Very good article, but not what I expected. I thought you'd be writing on wokefolk and how you need to use the right code words or you'd be cancelled. Material for a second article!
During the peak of the pandemic we got through the darker months by watching 'Allo 'All every night. One of the brilliant aspects of the show was the handling of the English language. Who could forget Crabtree and his bastardization of French via English! Or the "French as is spoken in English" of the cafe people saying things like "In the bedroom of my mother." Or the Germans always pronouncing the W with a V in the style of a high camp Mel Brooks movie? Or the mock upper class English by saying fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa in impersonating an Englishman.
I was also was struck by the ability to produce a farcical, if genial, comedy about a WWII occupation where no one is truly good or bad but always somewhat silly in their selfish desires and range of typical human emotions, which made them all have more in common as people than divided by enmity. Something today's world seems to have forgotten. One doesn't want to gloss over or make light of the astonishing cruelty of WWII but it is moments like today when you realize how close we still are to our cruel natures, despite all the progress of the last 70 years.
I only learned in my 30s or 40s that Allo Allo was actually a parody of another show altogether. can't think of any other examples where the parody is so much more famous than the original
The various slaughtered French in this article could have saved their skins, but like all French, either refuse not to speak their mother tongue, or if they do deign to speak a foreign language, make no effort to pronounce things correctly, and sound like Antoine de Caunes.
Very good article, but not what I expected. I thought you'd be writing on wokefolk and how you need to use the right code words or you'd be cancelled. Material for a second article!
I contain multitudes
Multitude in potential. Actuate!
During the peak of the pandemic we got through the darker months by watching 'Allo 'All every night. One of the brilliant aspects of the show was the handling of the English language. Who could forget Crabtree and his bastardization of French via English! Or the "French as is spoken in English" of the cafe people saying things like "In the bedroom of my mother." Or the Germans always pronouncing the W with a V in the style of a high camp Mel Brooks movie? Or the mock upper class English by saying fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa in impersonating an Englishman.
I was also was struck by the ability to produce a farcical, if genial, comedy about a WWII occupation where no one is truly good or bad but always somewhat silly in their selfish desires and range of typical human emotions, which made them all have more in common as people than divided by enmity. Something today's world seems to have forgotten. One doesn't want to gloss over or make light of the astonishing cruelty of WWII but it is moments like today when you realize how close we still are to our cruel natures, despite all the progress of the last 70 years.
I only learned in my 30s or 40s that Allo Allo was actually a parody of another show altogether. can't think of any other examples where the parody is so much more famous than the original
The various slaughtered French in this article could have saved their skins, but like all French, either refuse not to speak their mother tongue, or if they do deign to speak a foreign language, make no effort to pronounce things correctly, and sound like Antoine de Caunes.
haha