Media set in Mid-Atlantic nowhereland

[Chedney Honks]

I like that the topic of this thread matches its own nowhereland focus, fitting uneasily in General Bullshit but then, where do you move it to? Picture Box? Movies? Shelf Abuse? It straddles everything and nothing in an unsettling way. Well done. Barry must have thought about this and ultimately concluded that who cares, it's going to be off the front page in about a day.

[George White]

I know this is a dormant thread but recently watched the 1970 Jon Voight film The Revolutionary, which is set in a weird Mid-Atlantic allegorical place - London locations, 70s American student types, Vietnam-type warfare happening in black ghettos (yay! Earl Cameron), 30s music and fashions.

[gilbertharding]

Guess you'd have to say it's Mid-Channel, rather than Mid-Atlantic, but my nomination is the Tintin adventure, The Black Island. He travels the length of Britain, where nothing looks very much like Britain at all. He wears a kilt in Scotland, I guess. The train he catches looks distinctly Continental. I can't remember what side of the road the cars drive on.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Alison Wright

She's exactly the same in Sneaky Pete. I suspect she's just toning down her North-East accent a bit to make it comprehensible to Americans (or more accurately, making it sound like what producers think the American population want to hear).

The Peripheral has the future parts take place in London, and every English person in it sounds like they're putting on a quasi-rp voice of how Americans think English people sound, but there's also a Scottish and Northern Irish characters who speak in their natural accents (although the Scot is over-enunciating her t's a bit, but you get that in British shows sometimes too).

[Shaxberd]

With the increasing popularity of Japanese and South Korean media in the Anglosphere, and things like Netflix's various terrible live action anime adaptations, I wonder if we'll start to see more examples of stories set in a mid-Pacific nowhere land?

One current example that came to mind is the English translations of the Phoenix Wright games, set in a version of the US West Coast where the most popular show on TV is about samurai and there's food stalls selling "burgers" that look suspiciously like tonkatsu.

[George White]

Certainly, looking at the new One Piece adap, which has a mixed nationality cast (Craig Fairbrass and VIncent Regan), shot in South Africa...

Any adap of a Japanese fighting videogame in my head takes place in a Mid-Pacific nowhereland - Street Fighter (set in 'Shadaloo'), Double Dragon, Mortal Kombat, DOA, Tekken...
Also, Latitude Zero (1969 - which is literally set in a 60s mod/steampunk utopia in the Pacific floor).

That over-enunciation of words in Scottish is what Chris Diamond of TVCream called 'Tinseltown acting', on the Creamguide commentary for Prometheus, referring to Kate Dickie's performance (Dickie being one of the stars of BBC Scotland's Shakin' Queer as Folk - Tinseltown)...

[Mr Vegetables]

I don't think there's a lot of visual media at all about what it's actually been like in the U.K. over the last decade, instead of the pretend fantasy version where everyone is richer and happier than they are. It's one of the reasons I watch a lot less of it: I know people find it escapist, but I tend to just find it alienating

[George White]

Plus a lot of it isn't made in Britain.
That recent Vardy vs Rooney drama was shot in Hungary, hence the mostly Hungarian cast and the weird structure (i.e. a ton of offscreen voices, characters being oddly mute).
Lots of things shot in Ireland, or South Africa.

[wrec]

Slightly different but the English-made, Amsterdam-set Van Der Valk is an odd one, populated by British actors. The police have fairly non-regional-specific accents but then they interview cockney suspects etc. I started watching reruns years ago and for a while thought it was about a special branch of the Dutch police that exclusively dealt with crimes involving Brits, which of course makes no sense.

In the film JFK where Lee Harvey Oswald goes to Russia and is supposed to be speaking Russian, it's just normal English in his own accent, while all the Russians around him talk like Borat.

[seepage]

With the increasing popularity of Japanese and South Korean media in the Anglosphere, and things like Netflix's various terrible live action anime adaptations, I wonder if we'll start to see more examples of stories set in a mid-Pacific nowhere land?

