Why are butlers in American movies usually British?

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Yep. The Scouse accent.

Birmingham also has an accent.

And there’s the “Estuary English” of London.

And the accent of Bristol.

And the accent of southwest England (Didja zee the vox? For Did you see the fox?)

It's more complicated than that. You basically need a grid with geographical location on one axis and social class on the other.

Funnily enough the ruling class accent is pretty much the same wherever you go. Almost as though they all felt the need to communicate with one another easily?

The more working class you are, the stronger the regional dialect.

Increasing social mobility is also throwing a spanner in the works. I'm middle class and from Sussex, originally. Went to University in Stoke and picked up some Staffs and also Preston (from fellow students), now mixing it with a variety of volunteers from the Scottish central belt, and from the south east, and paid working class employees from Derbyshire and Nottingham, and Eastern European and African immigrants.

The net result of this is that everyone thinks I'm from somewhere else.

This is true. I prefer the well-spoken English accent, it sounds sexy. It's very easy on the ears, and easier to understand.

The only other English accent I like is the London accent. As in, "Yeh bruv". NOT cockney. There's a big difference. Essex accent, bleh.

Welsh and Scottish accents, meh. Edinburgh is alright, Glaswegian isn't great.

I always figured it was because England was the old world and America was the New World so when Americans got enough money to want to be classy they hired a "good" butler - one who already knew all about manners and the elite ways - so they had to go to the old world to find him.

The butler on the The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air was black (um, "african american" or "black-or-brown" - um - what is politically correct these days? It keeps changing) but he was still a male. I think the males should be complaining about the sexist portrayal of them as servants.

It was amusing that "Uncle Phil" and his household called him "Geoffrey" but Will Smith (who was a Rapper who called himself "The Prince" before he became a big movie star) always called him "G". (According to google his full name was "Geoffrey Butler".) G was inner-city slang - short for "Gangster" - a term of endearment or of honor for a fellow gang member - or at least someone treated like an insider. "OG" was "Original Gangster" and a higher compliment.

Anthony Daniels who played C-3PO said he originally envisioned his character as a "British" butler because, as he said on the Star Wars extra features "I am British". Apparently a long long time ago in a galaxy far far away the butlers were still British, but they were robots. Kenny Baker who played R2D2 (when it wasn't a remote controlled rolling drone) called Anthony Daniels the rudest man he ever met. They apparently really didn't like each other in real life. Anthony Daniels was an actor and Kenny was more of a stunt man and special effects guy. Kenny had no lines and Anthony was really annoyed that he didn't read the script, he considered himself an actor and Kenny "not an actor". Kenny was really annoyed that he wouldn't go on a speaking tour with him - which seemed like a great way to make money to Kenny.

There were a lot of British people Star Wars - because that is where it was filmed. David Prowse who played Darth Vader was British too, James Earl Jones just did the voice.

If you want the whole butler thing to be racist, it can be. You just have to be offended. Then it is racist.

I am having a hard time imagining a butler who sounds like Ringo. (But he was great on Thomas the Tank Engine - the best of all the narrators).

It's not racist because "Brit" is not a race.




The butlers could be any color or nationality you choose--they could even be turquoise Martians--but it would never be illegal.

Wait, wasn't Geoffrey in Fresh prince of Bel Air black?

Yes, and British.

That's why I mentioned him.

There's an interesting dynamic here, in that a black butler from the American deep south would have been viewed as a terrible racist stereotype, but a black butler from England is ok because - somehow - he's still posher than the rich American family he works for.

That's the bit the OP seems to be missing, these characters are not treated like dirt. If anything they're often the smartest characters - even smarter because they have no real power but plenty of assumed influence, which can only be wielded through cunning and verbal dexterity.

I also get the feeling that's partly why they're there - so wealthy families get used to"ruling" and in particular ruling through negotiation and subtlety rather than brute force. A British butler is a status symbol precisely because they're schooled in saying little, but making every word count. Useful skills for the rich and powerful to hone through gentle sparring.

Very important people are often very nice, because they never need to be horrible. Why raise your voice?

The media is busy glorifying gobshites like Alan Sugar and Gordon Ramsay, but they're upper middle class at best, and it shows. If you're shouting then you're insecure, and you've probably already lost.

How does Robert Guillaume's character in Soap [1977-1981] & Benson [1979-1986] fit into this?

Ok - I didn't watch the show a lot but I don't remember G being British - I recall him having a high class accent, but I don't remember a British accent.

but . . .

I just checked

https://freshprince.fandom.com/wiki/Geoffrey

"Born in London, Geoffrey serves as the Banks family's cynical, sardonic butler."

If you cannot trust "Fresh Prince Fandom dot COM" who can you trust.

On the subject of whether American men find a woman with a British accent attractive - I can distinctly remember hearing an interview with Sheena Easton - she had just recorded a kit song called "Strut" - her Scottish accent was one that I found VERY attractive. I also found it curious that her singing voice that she used for recording didn't have a hint of Scottish at all - she sounded very American and very rock and roll at the time - Wikipedia says "Sheena Shirley Orr was born on 27 April 1959, at Bellshill Maternity Hospital in North Lanarkshire, Scotland". Is Scotland still considered part of Great Britain? Does this count as a British accent?

