The trailer for Moon Knight’s is now out! Oscar Isaac is now a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe! He sounds eerily similar to Dick Van Dyke’s Victorian chimney sweep!
Eh? No. Let’s take a step back.
The internet has been giggling at Oscar Isaac’s British accent since the publication of the first teaser for the new Disney Plus superhero spectacular series, Moon Knight, Disney’s version to Batman.
He portrays Marc Spector, a supernaturally-charged hero with superhuman strength, expert combat abilities, the occasional vision, and links to the moon god Khonshu, which cloud his mind and result in a dissociative condition. And, if the internet is to be believed, he has one of the worst British accents an American actor has attempted on screen in recent times.
That, however, does not sit well with me. As a lifelong, native Londoner and gen-u-wine Cockney, I was born within the mythically-designated aural zone of the Bow Bells (at least in terms of how they’d have sounded out throughout a quieter London in ages past).
And, to my trained ear, Isaac is doing a fairly excellent job of impersonating a London accent. The true issue is what our ears have been accustomed to, and what that accent has come to signify in TV and film.
Waxing and waning accents
The larger issue, I believe, is the depiction of varied British dialects on our screens in general. For decades, so-called “RP” pronunciation reigned supreme, with faultless elocution regarded as the best way to depict the greatest of Great Britains in all its grandeur. That quickly devolved into caricature, and thus a broader spectrum of British accents began to appear, emphasising class divisions and frequently employing regional accents for comic effect. In Oliver Twist, you have the lary Cockney Artful Dodger, most notably played by Jack Wild. “The stage Irish.” A generation of children grew up with Scrooge McDuck as their first exposure to a Scots accent. These preconceptions have existed for decades — it’s no surprise that Dick Van Dyke’s infamous Mary Poppins turn so readily fit the mould.
Times have changed, and representation has improved, but there is now a new challenge at hand. The earthy, humble heroes of Game of Thrones’ Stark family (it’s not lost on me that Kit Harrington is a Londoner, by the way), the graft of Vicky McClure and Stephen Graham in The Line of Duty – the British accent of preferred export is now middle or northern English.
Northern accents have been a mainstay of our TV viewing in recent times, perhaps as a result of filmmaker Shane Meadows’ superb work — representing the hard-working everyman.
Outside of Westminster, though, London accents remain something of a caricature on our screens — the endless Eastenders sagas, the soap-opera docu-drama The Only Way is Essex.
As a result, if we hear an accent that isn’t RP, comfortingly middle-England, or Westminster, we reject it as a joke and write it off as Dick Van Dyke Mark II.
Knees up mother Moon Knight
However, I know a few people who sound like Oscar Isaac’s Moon Knight. The diaspora of East Londoners around the Thames Estuary has resulted in a more eclectic assortment of accents than we normally see on TV, and Isaac’s character could easily be found riding a C2C train between London’s Limehouse and the more suburban Essex districts, in my opinion. But, because we’ve never seen a Cockney wear a cape and cowl before, our first response is to laugh.
The difficulty here is that, as any Moon Knight fan knows – and be warned, there are some minor spoilers ahead – the character is American, with a disease that causes him to assume other, distinct personalities. It’s a get-out-of-jail-free card for Oscar Isaac — any variation in dialect accuracy can be attributed to a character grappling with two aspects of their identity, and, based on the teaser, one suffering with a considerable amount of hallucinatory misery. Nonetheless, that Londoner side sounds appealing to me.
So, Oscar, if you’re reading this and want to join me for a pint in a true London boozer, give me a call — you’ll fit right in.