Good lord, why can't they make movies with real Southern accents?

[Elemenopy]

Here’s an accent or dialect that fascinates me. It seems to cross regional borders, but has a certain socionomic association/connotation: blue collar, largely white, extended families, traditional values. In general, these are people who can fix your dishwasher, car, pool, roof, butcher a pig, build you a funky table, too, and probably give you something homemade and potent to sip while you enjoy it all. Proper linguistic taxonomy aside, I think of the speech as “Appalachian,” (at least if they have nice dogs )

To tie this in with the original question, I have heard this accent/dialect in Northwest Indiana where I grew up (including my grandmother, whose folks were rural Pennsylvania transplants, with some Balkan heritage, no less). I’ve heard it, with little variation in inflection,rhythm, even vocabulary, in places like Phoenix. Georgia. Texas–urban and rural. Florida. Southern Illinois and Missouri. Colorado. In Louisiana where they weren’t speaking Yat or thick Cajun (inlaws called them “cunass;” I was assured that wasn’t a huge slur, so I include it just for illustration). And so forth. The accent is endemic in the Navy, at least the folks I was around. It’s not as contagious as other Southern accents, at least for me, but can be quite melodic and hypnotic in its own right.

Merle and Darryl from Walking Dead are close to what I mean. Seems to me if you need a Southern accent for film, and the demographic is close, you could start with someone from any of those regions. It might even be easy to polish up a bit into a more refined–or at least, more specific–southern accent.

Speaking of Yat, I agree with the poster who said they want to hear this dialect more often. Dh is a 9th Ward transplant with virtually no accent, till we go down by his mamaw’s, then watch out…heck, after a week there, even I sound like Edith Bunker! :o

[syncrolecyne]

@Mississippienne

Here’s my native accent: Reading Uncanny X-Men #341 aloud.

I’m from central Mississippi, but I’ve had people guess all over the South and even Britain (!). A good movie if you want to hear genuine Southern accents is Red Dirt, from 2000, starring Dan Montgomery, Jr. (Texas) and Walton Goggins (Alabama), although the rest of the cast is all Yankees I think. The movie is set in and filmed in Mississippi.

New Orleans’ Yat accent is one I’ve never even heard attempted in a movie, as Hollywood usually equates Louisiana with Cajun, and gives everyone in New Orleans terrible Cajun accents instead of Creole or Yat accents.

Yes, or even worse, just the phony low country accent. I can’t think of too many authentic Cajun accents in a film either.

When Hurricane Katrina took place, I knew a LOT of people who were very surprised to hear authentic New Orleans accents for the first time. The biggest shock was how un-southern they are.

Texas gets this treatment too…everyone here must have a very thick twang in Hollywood. There are large areas of Texas that are twangless. If someone sounds Texan or Southern in El Paso, they are probably stationed at Fort Bliss. In south Texas, the accents are standard U.S. and Tex -Mex, though some older Tejano families around San Antonio do have the subtle blend of a Texas twang and Spanish inflection (its a very nice accent in my book). Not too many twangs in Austin (unless the legislature is in session), though some have a very mild central Texas accent. Far more people in the region sound like say Lance Armstrong than Lyndon Johnson to mention two upstanding examples. Dallas and Houston are increasingly like this too. The far east of Texas is more upland south. The classic Texas twang is only prevalent in north to central Texas, and into the smaller towns of the west.

I think politicians are also to blame for accent stereotypes. George W. Bush, Rick Parry, and Ted Cruz all have “stump speech twang,” and Bill Clinton always sounded more southern when campaigning in Kentucky than when addressing the UN. And why on earth did Jimmy Carter sound like the guy who probably sold Tara to the O’hara family when his brother Billy sounds like any guy you’d encounter at a bar on the wet county line?

[sweat209]

@Marley23

Because it’s silly and restrictive and not worth the trouble when the real priority is getting the actors you want. People will go see a movie because of the actors, but they won’t go see a movie just because it advertises authentic Southern accents. So from a business standpoint it’s not that important. And to be honest here, isn’t it kind of a tradition at this point that if a movie is set in your home town or country, everybody sits back and complains about all the stuff they got wrong? I know I’ve done that with movies set in New York.

