Saturday, September 8, 2012
America/British -Blog #3
It is very clear from this clip that the British look down on Americans. Hugh Laurie is dressed messy and casual, with a plaid shirt and a plain white shirt underneath. His hair is also messy and has some sort of a bandanna wrapped around his head as if to imply that Americans are un-kept hippies. And the guy at the end who I assume is supposed to represent "the British" is wearing a nice fitted suit. Hugh Laurie's song that he's singing also doesn't have much to it, just "America" and "The States" repeated over and over... maybe trying to imply that there's nothing really that great to be said about America. The British clearly find Americans annoying, hence why the man came in at the end and punched him off the piano so that he would shut up. Maybe that's how the British feel when America constantly brags about how great of a country we are, they probably wish that we would dial it back a little bit and "shut up" about it.
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It's not. I have a number of friends in England and they all guarentee that's not how they actually view us. It's kind of like the Saturday Night Live skit a few years ago where we portrayed John Elton (what was being knighted by the Queen) as a mafia boss holding the British Crown "hostage". I thinks it's all just in good fun. It is a satire after all. Satires are suppose to be outrageous and out of character while proving a point. On Jay Leno or Connan O'Brian, we make fun of the "snobbishness", stuffy appearance, the over the end pompt and circumstance of the British citizentry and royalty. And those too, are satires of the events and times. We'll laugh at them, they will laugh at us. That's the type of relationship we have with England. It's better than them threatening to blow us up like other countries, right?
ReplyDeleteJennifer,
DeleteI've had students who were insulted by this. They didn't like the way Americans were depicted. It's interesting how different cultures have such different values. Things that we take for granted can be satirized by other countries (and we often satirize them).
Richard Bobys
I think you may have misunderstood the sketch. Sir Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie do in fact poke fun of the American ego, but I don't think that at any moment they seem to look down at them. The American sense of superiority is in fact annoying, and anyone from another country will tell you that. Americans tend to poke fun of Hispanics for being poor, Asians for being good in math, Canadians for being polite, the Middle Eastern for ridiculous reasons that boggle my mind, the British for their accents and their culture, Russians for being communists... You name it, America has poked fun of it. Why shouldn't other countries have the same right? I don't think that America looks down on the culture it pokes fun of, it is just comedy!
ReplyDeleteAbout Stephen punching Hugh, it has nothing to do with the sketch itself. It is more about Stephen (the composed, classy one) finding Hugh (the sporty, silly one) annoying. It is sort of a recurring joke, which is more notably referenced in the later (and funnier) sketch entitled "Where is the Lid?".
Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie are intelligently hilarious, and its a shame that Americans don't "get" that kind of humor. Now c'mon America, lets go back to watching Tosh.0! :)