English Stereotypes About Other Nations

Appendix 3.

The English, by Jeremy Paxman, is an attempt to pinpoint exactly what it means to be English, as opposed to British. The text is taken from a chapter in the book which deals with English attitudes to foreigners.

It’s hard to escape the conclusion that, deep down, the English don’t really care for foreigners. […] in 1497, a Venetian noticed that ‘the English are great lovers of themselves, and of everything belonging to them; they think that there are no other men than themselves and no other world but England; and whenever they see a handsome foreigner they say “he looks like an Englishman” and that “it is a great pity that he should not be an Englishman”’.

In describing a visit to England by Frederick, Duke of Württemberg in 1592, a German author commented upon the fact that ‘the inhabitants … are extremely proud and overbearing … they care little for foreigners, but scoff and laugh at them.’ Another visitor, the Dutch merchant Emmanuel van Meteren noticed the same arrogance when he listed the qualities of the English character. “The people are bold, courageous, ardent and cruel in war, but very inconstant, rash, vainglorious, light and deceiving, and very suspicious, especially of foreigners, whom they despise.” […]

The picture had hardly changed by the middle of this century. In 1940, George Orwell, who had noticed how little ordinary soldiers were affected by their exposure to foreign cultures in World War one, turned his attention to the boys’ magazines the Gem and the Magnet. He hated almost everything about them, from their conservative politics to their absurdly dated mise-en-scène.

As a rule [he wrote] it is assumed that foreigners of any race are all alike and will conform more or less exactly to the following patterns:

FRENCHMAN: Wears beard, gesticulates wildly.

SPANIARD, MEXICAN, etc.: Sinister, treacherous.

ARAB, AFGHAN, etc.: Sinister, treacherous.

CHINESE: Sinister, treacherous. Wears pigtail.

ITALIAN: excitable. Grinds barrel-organ or carries stiletto.

SWEDE, DANE, etc.: Kind-hearted, stupid.

NEGRO: comic, very faithful.

Note that Americans do not appear on this list of hilarious stereotypes. But then, speaking English, they weren’t really foreigners. It would have been impossible for ‘Frank Richards’, the author of these hugely successful stories, to have got away with the simple-minded caricatures Orwell despised, had the English not had a profound ignorance of foreigners.

As he had been turning them out for thirty years, Orwell assumed the name to be a nom de plum for a team of writers. He underestimated the man: Richards once wrote 18,000 words in a single day, and his lifetime output was estimated at the equivalent of a thousand ordinary novels. To his astonishment, after the article appeared, Frank Richards […] demanded the right of reply. On the question of stereotypes he wrote, “As for foreigners being funny, I must shock Mr. Orwell by telling him that foreigners are funny. They lack the sense of humour which is the special gift to our chosen nation: and people without a sense of homour are always unconsciously funny.”

Дата добавления: 2014-12-27