Some sounds are inherently pleasing to the ear — a favorite song, a crashing wave, a giggling child — and in my opinion, the charming tone of a British accent.
If “Love Actually” taught me anything, it’s that we’re all suckers for a British accent, girls and guys alike. To us provincial Americans, it has the ring of ancient history and the romance of our nation’s past. Like dusty libraries and lace petticoats, it sounds outdated but also refined, genteel and infinitely classy.
No language in the world is so intriguing as our own when spoken differently. We have our Southern drawls and our Northern brogue, our “y’all” and “you’s guys,” but nothing is so effortlessly elegant as the tongue of our neighbors across the pond. It’s not just the accent, but the language itself that draws us in with its formality. We admire the Queen’s English for being a seemingly better, more proper version of our own.
Theirs is, after all, the language of sonnets and soliloquies, of Shakespeare and Byron and Keats. To the untrained American ear, it predicts intelligence and projects sex appeal even where there may be none. This is what’s left of imperialism — the dream of a mother country full of Jane Eyres and Mr. Darcys waiting to woo us with poetry and wit.
In case you can’t tell, my personal knowledge of Britain is limited to what I’ve gleaned from pop culture. As such, I tend to reduce the entire country to Charles Dickens and Colin Firth, Abbey Road and Big Ben, fish and chips and bangers and mash.
But there is still something about the British, something beyond a linguistic link and a geographic proximity that makes their culture appealing. It’s less a specific lust for the dashing accent and more a general infatuation with our transatlantic brethren.
This British itch must be at least part of the explanation for so many iconic pop cultural crossovers — the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Monty Python, James Bond and Harry Potter, just to name a few. And as with the Spice Girls or Rick Astley, sometimes being British counts for even more than talent.
We’re not as easily seduced by all cultures and accents. We’ve all tried out the occasional “bloody ‘ell,” but I’ve never heard someone add an “eh?” on the end of a sentence in the hope of sounding more Canadian.
It’s as though we’ve developed — more than 200 years after the Revolution — a romantic fascination with our country’s colonizers. And don’t tell TJ, but in severe cases, this borders wishing that pesky rebellion never happened, so that we all could be sitting around drinking tea and saying stuff like “bollocks.”
Speaking of “bollocks,” British English also is intriguing for its broad vocabulary of expletives and insults. Easily, the English have 100 words for “jerk.” Much more useful for making hostility and sarcasm palatable — just ask Simon Cowell.
What is it about Britain that catches our fancy? Maybe it’s the tea parties or the funny way they spell words like “favourite” and “colour.” Maybe it’s the rain or double-decker buses or British royalty. The First Family, even one as alluring as the Kennedys, just can’t compare to polo-playing figureheads with fortunes and castles and titles.
We don’t always understand British culture, but we always want to adapt it. We remake British television shows and draw their actors and musicians into the vortex of Hollywood. Even our dark, alluring American characters like Batman, Chuck Bass, and Dr. House get some of their edge from being played by actors from the U.K.
It seems the British Invasion wasn’t a onetime heyday that began with Beatlemania. These days, it’s more like an ongoing immigration, a constant influx of music, movies and television that skips the Immigration and Naturalization Service paperwork and goes straight to the heart of American culture.
Just look at this year’s Grammy Awards, which saw domination from British acts like Radiohead, Coldplay, Adele and Robert Plant. Or the Oscars, a veritable lovefest for Kate Winslet and Brit-directed and written “Slumdog Millionaire.” Or check out the buzz surrounding “Skins,” a British teen drama that makes “Gossip Girl” look like “The Brady Bunch.”
Maybe the Brits do it better and maybe they don’t. But there’s something to be said for the mythical journey of pop culture that travels across thousands of miles of icy Atlantic water to land safely on U.S. shores. It is, to borrow a phrase, bloody brilliant.
Rebecca’s column runs biweekly Tuesdays. She can be reached at r.marsh@cavalierdaily.com.
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