An interesting thread, which seems to disparage the idea that almost all Australian characters in comic books sound like they work on a farm in the Pilbara: Why the Portrayal of Australians in Superhero Comics is So Cliched - World Comic Book Review
IMHO, the quotation from DialectBlog in that article misses that the “broad” Australian accent isn’t so much working class as rural. It can’t be that all Australian characters, excluding X-Men’s Tempus, are from the Australian countryside.
I am trying to think of contemporary portrayals of Australians in motion pictures as a point of comparison:
a. Rebel Wilson in “Pitch Perfect”, who has a standard Australian accent with some droll use of the broad accent from time to time;
b. Chris Hemsworth in “Ghost Busters”, in which he had his natural, cultivated Australian accent.
Cate Blanchett has a cultivated Australian accent, as does Hugo Weaving, but I don’t recall hearing either of them speak in their natural accents recently (Weaving did in “Priscilla Queen of the Desert”, of course). Ben Mendelsohn has a surprisingly broad Australian accent when you hear him speak in interviews.
So. Are broad Australian accents over-typicalised in mass media?
The good thing about the current state of TV and movie characters from other countries is they’re overwhelmingly played by actors from those countries. Yes there are a lot of Brits and Aussies putting on American accents, but they also will use their real accents in other roles. Rarely will they get an American in to play a New Zealander when they can get Manu Bennett, Lucy Lawless, or Karl Urban in to do it. In Agents of SHIELD they have Brits and Scots using their real accents.
Beyond that, though, comics are all about stereotypes. You’re equally as likely to get regional accents in Texan, Georgian, or Minnesotan characters. It’s far from restricted to international.
Without a “G’day”, how would you even know a comic book character was Australian? Similarly, comic book Canadians need the “eh?”. Notably, in the Alpha Flight series (Marvel’s intermittently published Canadian version of the Avengers) only one character said “eh?” and the rest had conventional dialogue, except the two characters from Quebec who dropped the “h” now and then.
Has there been a similar Australian team of characters? In that context, having one “rural” character would acknowledge the stereotype while also demonstrating that it didn’t apply to every Australian.
Only one I can think of is Captain Boomerang from The Flash and The Bad-Guy Avengers (whatever last summer’s bomb movie was called).
You knew that Captain Boomerang was Australian because all those Australians love throwing boomerangs around. They wanted to call him “Captain Kangaroo,” but the name was copyrighted.
If we’re talking rural stereotypes, the worst offenders are probably Australian makers of Australian film. Thinking of ourselves as a country characterised by “the bush” despite being an 80% urban nation is one of the most Australian things out, and I’m sure I could name two popular rural-based films for every one city-based and not break a sweat.
The only time I remember Australians in a comic book was when Little Lulu and Tubby went to visit her uncle, Crispy Bacon, at his “ranch” (station) down under.
The only line I remember (I was six years old at the time) is “Your uncle Crispy Bacon sounds like a ham to me!” I think it was delivered by Wilbur van Snobbe.
This actually matches with my experience living in Calgary for a few years. Many but not all Canadians there would sometimes put an ‘eh?’ on the end of questions, not a big deal. Except… I had a landlord who would use ‘eh’ at least once on every single question as well as most of his statements. It was almost a verbal tic, if it weren’t his natural way of speaking I would have thought it parody. His accent was normal for Calgary except for this, and his wife didn’t do this.
Having one particular Canadian (but not most Canadians) liberally pepper his sentences with ‘eh’ seems right to my experience.
The first time I encountered a Canadian was at a truck stop just outside of Windsor, Ontario (I was driving from Milwaukee to Vermont at the time). When I told him I was going to attend language school, he said “Oh, hey, whaddaya think of that Gorbachev, eh? He seems like a pretty nice guy, eh?”
It was like talking to Bob or Doug MacKenzie. I was barely able to keep from laughing.
I haven’t heard anyone talk like that since I’ve been living in Toronto (though I do know a Canadian in Moscow who does).
Yeah, it is hard to win when you are attempting to use an outsider as a character. When you give them recognizable character traits, you are accused of stereotyping. When you make them “other in name only” you are accused of whitewashing. And when you carry them on your shoulders, they fall in the river and drown.
Bendis’ Tempus is somewhat different. The character sounds to me like an urban Australian.
It just occurred to me that there is also that story in Warren Ellis’ “Global Frequency”… I don’t have it at hand, but it was the amusing tale of a British spy and an Aboriginal Australian police officer working together to deal with a suicide cult. The Brit sounds British: the Australian cop not so Australian: his racist commander sounds very Australian.
