--- Neil Faulkner N.Faulkner@tesco.net wrote:
My own take on the nationality thing is that I don't see the characters as being in any way 'British'. No more quaint ideas of nation states under the enlightened umbrella of Federation rule. I don't even think they're really speaking English as such, what we hear is translated for our benefit (the same way Xena doesn't talk Greek).
This gets into quite interesting territory. If we don't hear what 'really' got said, then maybe we don't see what 'really' happened, and the aired series is some kind of interface between the 'real' events and our ability to make sense of them, a kind of consensually acknowledged construct to accomodate the limits of our comprehension. (Tolkien did this with LotR, in an appendix giving the real names of the hobbits and other such stuff.)
This makes things very interesting indeed. All translation is interpretation. Whose version of events are we getting, how accurate is it and why ?
Does this, then, legitimise 'Americanization' of these 'Brits in space'?
Probably not - as has been pointed out they're "British" in their reticence and their inabillity to communicate their emotion. A parallel would be with the film Sink the Bismarck where Kenneth More hears the news that his son is alive and dashes into an office so he can cry in private. The heroine notices this but leaves him to it out of respect for his feelings. In a modern Hollywood movie she'd probably follow him and give him a hug. Which would be right in modern day California but wrong for 1940's Britain. Our heroes are at the Kenneth More end of the spectrum rather than the Californian end. (All of which is a literary /aesthetic judgement - not a moral one. And I apologise to any reticent Californians for the use of generalisations as a convienient shorthand).
Or that there is a standard Federation accent pervading across Earth and perhaps much of the Inner Worlds, which may well be possible with a mobile population with access to the same media. (Yes, I know Avon needed exit visas, but he needed them for non-legitimate travel. Legitimate travel might be commonplace, with people constantly on the move.)
I'd imagine that the ruling elite would have some kind of recieved pronunciation whereas the lower orders would speak with various regional accents or dialects. Those on the borderline between Federation and non-Federation might speak a form of pidgin (the Subterons ? Freedom City ?) I'm grateful however that they didn't try this when it came to the script and casting.
Stephen.
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