Recently I have watched a lot of films on account of it being the university holidays and all. All of these films are of course, inevitably American. Oh, are they ever American. Just when you thought I am going to start ranting about the stupid Yanks and their ability to make even the most tolerant of us shake our heads in irritated dismay, I present to you the topic of stereotypes in films.

I’ll take one film for example : “Pieces of April” presents the perfect example of Americans stereotyping every other culture and nation in the world. In the movie, an American girl tries to communicate with an elder Chinese couple. Usually one of two stereotypes are used for Asian folk :

1) Asians in California: garish “I bought this shirt in Malibu” type clothing , with the trademark upper-class camera slung around the neck, albatrossing them to the status of Tourist. They are also pointing at anything that goes by which is worth photographing , and they are constantly jabbering in voices that sounds like an agitated ferret caught in a bag.

2) The people in question stare at the Westerner blankly while he is trying his best to impart some English knowledge onto them. In his monolingual ignorance he actually thinks that English has to have some resemblance to Mandarin. Well.

But, moving on from the movie, Asian people aren’t the only ones getting pigeonholed.
The Britons are fairly high up on the list, the Yanks relegating them to various stereotypical roles :

1) The mad scientist. For some reason : “I will rule the world MUAHAHAHAHA” sounds better without someone rolling the r, and thus , the scientist indeed sounds smarter and more evil. Spies however, are for some inexplicable reason, always American. It seems to have evaded them that the greatest spies in history were British (James Bond, Austin Powers). Cody Banks doesn’t count.

2) The butler, as seen in Batman, Richie Rich and Annie. The frequently asked question is mostly “ Would you like a scone?” (pronounces skohn) This pastry seems to fascinate the Americans, so in every other scene the butler is inquiring if the master as yet developed a hunger for a scone or if he can bring hand him his cape/count his money again/run a bath. Ok so maybe the scone thing isn’t entirely true. But that’s only because they don’t know what it is :P

Ok don’t get so worked up – I don’t dislike Americans that much. But, if you can’t make fun of the most powerful nation on earth, then who?