, but it wasn't lazy,
and it was a lot of fun.

My favourite moment: when Lady Elizabeth is giving a music lesson:
"And when you pluck this string like this, it sound like this:
("ping")" I felt I was learning how to play the harp just by watching
it...

- Corwyn of Linncoln

                    
Duncan Thornton          | 
thorntn@ccu.umanitoba.ca | "Less Great Art; More Nice People"
  *GKC rules ok*         | 
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