Hey dudes,
if you read my last post called “Black and Blue,” you’ll remember a point where one of the characters starts talking in an Irish accent. I have a lot of friends who do this for no apparent reason, and I think once or twice I’ve said “Cheers” instead of “Thanks” or called a truck a lorrie. For a long time I couldn’t think of any rational explanation for this other than base pretention. But a few days ago I was watching, I’m embarrassed to say, Entertainment Tonight, and they were talking about how Britney Spears has recently begun addressing the press in a British accent. Here’s something I wrote as an addition to that story that I thought you all might enjoy. Cheerio!
Black’s occasional use of an Irish accent is not one easily explained.
Those who follow tabloid journalism will be familiar with a certain popstar’s recent use of a phony British accent while talking to the paparazzi. Her reasons for doing this are obscure, because this certain popstar is known to come not from Manchester, Leeds, Sussex, or Brixton, but rather from a small town in Louisiana.
The popstar’s first hit was a song that rhymes with “Shmit Shme Shmaby Shmone Shmore Shime,” and its lyrics could be interpreted as either an admonition to overly-strict parents or someone asking for a spanking. In the song’s aburdly well-known and well-loved video, this popstar is provocatively dressed as a Catholic school girl. Later on, though in the meantime she would don a thousand provocative outfits, this popstar would insist on her virginity–even during a high profile romance with a popstar whose name rhymes with Justin Timberlake.
In short, for a long time this popstar (both fresh-faced and nubile, both innocent and sexy) embodied, as Chuck Closterman puts it, the paradoxical roles of both virgin and whore. For many years she reigned as America’s princess because she straddled the gap between Shirley Temple and Debbie from Debbie Does Dallas. America loved her all the more because she often straddled this gap wearing nothing but her bra and panties.
In her long (long, especially considering her age) and prolific career, this popstar only made one mistake: she became pregnant. The media and the public, confronted with the visual evidence of her defilement in the form of her turgid stomach, became sickened. They found themselves looking at a whore where once had been a virgin–and in our hearts we knew that we, WE, were the father. In a spirit of collective shame, the national perogative became, if not to kill her outright, then at the very least to drive her completely insane.
As a nation, we have succeeded: now she often addresses the press in an English accent. Why her insanity should express itself in this manner, nobody can say–there are no words to discuss the phenomenon. I do know that it can not be easy to have such a deep understanding of the fact that at the heart of the American psyche is a strong tendency toward a ravaging kind of canibalism.
I believe that, though under wildly different conditions, Blue sometimes speaks in an Irish accent for similar reasons. He is not a popstar.