Comments on: Reality Calls

By: Nuts and Bolts - Asymptotia

Nuts and Bolts - Asymptotia — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 18:40:43 +0000

[...] Take yesterday for example. After a week of working on various calculations and chipping away at improving my understanding of how to approach a certain problem, I decided to take Saturday and be outdoors a bit more…see what it was like outside. You know…. Have an actual Saturday Saturday. (I did not end up being booked to do that TV shoot, by the way, so I had a nice clear day ahead of me.) [...]

By: Clifford

Clifford — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 17:36:39 +0000

Well, we’ve all been part of the audience in seminars where the speaker -when possessing a nice crisp British (often oxbridge or percieved as such) accent- is allowed to get away with murder by the audience in a way that i’m almost certain would not happen if they spoke with an accent from Southern California, or the Bronx, etc. There’s a perception of “learn-edness” which lends credibility to a lot of dubious stuff at times, probably coupled to the fact that most people in the USA assume that if you were educated in Britain it was probably at either Oxford or Cambridge…(those being the only two universities over there, of course.)

(I’m going to get so beaten up in the playground now…and possibly have my British accent license revoked for daring to say this…)

-cvj

P.S. Since I’ve not heard from the producers by now, I’m guessing that you won’t be seeing me as a tv panel judge any time soon.

By: Samantha

Samantha — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 17:00:12 +0000

I like your explanation, Yvette, the British judges are clearly there as the ones to “hate”. This is similar to the phenomenon of the British character actor always being the “surprise” bad guy in action movies, it got so blatant at one point, the British actor only had to walk into the scene for the first time and I immediately pegged him (and it is always a him I think) as being the evil behind the scenes mastermind. It got tiresome, I have to say.

But back to reality shows, the thing that surprises me is that the British judge is also the one the contestants most repect, want to impress etc etc which (in my opinion) points to a) the obvious - people respect those who speak plainly and b) some weird British/American cultural thing that I don’t really understand, can it really be as Athena suggests (jokingly) that the British accent confers gravitas?

By: Yvette

Yvette — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 12:05:34 +0000

The thing I think is odd about the British judge phenomenon is that the British judge, as well as being the meanest, also tends to be the most authoritative one. What is with that?

The colonies are still resentful and rebelling perhaps, so they take it out passive-agressively on reality TV British judges?

By: Athena

Athena — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 03:15:04 +0000

Clifford, seeing you as a judge on a reality-show-style competition would be pretty interesting — I’d tune in!

As for the mean British judge on these shows, it could be formulaic, following the success of American Idol. The only other show I know is American Inventor, so I agree with your extrapolation! Like Samantha said, this judge also tends to be the most authoritative. And as I said to you half jokingly, sometimes an accent adds an air of authority or superiority. : )

On the other hand, that gecko from Geico has a British accent (where’s he supposed to be from anyway?), but it gets even sillier when the little guy goes on about jam and muffins. In an insurance commercial, no less. Guess he’s supposed to be our buddy, but I’m suspicious. Talking geckos don’t hail from London; it’s too cold.

By: Samantha

Samantha — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 20:34:34 +0000

Dancing with the stars ALSO has a British judge - I can’t comment on whether he is the mean one since I don’t watch the show.

The thing I think is odd about the British judge phenomenon is that the British judge, as well as being the meanest, also tends to be the most authoritative one. What is with that?

By: Clifford

Clifford — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 17:51:20 +0000

Yes, I love working in notebooks too (and sketching books are nice, I do agree)… sometimes one needs to dabble and dawdle on a larger, less structured space…. ultimately it all ends up in the notebooks though.

-cvj

P.S. waitaminute…. should this have not been on the other thread?

By: Carl Brannen

Carl Brannen — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 17:20:09 +0000

One of the odd things about working as an engineer in industry is that you discover that (contrary to what the guidance counselors in high school would have you believe) some of the best and most successful engineers have no college education. This is especially true in mechanical engineering of machinery. And software. Bill Gates, who didn’t earn a bachelor’s degree, just picked up another honorary doctorate.

I forgot to mention yesterday that my prefered medium for doing calculations is the 8.5 x 11 inch notebooks that art stores sell for people to sketch in. They take a clean ink line and are easy on the eyes. I can’t imagine how I survived as a grad student using cheap paper and mechanical pencils. The old notebooks are almost useless, but each has a couple pages that are indexed in the inside front cover.

By: Clifford

Clifford — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 16:12:02 +0000

Thanks! Piers Morgan? Really? That’s bizarre…

Anyway, as many as three or four data points! Excellent. I would say it is very much a tradition then, and almost a law of Nature (if I simply discount all the shows I don’t know about as experimental error )…

Is this the TV version of having the British accented bad guys in the movies?

Cheers,

-cvj

By: ryan

ryan — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 15:50:28 +0000

Here’s another data point for you: “America’s Got Talent”. Unfortunately, this show features Piers Morgan, whom you may recall was the former editor of the Daily Mirror.

Also, American Inventor is based upon the BBC 2 show “Dragon’s Den”. The Englishman in American Inventor was also a judge on the Dragon’s Den, providing a bit of continuity between the two I suppose.