Faking the foreigner

"Top of the morning to ya!" by The Boozing Irishman.

Bad voice acting is no news to gamers. There's been some pretty disturbing stuff, mostly within the challenge of delivering emotions. Voice acting can be a tool to great gameplay. It's part of building the character into a likable, charismatic form of identification. Or it can be a way to say "fuck you and your stupid accent".

There's a fine line between funny and offensive. Some brand new games have chosen the latter and present interesting attitudes towards foreigners. The Saboteur's protagonist Sean is an Irishman. His voice on the other hand is not. The result: one of the shittiest, most stereotypical Irish growls I've ever heard. Apparently Robin Atkin Downes thought that just infiltrating some "arses" in the lines is effort to put on a person's national identification. The rest is stolen from these.

Ah yes, let's not forget all the rest of the lovely accents in the game. Jon Curry plays a Frenchman, I think, and sounds exactly the same as he did as an Italian. It's still better than Karen Strassman as Veronique, which is an excellent caricature of the non-native English speaker, who can't tone down the mother tongue. Jules is pretty sucky too, voice acting by a born and raised American of course. And then there's the British accent of Skylar's. This is the most baffling one since you'd think there's British actresses more than enough to choose from. (If not, I'd recommend Claudia Black for everything.)

 "Byt he 'as my bratheeer...also I've

never met a French person."

Dierker may be my favorite of all. The often seen nazi psychopath is related to Indiana Jones baddies. You remember how politically correct they were. The actor's name is suspiciosly German, but his accent sure isn't. Was he adviced to overract? Yikes.

Some people speculate Sean's accent is fake so Sean is easier to "understand" and "identify" as Irish. Yeah. Exactly comments like these worry me. In case if someone didn't know, the Irish aren't some sort of a homogeneous chunk of alcoholic arse yelling goblins. Listen to these Irish actors for example. Trouble locating them? Didn't think so.

I could guess, according to the nature of the game, that it isn't exactly taking itself seriously. There's so much stereotypes in it that I'd like to think so. Much like GTA's Nico Bellic, who sounds like this because GTA has a long tradition potraying all the immigrants and minorities in the world equally overdone. Even if that is so, it is a habit originating from tv, movies and people in Youtube pretending to be foreigners. By repeating it games will evidently be a part of the disease of bad accents and affect on future actors and their performance. It's a great big rat race with no escape.

I'm guessing what is heard in the game is a result of several things. These seem to be that game developers a) don't give a shit, since we're foreigners and therefore secundary, b) find us being an excellent source of humour and c) are working to keep the stereotypes running in order to maintain the power of "normality", "default", "us" and "the others". Since language has a huge significance in delivering images, those who have the power of the language can indeed decide if they want to dissolve the existing stereotypes. By choosing "no, I'd rather make them million times worse", you get results like Bolo Santosi.

"My name is Boloo SanToosi and I'm

the leader of an awful racist stereotype."

Oh yes, if The Saboteur's "who cares"-attitude isn't enough for you, it certainly is nothing compared to Just Cause 2, which seems to be aiming to actual racism. Bolo Santosi, the internet ceberity by now, is trying to be a Singaporean, of who, I'm guessing, none of the game crew knew nothing about. Wonder what voice actor Liz Sutherland was thinking when going to work, since I have no words.

Maybe some day, for the entertainment industry, for example Europe or Asia aren't just some foreign places with funny speaking foreigners, but continents with tons of different nationalities and people who actually buy these games and can tell if the accent is real or not. Until that I guess we'll be laughing for the absurdity, and bitching and moaning in the internet.