Are you saying there is no good southern people to play in movies? Why get British people in the movie and the British accent comes out in the movie.
Take the TV show walking dead they had two British people in season two.

@epbrown01

^Here’s the solution in a nutshell, and I think Justified does a good job with it. Rather than have people try and do the accent - and Americans seem to have trouble deciphering any accent other than their own - mimic the speech patterns. You get the regional flavor and can still tell what people are saying. Sure, Walton Goggins’ Boyd (he’s from Alabama) and Joelle Carter’s Ava (she’s from Georgia) nail the rhythms perfectly, but Damon Herriman’s Dewey Crowe (“Damn! I had four kidneys?”) was spot on and he’s from Australia.

Not sure what the problem is o:o. May be they have a sheltered life and don’t travel much , watch TV or more so reality TV where you get accents more so than movies or TV sows.

Even fact US has so many different accents it does not seem strong but very subtle to my ears where other countries like in Europe the accent is thick.

Take the TV show American hogger and here comes honey boo boo :o some people say they have thick accent and hard to understand . To me only the old man in American hogger and the Mom ,Dad and kid in here comes honey boo boo have more stronger accent .The teen girls in here comes honey boo boo have slight accent likewise people in American hogger. But some other people fined it thick and hard to understand.

Yet Hispanics who are not good at English and people from France , Spain ,Australia and UK there accent is 100 times more thick.Even people in Canada have stronger accent and bit hard to understand if it close to the north east part of Canada like in Quebec ,Newfoundland so on.

Not sure what is going on here.

[Becky2844]

@Zsofia

Uh, no, but thanks for playing.

I’ll have to catch House of Cards now - I’ve been meaning to watch it now but now that I know there’s an attempted Gaffney accent (home of the Giant Peach/Giant Butt)… perhaps we’ll have to see.

How dismissive.
If actors have chosen not to attempt an accent, but still convey the nuance through what they say, am I that far off the mark?

[elfkin477]

@Mississippienne

Its a weird example of Reality Is Unrealistic. Southerners do have distinct accents – note the plural – but because our natural accents don’t sound that much like Foghorn Leghorn, Yankees think we don’t sound ‘authentic’ enough.

Ah, but that doesn’t just happen to southerners. I’ve lived in New England all my life and I’ve had several people - every single one of them from away, mind you - ask me if I’m Canadian or from the Great Lakes region. This has happened to other people I know who have grown up in southern New Hampshire too. Our accent is considerably milder than Boston or down Maine, so it doesn’t seem real enough to people who expect us to sound like more stereotypical yankees.

[Spoke]

@sweat209

Are you saying there is no good southern people to play in movies?

Mud is a good recent example of a movie where they didn’t seem to have any trouble finding Southern actors. And the movie feels much more authentic because of it.

[CrazyCatLady]

@Spoke

Actually, I’m surprised to learn she is from Georgia, because her accent on the show seems like the standard bad, overdone, Hollywood version of the Southern accent to me.

Now, Walter Goggins is perfect, of course.

I live about 40 miles (as the crow flies, 60 as the road runs) from Harlan, and there’s a lot more folks around here who sound like Ava than like Boyd. There are a lot components to the accent around here, and they’re all present in varying levels, so you get a wide range of accents, even from folks raised back the same holler. But no matter what the accent sounds like, the patterns and inflections tend to hold. In those terms, Ava sounds like she’s from 'round here. Raylan sounds like he grew up around here and then moved to the flatlands for a long time–the accent is smoothed out, but the patterns hold. Boyd, otoh, sounds like he’s from Deadwood.

[Marley23]

@sweat209

Are you saying there is no good southern people to play in movies?

No. I’m saying it’s not that important to get the accent perfect.

[silenus]

@Marley23

No. I’m saying it’s not that important to get the accent perfect.

Although an argument could be made for the oxymoron.