I watched Wimbledon at the weekend. I should probably say ‘endured’ or ‘was repulsed by’, thanks to the concept of Kirsten Dunst pairing with Paul Bettany – something only slightly less off-putting than Catherine Zeta with Sean Connery in Entrapment. But watched is the word I shall use for the moment.
Only, I’ve see a few Kirsten Dunst movies in my time and for the first time, I noticed something odd about her.
She has an American accent.
When did that happen? Isn’t she English? In fact, I hadn’t noticed her having any kind of accent at all until now.
Anyway, it occurs to me she’s probably always had an American accent and I am merely party to an extremely odd phenomenon, one perhaps you might share, too.
It’s the idea – no, not even idea, but gradual acclimatisation to American accents so that they become the default accents for movies.
There are probably some to wrinkles in this acclimatisation theory of mine, since I might have noticed if Dunst had a Tennessee accent, for example, rather than that sort of standardised Northern US accent that the likes of Courtney Cox and Hugh Laurie emulate.
But that generic US accent seems to be the natural, unnoticeable accent of the movies, except when placed in an extreme minority next to British accents.
In Wimbledon, even adding in an extra US accent – Jon Favreau’s – made both Dunst’s and his seem less noticeable. Sam Neill (born in New Zealand) was faking his noticeably, which is odd given he did such a good one in Jurassic Park, so it didn’t seem like there was an extra US accent to dilute Dunst’s when he was around.
And it’s odd how when you stick a British person in an American show or movie, you only ever notice that they’re British, not so much that everyone else is American.
Why should this all be it, gentle reader, and do you experience it, too? Do Americans have a mirror effect with British and American movies and casts? Do people who watch arthouse films a lot experience the same phenomenon?
Or is it just me?
