fake American dialects (Society Listserv?)

[Laurence Horn]

At 10:50 PM -0400 6/23/08, Mark Mandel wrote:
>On Mon, Jun 23, 2008 at 10:27 PM, Marc Velasco <marcjvelasco at gmail.com> wrote:
>>  One of the better jobs (imho) of a fake American accent was English actor
>>  Dominic West off of 'The Wire.'  He's not merely pulling off 'generic
>>  American' but doing a passable job at the subtle Baltimorean dialect.  One
>>  episode in series 2, he had to pull off a local Baltimore street cop, trying
>>  to imitate his idea of a British accent.  Has anyone else ever had to
>>  pretend to be themself?  I'm sure it's happened before, but I estimate it's
>>  rather rare.
>
>Not that but somewhat parallel: Julie Andrews in Victor/Victoria,
>playing a female impersonator.
>
and there's a long tradition of the reverse--male actors (e.g. in
Shakespeare's day) playing female characters who are pretending to be
men (as in several of the comedies).

LH

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