I have noticed that a British BBC "news reader" sounds much more like a USA evening news "News Anchor" than - say Eliza Doolittle or some of the other specific regional accents in Britain sound like a regional accents from the US, say the deep south or parts of New York or Boston.

My family and I like the BBC series "All Creatures Great and Small". We even bought the boxed set for the COVID-19 lockdown. They have a lot of great character actors with different local accents, especially "The Yorkshire Dales".
The other BBC accents I get are from shows like "Are You Being Served" and "Chef!" and "Monty Python" (though the last are probably exaggerated for comic effect. I also recall the bad imitation American accents on some shows like Peri Brown on Doctor Who (The Fifth Doctor's companion, for die-hard-fans). Wikipedia says she was supposed to be "An American college student (her passport lists her residence as Pasadena, California)". Like a lot of British fake American accents her accent was too nasal. I took me a while to realize that she was supposed to sound "American" - I always just supposed she was whiney. I suppose American fake British accents are just as obvious.

^ I've never understood why British and American shows both feign each others' accents so incredibly badly. I mean, they are really terrible at it. Why doesn't either just hire an actor who is from that location?

One exception is Bridget Jones, but even then her accent is a mixture of common and posh, which isn't right.

I love The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. One of my favourite ever shows, it's so funny. My favourite character is Philip Banks.

Yes, Geoffrey comes from England.

I always think of the British accent as RP English, whether it's accurate to describe it that way or not.

Hugh Laurie nailed an American accent on House. It was kinda generic (mixed regional traits) but it was still believable.

I think a big part of it is that historically it's been easier to get a local to imitate rather than find someone with the proper one. Even if the accent isn't done that well the home audience probably won't notice so it still works to convey that character is an outsider.

Of course, when it's your own accent being badly faked people notice and then there's backlash.

It isn't just American and British accents that get done poorly in each other's cinema. I'm pretty sure American and British studios are also known for terrible Australian accents, using those same accents for Kiwis, using a terrible and generic Eastern European accent to represent Russians, Germans and pretty much anyone else who lives east of France, poor representations of immigrant community accents, poor representations of foreign accents, etc so it's a problem they have with accents in general.

Gun nerds can go through and do the same with gun realism.
HEMA and martial arts nerds can go through and do the same with fight realism.
Experts or at least geeks from a bunch of specialties can do the same with whatever field they're knowledgeable in.
Overall the pattern is that directors and producers don't care much about realism.

Actually you're right - Hugh Laurie did nail it.

I have no idea about those other countries, but you're very likely right.

Yeh, as long as it impresses the audience, I don't suppose they do care about realism.

Somewhat unrelated: Has anybody seen the film on Netflix called Jim & Andy, with Jim Carrey in it? It's quite interesting. You see Jim lose himself completely and become this whole other personality (Andy Kaufman) while making a film about Andy (Man on the Moon), and the people around Jim think he's gone insane. Andy, according to his wrestling rival Jerry Lawler, was polite IRL and not "the loon". I was just reminded of this documentary because of films basing characters on realism. I recommend Man on the Moon as well, both are excellent films and go very well together.

So this begs the question, with a spiffy suit and a terrible Monty Python accent, do you think I could become an American butler?

One British steriotype of Americans is that all Americans are Rich. On "Are You Being Served?" there was a "Rich American Uncle" who everyone was trying to impress. Agatha Christie stories seem to only include Americans if they are rich businessmen - usually powerful and ruthless. I wonder if it had something to do with American resources suddenly appearing part way through WWII. For example the British were cracking the messages from the German enigma machine slowly, partially by hand, and partially by mechanical computing/code-breaking machine. They finally gave the designs to the Americans and the American were able to throw resources at the problem - more people and many more machines and it made a big difference. I think there were other such cases too.

I used to think it all just came from watching too much "Dallas".

I guess if you really believed that all Americans are rich the whole "British Butler" thing would be more offensive: who would want to be depicted as a scraping servant of "one of those Rich Americans".

American average per capita income is not low, but UK is also above the world average.

As a boy in the USA my family was often short of funds at the end of the month. My mother would often serve "garbage soup" (her name for it) which was soup made of what ever was left in the refrigerator when the cash ran out. We often had to wait months or years to make needed repairs to the house we were living in. I know there are people much worse off in the world, but I certainly never felt like one of those "Rich Americans" in the books and movies and tv shows.

here are some stats I found

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_ ... Statistics

https://worldpopulationreview.com/count ... by-country

Here is a few lists of British Stereotypes.

https://theculturetrip.com/europe/unite ... y-to-deny/

https://www.oxford-royale.com/articles/ ... naccurate/

I'm a bit bothered by how everybody (but in particular americans) say "british" accent. I wish they'd at least narrow it down to "english" since that's what they mean.
As somebody above wondered, scottish accents are technically british, as are welsh ones. But call them that and everybody get's all confused.