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ACC25086.
Why do so many Hollywood films seem to feature villains played by British (more specifically English) actors? For example, in Robin Hood Prince of Thieves, heroic Robin and his men are played by American actors (even though it’s set in Medieval England), while the Sheriff of Nottingham, the evil guy, is played by a very English actor, Alan Rickman. There are many other examples. Is it acceptable for some reason for the English accent to represent evil, when other accents would be unacceptable?
I have two theories why so many Hollywood baddies are British. First, an English accent, especially the to-the-manor-born type an Alan Rickman can achieve, tends to symbolize breeding (authority) in this country. Mainstream American movies are built on the idea of the ‘little guy’ defying authority. Second, because most British-accented actors are white, they make a perfect image for villains, as a bad guy of any other ethnic background would bring accusations of racism.
I don’t think Brits are portrayed as evil. However, in many historical movies in which the language of the country was not English (i.e. The Gladiator), all the characters have British accents. Americans think that by sounding ‘Britishy,’ you sound regal, educated and formal, sometimes to the point of being uptight.
I’m from England and I’ve noticed this, too – almost every movie I’ve ever seen has had a British-accented bad guy. And they are always rational, exceptionally intelligent bad guys – never slash-and-grab types. I’ve also noticed that Eastern European accents are sometimes used for intelligent, calculating criminals. I think the PC crowd would not be so accepting of other accents used for the same types of roles. Recently, groups have boycotted various movies because of the use of Middle-Eastern accents for the villains. I guess because the British are a Western, Caucasion people, it is considered OK to stereotype them. At least we are portrayed as intelligent and elegant people, and even though that’s a stereotype, it’s better than some of the other stereotypes.
If the film is an American production, I will venture to say that the villain or antagonist is going to be represented as a foreigner 99 percent of the time, even though some people here are convinced that anyone who speaks proper English can’t be a foreigner. Hollywood offers a very distorted reality. To attempt to answer your question, I can only reason that in the context of a film that takes place in England, made almost exclusively for a U.S. audience, you can be certain that anything American (accent or actor) will never be used to portray ‘the bad guy.’ Conversely, have you ever noticed how in British films, television shows and novels, continental Europeans and other foreigners and their accents are the epitome of evil? Nearly every James Bond movie has a foreigner as the villain; even Count Dracula in Bram Stoker’s novel is meant to represent everything that wasn’t English and Victorian. Look at most historical films about the Romans, Biblical stories, World War II films, etc: the protagonists all use British accents. I suppose it depends on who is directing the film and in which country, which brings up another fact that most movies are not even filmed in the country where they are supposedly taking place. By the way, Alan Rickman played the best villain in Die Hard as Hans Gruber. Remember?
My guess is that it’s just a quick and dirty way to show ‘otherness,’ especially if you are not a very good actor or the director doesn’t think the audience is smart enough to deal with villains that don’t ‘talk funny.’ It’s not just English accents: German, French, etc. are also used.
Don’t you think maybe you put too much thought into that? Why does everyone want to be a victim? Did you ever stop to think maybe he was just the best actor for the part and it had nothing to do with accents?
If you think only British accents are used to represent villains, you aren’t paying much attention to movies. How about all the Arab terrorists, Latino drug dealers and black ‘ghetto-sounding’ gang members that make up a far larger portion of film villains? How about all the Russian villains or Italian mafiosos? British accents in the American mind represent the upper class, old money or other privileged elites, which only by coincidence also makes them good villains. Think about the Star Wars series, for example. Frankly, we get all too many movies that assume a British accent equals sophistication and the height of culture. Think James Bond or all those boring Ivory Merchant films.
In a lot of movies (especially those targeted towards kids, like the Robin Hood films), there is a great deal of concern to not reinforce racist stereotypes. Even in movies made for adults, you will often find scripts that steer away from the obvious choices (e.g., Arab bad guys post 9/11) to find ‘safer’ ground (e.g., the real villian is some racist white guy.) Hollywood is pretty liberal stuff (whatever these other replies are saying.) English people are the safest group; they are former imperialists who’ve never been oppressed by anybody (at least in the United States — they were always the ruling class); it’s considered ‘safe’ to make the English guy hideous and stereotypical because there is not much of a stereotype in American culture that this is related to. It’s not like they’re going to stir up anti-English-people riots.
The British accent is great for villains because we Americans perceive the Brits as being aloof, intelligent and proper … and for some reason this makes for a very engaging villain. For instance, Scar from ‘The Lion King.’ Could you picture him saying his lines with an American accent? I couldn’t.
I’m neither English nor American; therefore I am not biased on the matter – but it does happen to be my dissertation’s topic for my MA degree. I have come to the conclusion after a lot of research that the English accent is used to represent ‘evil’ in an attempt to show that evil comes from abroad and is not something that comes from within the American community. It is the way through which Hollywood can create a unified American consciousness and a patriotic togetherness against all foreign evils.
Perhaps early American theater stereotyped the English as the bad guys (after all, we did fight our first war against the Brits) and it stuck. It certainly seems to have done so in melodramas. In deeper drama, you may find no stereotype, or a more sophisticated one. But an upper-class, rich, disdainful bad guy seems to be a likely antithesis to the humble, hardworking, poor-but-honest American hero.
It’s not just the English accent. Think of a villian’s line from a movie…Star Wars, The Patriot…whatever. Now think about doing it with a jordie accent or a scouse accent; thoughts of Darth Vader with an accent from Yorkshire or Lincolnshire make me giggle… maybe even try an Irish (Luke, I’m yer fadder), Welsh, cockney or Scots accent. Not the same, is it? Would be a great comedy project, though. Gotta have a posh, upperclass English accent. So perhaps the royals should be outraged. As a sidebar…yes, the English have been oppressed – by the Romans, the Saxons and the Normans.
I too have noticed that when ever the American Film/TV have a baddie/villian in it then the actor is more often than not English and the character is always English. What does this say to the American public? Day in day out they see films and programs which show the English as villians. Yet the UK (England is part of the UK)is supposed to be America’s greatest friend, standing shoulder to shoulder with her in the war on terror. Surely this negative view of the English must be affecting the American public as well as the other English speaking parts of the world.