HBO’s On Demand Comedy Specials recently have included some really fun stuff by George Lopez and Cedric the Entertainer. Hour long goodies.
An amusing similarity between them is that both comics, when doing impressions of Your Basic White Person, sound very much like the Valley Girl or the Surfer Dude, complete with all the “whatever” and “totally” and other vapid expressions that have become associated with those people.
My questions are:
For you non-Whites: is that how white people sound to you?
For you Whites: is that a fair generalization for the White Guy or Gal?
In either case, if not, what’s a better Typical White Guy or Gal?
It’s a somewhat fair stereotype. For a Californian. In the 1980s. About as fair as characterizing all Canadians as sounding like Newfoundlanders.
A “typical” white person would sound … well, rather bland, really. Standard English-speaker, no accents or peculiar inflections, pretty vanilla as things go. There are numerous regional differences, though. The Texas drawl (which covers a lot of southern states), New Yorkers, Bostonians, Minnesotans, etc.
Do you suppose the reason these “types” are being used may have to do with how dated they are? Or is it more a matter of their attitudes and speech patterns having been adopted or emulated across the country?
The Valley Girl stereotype does sounds a lot like a lot of young white women and girls who abuse “like” and “ohmygod!”. It’s not just exclusive to California. Same with the “surfer dude” thing, except I call it fratboy speak.
Comics also imitate whites by speaking with a nasal tone and using corny Ned Flanderesque expressions like “Gee willikers!” I know of a professor in Minnesota who sounds just like that. But aside from him, I don’t see a lot of whites talking like that. I think that particular stereotype comes from old movies featuring Jimmy Stewart and the like.
I don’t know the extent to which those stereotypes were emulated, implying a rather profound lack of intelligence as they do, but they were certainly popularized by television and movies throughout the 80s because they sounded so dumb as to be funny. I think the fact that they seemed so over the top is what’s made them stick in the public consciousness, which is probably why they are sometimes still used as stereotypical “white folk.” You need only hear them to know they’re white because no one else talks like that.
The same could be said for residents of the above mentioned states, to name a few, but in generally they’re not all that funny. Except when you get a Bostonian to say “park my car.”
I should have added that Cedric and Lopez are not alone in their “white guy” take-offs. Dave Chappelle has some different ones that seem a little closer to “mainstream” than the California types. It’s just that the Cedric and Lopez shows are both on On Demand this week, thus making it easier to spot their similarity in stereotypes.
Both stereotypes are alive and well in my town. Hell, I know 20 real surfer dudes. I don’t really surf, but I’ve got a longboard in my living room and unfortunately lapse into surfer dude speak pretty regularly when I’m not in angry psycho rant mode. Valley girl speak seems more prevalent in the 12 to 19 year old demographic but is also the default speech at ski resorts. I know, I’m not white, but almost everyone I know is.
Good to know. Another female white stereotype that bothers my ears is the one that’s best exemplified by The West Wing’sJanel Moloney whose nasal whiny delivery is so garbled as to be unintelligible. This has replaced (for a large part) the Valley Girl dimwit with the wispy fragile bubblehead. Both types are offensive to my idea of women. But the Janel type is audible in almost any situation where more than one woman is present. It’s almost as if they try to outdo each other in whining and garbling their words. FWIW, even with the Closed Captions on it was hard to make out what “Donna” was saying.
