I was quite surprised that the example talking about I Am Dina didn't mention the actor's name who played the Russian, so I added his name to the example:
The pan-Scandinavian movie I Am Dina, set in nineteenth century rural Norway, featured illustrious actors from all three countries and then some - like GĂ©rard Depardieu, playing one of the male leads. For the sake of realism (one assumes), it was decided to do this in English. The result was hotly debated, but the biggest irony was probably that the only English actor, Christopher Eccleston, was cast as a Russian.
"I told you PCs were unreliable." Darwin, The Amazing World of GumballThere were a large number of Americans on this page that played Americans. I think most people can agree they are not using a fake nationality (unless you are subscribe to the right wing talk show host way of thinking). Also there are some Americans listed as the wrong nationality (i.e. Steven Seagal is not Irish he is from the big city of Lancing Michigan). Some even got the ethnicity wrong (Mohamed Hassan was mostly Jordanian and considers himself such not Italian.)
Someone needs to add Allo Allo. All Englishmen playing Austrians, Germans, Frenchmen, Italians, ... All while speaking English.
Hide / Show RepliesAh, now there's an interesting philosophical question. If everybody in the show is blatantly doing an unconvincing foreign impersonation for comic effect, is it still this trope?
If there are bad examples, then edit those, but there are plenty of legitimate examples, and disliking a few of them doesn't mean it's a stupid trope.
- Adding to the intrigue, "Chekov" is a rather rare romanized spelling compared to "Chekhov", which itself is some old fuck-up turned into tradition, since the transliterated <kh> actually represents a hard H, such as the first sound in "whore".
Seems that someone Did Not Do The Research here, as "Чехов" in Russian does have a [hard H] sound, because that's the only [H] sound Russian actually have — there's no [soft H] in Russian.
Edited by Khathi
This might be Rules Lawyering, but should Toby Huss as Kahn on King of the Hill count? He may be Laotian by birth, but Kahn's a naturalized American citizen. Yellowface might be the more appropriate description.
"Vox populi, vox humbug!" - William Tecumseh Sherman