One current example that came to mind is the English translations of the Phoenix Wright games, set in a version of the US West Coast where the most popular show on TV is about samurai and there's food stalls selling "burgers" that look suspiciously like tonkatsu.

Isn't Los Angeles in Blade Runner a bit like that too? I recently played a game made in South Korea where the setting looked like a mishmash of South Korea and Japan but all the characters were White, including all of a Yakuza clan [apart from one in a cutscene who was from an explicitly 'Asian' country nearby]. 

[George White]

Also a lot of cyberpunk things - Johnny Mnemonic, the Nemesis films/any Albert Pyun joint in the 90s...

[jamiefairlie]

Reminded of this by coverage on Sex Education, people moaning about how it's set in an English high school where they wear letterman jackets, play American football, and act and dress like Americans.

But this isn't new.
Both adaptations of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the Burton film going for a world that looked like America to British kids and Britain to American kids.
Hellraiser - obviously, intended as British-set, then they redub it with US accents.
Various Aussie horror films of the 70s/80s  - notably Harlequin and the Survivor with Robert Powell deliberately set in a generic nowhereland, where you have American-style politics, American and British leads with an Aussie supporting cast all either trying to sound British or American, or both at the same time, and where Test Card F is on the telly...
A lot of Italian horror films too.

Any favourites of this phenomena?

The original Charley is just bizarre. I still can't pin it down.

[jamiefairlie]

Certainly, looking at the new One Piece adap, which has a mixed nationality cast (Craig Fairbrass and VIncent Regan), shot in South Africa...

Any adap of a Japanese fighting videogame in my head takes place in a Mid-Pacific nowhereland - Street Fighter (set in 'Shadaloo'), Double Dragon, Mortal Kombat, DOA, Tekken...
Also, Latitude Zero (1969 - which is literally set in a 60s mod/steampunk utopia in the Pacific floor).

That over-enunciation of words in Scottish is what Chris Diamond of TVCream called 'Tinseltown acting', on the Creamguide commentary for Prometheus, referring to Kate Dickie's performance (Dickie being one of the stars of BBC Scotland's Shakin' Queer as Folk - Tinseltown)...

That's the worst, speaking Glasgow slang but pronouncing every letter and speaking slowly.

[George White]

Slightly different but the English-made, Amsterdam-set Van Der Valk is an odd one, populated by British actors. The police have fairly non-regional-specific accents but then they interview cockney suspects etc. I started watching reruns years ago and for a while thought it was about a special branch of the Dutch police that exclusively dealt with crimes involving Brits, which of course makes no sense.
 

That's Bergerac's plot basically albeit in Jersey - Le Bureau des Étrangers.

[touchingcloth]

What's the setting for RIP Picture Box?

[Sebastian Cobb]

I don't think there's a lot of visual media at all about what it's actually been like in the U.K. over the last decade, instead of the pretend fantasy version where everyone is richer and happier than they are. It's one of the reasons I watch a lot less of it: I know people find it escapist, but I tend to just find it alienating

Isn't that an American thing to an extent? Rosanne's house was huge, everyone in John Hughes films lived in mansions etc. The Simpsons having two cars and a house with a rumpus room on a single salary.

[curiousoranges]

Threads it in mid-subforum nowhereland.

[Shaxberd]

Nah, Threads is set in Sheffield.

[Elderly Sumo Prophecy]

Bioshock

[Petey Pate]

The End of the F***ing World is clearly set in England, but the decor and locations feel very American, particularly the diners. It's also oddly non time specific, the cars are mostly vintage and the characters use record players.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I don't think using record players is an intentionally anachronistic trend. I think it's due to them being visually more interesting (lots of directors do this) than CD or cloud streaming. It happened before the vinyl revival/never went away.

I always liked how PTA filmed an autoreverse tape deck changing over in Boogie nights as things get darker and Jessie's Girl plays.