Voice. Over.

In a(n) X ...
The snowclone inspired by a voice. And it's one of the simplest snowclones imaginable. It's usually a bare prepositional phrase. Sometimes followed by a simple phrase like 'one man..' or 'a sole warrior...' No more. Often no complete sentence. Just enough for everyone to know you're doing your impression of the movie guy. Don LaFontaine: who died Monday. No impression was as good as the original.

He could sound young or old or fat or skinny or {come up with with your own binaries}. His voice was low but it didn't have that Barry White resonance. It was raspy. But brother it worked. Everyone loved his voice and after 3 decades of faceless work he was starting to get recognized on sight.

A lot of the people who wrote his copy trusted him to move us, just by timbre, into places times and minds that sounded like a good two-hour trip.



photo from here

Where the women are strong

Mr Verb has posted on the representation of Minnesota Dialect in the Cohen brothers' film Fargo. He does a very nice job describing the features as heard in the film comparing them to the features as they occur in the actual dialect. Go read it.

It reminded me of my post from last September about Buffy's pre-velar raising. Dialectal phonological variation is one of my favorite linguistic areas. To learn a little more about the various AmE dialects take a look also at a couple of sites that I've added to my Resources link list.

Linguists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are doing a lot of research on the "Skonnie" dialect and they've put up a website providing a lot of information.

More generally--the Harvard Dialect Survey has produced some fascinating dot maps from its huge lot of data.

Now go watch Fargo. It's my favourite film by the Cohen brothers. It's disturbing. It's hilarious. It's ridiculous. It's heartwarming.

Or just go listen to some Garrison Keillor. He paints a picture of Minnesota true to all of those qualities without subjecting us to a wood-chipper scene.

[Update:
I see that the Harvard survey site isn't loading up. The link is correct and it was working fine just a couple of days ago. We'll wait a while and see what's up.
]

Bragging about a sub-parsec performance

Recent posts over at Q-Majin? have me thinking about astronomy. So...

I'm not a fan of the Star Wars movies. I've only seen episodes 4 5 and 6 and I was thoroughly bored.

But I will call off one judgment that I've held against the writing for about 15 years. Knowing how fans of sci-fi run along the bleeding edge of detailed criticism I never assumed to be the only person to notice the line.

Here's the line that bothered me.

It's the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs.

A lot has been written about this line. And there are several claims. Some of the more common observations:

1. A parsec is a unit of distance not space--so the Lucas made a mistake.



2. Distance is the correct measurement
   
   • Han Solo is bragging about doing a treacherous run in the shortest distance (distance vs linear displacement)--so Han Solo is a skilled pilot maneuvering an agile ship most efficiently (and speed isn't so relevant).
   
   
   • The speed is relevant because the run requires "catching" other ships and delivering cargo over the shortest distance.


3. The line shows that Han Solo is a bigmouth--not an astronomer.


4. Space and time are the same thing. Einstein said so.

Even those who defend the line commonly admit that the explanations in later books are retcons: retroactive continuities. Those are explanations that are provided after the fact because a storyline is otherwise illogical.

I haven't heard the commentary track on Episode IV So I'm relying on Wikipedia for the the citation. According to the article George Lucas explains on the DVD that hyperspace cannot be traveled in a straight line but the pilot that can maneuver his ship closest to black holes and obstacles is fastest. The question remains: did he have that in mind when he wrote the line?

I say it doesn't matter. We don't need to rely on an author's argument (outside the work proper) to accept the cohesion and coherence of a plot.

My favorite defense of the line is #3. It's the most elegant. Most online scripts make a point of providing stage directions for Obi Wan Kenobi to give Han Solo a knowing look (in fact almost all the scripts I found are obviously based on a common source--the stage directions are repeated verbatim). Perhaps Alec Guinness just saved the scene. If Lucas had written that "look" into the stage directions he would not have needed the retcon explanation. In this case (if the report regarding Lucas' commentary is accurate) the readers and critics have succeeded in proving that an author often does well to keep quiet for the sake of the work.

Cool news

This isn't about linguistics. I'm not sure how many have clicked on the sidebar link to Behind Forgotten Eyes. The link is promotional page for a documentary about the Korean "comfort women" who were forced into sexual slavery during World War II.

Buffy's good friend Tony Gilmore directed the film, which has for some time been listed on IMDb without distribution information. Yoon-jin Kim narrates the film (Casey, you know her from Lost) and I just read that Horizon has agreed to distribute the film. It will be shown at the Cannes Film Festival.

This is very exciting news. To provide a face to accompany the name dropping I offer this picture of our New Year's Eve 2004 dinner with Tony and his (now) wife Mayu, and Daniel.