Okay, I've watched it like three times, and... I know Streep is considered one of the best when it comes to accents, but it's like... I guess all I can say is that to my ears, it's like she sounds Southern and yet... not. Like, she's saying it how someone Southern might say it, but what she says isn't Southern at all. Little things. Like when she says "and everything", I was expecting the phrase "and all". And the "sss,sss,sss" sound followed by "thank you very much" sounds... off, just a little. So it's sort of like she's doing a Southern accent with a script that's not really a Southern part, if that makes sense. I would've expected, "hush, you," and maybe a "goodness" or a "gracious" thrown in there somewhere. Even if only partly said, and the rest is just left hanging, half under the breath. "Gracious" is a relatively common kind of expression in older generations that acts like the equivalent of "sheesh" or "geez".
Accent-wise, there are parts -- like at first -- where she sounds more Coastal (Mississippi, Delta), but that has some in common with Tidewater. And then it seems to shift, just a fraction, and by halfway through, she's starting to sound more like maybe Richmond, or the north part of the Carolinas. She's getting too much at the front of her mouth to be Coastal or true Inland, but she's not completely nasal-twang like upstate Alabama or the southern stretch of the Appalachians. She's not got a lot of dialogue to hear whether she's dropping r's (which can be partly geographical and partly generational, so that's not really a precise thing).
I guess... she sounds generic, but at the same time, false, to my ears. And the false-ness has (I realize, after thinking about this carefully) its roots in the fact that her phrasing is wrong. She has some of the cadence right, here and there, that makes me think Coastal, but... I would probably guess Tidewater, with assumption that she's only lived there since maybe college. That it's not her native accent, I guess is what I'm saying, and that's because the cadence of the spaces between words, and the syncopation of certain words -- and the word choices themselves -- feel too, I dunno, northern.
I imagine she was probably trying to aim for the classic Southern accent, not the extreme sing-song of Atlanta speech, but the gentler Tidewater version. And it's not that she does a bad job, it's just that what she's given to say doesn't fit the accent at all.
It's possible she sounds more like Carolinas. I haven't been in those parts for years, so I can't say, and I don't really talk all that much with the Carolina sides of my family, so I don't get constant reinforcement the way I do on other regional accents. I lived in VA for years and travelled all around the state. And I guess I'm surprised anyone'd expect the accents to be all the same, because VA is a big state! And there are major stretches of land dividing some very different geographical regions, with very different socio-ethnic backgrounds of the settlers. Or maybe it's population density? Seeing how Rhode Island wasn't exactly all one accent, either, and it was... well, teensy. Heh.
[My other reaction to your comment that her screentest was with southern accent was, "did she know going in that she was trying out for the part of the bad guy?" since if the southerner isn't the dimwitted fool, he's the ultimate evil wrapped up in an easy smile and a friendly drawl. And probably wears white, and walks with a cane he doesn't need. Bleah.]
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Date: 6 Feb 2011 04:54 am (UTC)Accent-wise, there are parts -- like at first -- where she sounds more Coastal (Mississippi, Delta), but that has some in common with Tidewater. And then it seems to shift, just a fraction, and by halfway through, she's starting to sound more like maybe Richmond, or the north part of the Carolinas. She's getting too much at the front of her mouth to be Coastal or true Inland, but she's not completely nasal-twang like upstate Alabama or the southern stretch of the Appalachians. She's not got a lot of dialogue to hear whether she's dropping r's (which can be partly geographical and partly generational, so that's not really a precise thing).
I guess... she sounds generic, but at the same time, false, to my ears. And the false-ness has (I realize, after thinking about this carefully) its roots in the fact that her phrasing is wrong. She has some of the cadence right, here and there, that makes me think Coastal, but... I would probably guess Tidewater, with assumption that she's only lived there since maybe college. That it's not her native accent, I guess is what I'm saying, and that's because the cadence of the spaces between words, and the syncopation of certain words -- and the word choices themselves -- feel too, I dunno, northern.
I imagine she was probably trying to aim for the classic Southern accent, not the extreme sing-song of Atlanta speech, but the gentler Tidewater version. And it's not that she does a bad job, it's just that what she's given to say doesn't fit the accent at all.
It's possible she sounds more like Carolinas. I haven't been in those parts for years, so I can't say, and I don't really talk all that much with the Carolina sides of my family, so I don't get constant reinforcement the way I do on other regional accents. I lived in VA for years and travelled all around the state. And I guess I'm surprised anyone'd expect the accents to be all the same, because VA is a big state! And there are major stretches of land dividing some very different geographical regions, with very different socio-ethnic backgrounds of the settlers. Or maybe it's population density? Seeing how Rhode Island wasn't exactly all one accent, either, and it was... well, teensy. Heh.
[My other reaction to your comment that her screentest was with southern accent was, "did she know going in that she was trying out for the part of the bad guy?" since if the southerner isn't the dimwitted fool, he's the ultimate evil wrapped up in an easy smile and a friendly drawl. And probably wears white, and walks with a cane he doesn't need. Bleah.]