# Million Dollar Baby questions (SPOILERS) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 7, 2005, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/million-dollar-baby-questions-spoilers/283615 "2005-01-07T18:22:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![middleman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9a140/32.png) [@middleman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/middleman)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2005, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/million-dollar-baby-questions-spoilers/283615/61 "2005-02-22T21:19:21Z")
I’ve lived in Houston for 17 years (less the three years I was in school in Lubbock). Prior to that, I lived in Mobile, AL (about as Southern as you can get). East Texas has the same “Southern” mentality as Alabama (with a Mexican flair, I suppose). “Texan” is a Southern Subset. Don’t MAKE me draw a venn diagram! 😉 ---
**Author:** ![DoctorJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doctorj/32/2904_2.png) [@DoctorJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DoctorJ)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2005, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/million-dollar-baby-questions-spoilers/283615/62 "2005-02-22T21:34:42Z")
> [@](#): > > Anybody who’d compare his character to Stepin Fetchit apparently didn’t pay any attention to the movie. That isn’t what I meant. I thought Freeman’s role was well-written and, as usual, well-executed. I just meant that if they wanted to go for over-the-top stereotypes, they might as well have gone all the way. > [@](#): > > Oh really? I invite you to the backwoods of Kentucky or Appalachia. You may need an interpreter as the English spoken by some people is chock full of grammatical atrocities and the accent so thick you may have difficulty believing it’s English at all. I grew up in the backwoods of Kentucky, so there isn’t much you can tell me about mangling the Queen’s English. It tends to be mangled in very particular ways, though, depending on where you are in the South, and the Southerners in this movie were not even close to anything, anywhere. This is a pet peeve of mine. Actors will spend weeks with dialect coaches making sure they sound like they’re from the right neighborhood in London, but then they’re playing a Southerner, they just talk slow, try to sound as stupid as possible, and say “y’all” a lot. As for the stereotypes: a beloved English professor once told me (as we were discussing a particularly bad short story I had written) that the fact that such people really exist doesn’t make it any less of a stereotype. The writer’s job is to make the character into something more. I don’t really take personal offense at the stereotypical Southerners–I just think it’s lazy writing. ---
**Author:** ![BobT](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8e8cbc/32.png) [@BobT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobT)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2005, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/million-dollar-baby-questions-spoilers/283615/63 "2005-02-22T21:51:12Z")
The actor who played Danger is actually Canadian. Martin Baruchel was born in Ottawa and grew up in Montreal. So he probably hears it from the French that he doesn’t speak that language properly either. ---
**Author:** ![Fiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e274bd/32.png) [@Fiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiver)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2005, 4:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/million-dollar-baby-questions-spoilers/283615/64 "2005-02-23T04:15:30Z")
> [@spoke-](#): > > Explain to me again why Texas isn’t culturally Southern? The fact they drink unsweetened iced tea trumps everything else on your list. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Chao\_Goes\_Mu](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_chao_goes_mu/32/3191_2.png) [@The\_Chao\_Goes\_Mu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Chao_Goes_Mu)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2005, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/million-dollar-baby-questions-spoilers/283615/65 "2005-02-23T12:48:21Z")
> [@DoctorJ](#): > > I grew up in the backwoods of Kentucky, so there isn’t much you can tell me about mangling the Queen’s English. It tends to be mangled in very particular ways, though, depending on where you are in the South, and the Southerners in this movie were not even close to anything, anywhere. > > This is a pet peeve of mine. Actors will spend weeks with dialect coaches making sure they sound like they’re from the right neighborhood in London, but then they’re playing a Southerner, they just talk slow, try to sound as stupid as possible, and say “y’all” a lot. I can’t argue with you here. I was born a Yankee but my family is scattered about the South and I have friends in Texas and one problem with many Yankees is the misconception that all Southern dialects are the same. Most people cannot tell the difference between dialects from North Carolina, Texas, Alabama, and Kentucky, let alone the _variety_ of dialects in _each_ of these states. It would be refreshing if Hollywood actually paid attention to these subtleties but people apparently content to wrongfully assume that all Southerner’s are just ignorant hillbillies (or ‘ridgerunners’ if you want to nitpick 😉 ) ---
**Author:** ![middleman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9a140/32.png) [@middleman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/middleman)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2005, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/million-dollar-baby-questions-spoilers/283615/66 "2005-02-23T13:54:35Z")
> [@Fiver](#): > > The fact they drink unsweetened iced tea trumps everything else on your list. Though it weakens MY position, as a man of reason, I MUST score this as a knockdown! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/million-dollar-baby-questions-spoilers/283615.md?page=3)