Moving this to Trope Talk as a more appropriate locale, ~Hello83433. Wiki Talk is more for existing policies and the like.
Anyway, I don't think they're notable, but the likely answer for their continued existence is that Fake Nationality and most of the subtropes have been around since 2010 or earlier. Fake Australian is the youngest (b. 2016).
Thanks for the move, wasn't quite sure between the two.
As for some more concerns, some of the more specific tropes seem to have a different take on what counts. Now, these are just the laconic, and a very broad look, but I thought it noteworthy.
Fake Nationality is simply "An actor of one nationality is playing a character from another one."
- Fake American: An actor sounds American when they really aren't. X
- Fake Australian: A foreign actor/actress who plays an Australian.
- Fake Brit: An actor/actress who tries to sound British but isn't. X
- Fake Irish: A non-Irish actor/actress plays an Irish character.
- Fake Russian: A common case of a non-Russian actor/actress playing characters from Russia. eh, a little broad. A character from Russia can be a character that moved to the U.S. when they were 5 and therefore, wouldn't have a Russian accent
- Fake Scot: Scottish character played by a non-Scottish actor/actress.
And, to reiterate, the tropes that have a correct laconic are essentially The Same, but More Specific. CSP Cleanup Thread | All that I ask for ... is diamonds and dance floors
Also note that Fake Brit is actually "Fake Southern English" (specifically, RP and Cockney), and therefore gets used for British actors who are faking being from different parts of Britain... I flagged this as a problem some time ago, and discovered a couple of the other Fake Nationality sub-tropes have the same issue (Fake American, for example). This creates unintentional artificial groupings, exclusions and misuse (for example, the "Fake Southern English" means that a northern English person who is faking being a Londoner would count, but a Londoner faking being from northern England would have to use Fake Nationality instead of Fake Brit — which is nonsense logic; the same is true for Fake American because the definition states it's someone faking a neutral US accent — that technically excludes Americans who are faking a non-neutral accent, which seems equally nonsensical).
So, both the concept and the current trope descriptions of the Fake Nationality sub-tropes are problematic — Fake Brit is in a worse state than the others, but they all have this problem to greater or lesser extents.
Edit: I found my original post
. It was posted to the Trope Description Improvement thread back in June 2021. I've reposted it here. It's a bit long, so I put it inside a folder.
The short version is that I was wondering if we should get rid of the Fake Nationality sub-tropes and just have two tropes: Fake Nationality (actors playing a different nationality to themselves) and Fake Regional Accent (actors from the right nationality who are faking a different regional accent to their native one) note
Fake Brit has a bit of a problem.
The first problem is that the trope name is very non-indicative of what it's actually about.
The thrust of the trope is about faking accents found in the South-East of England, in particular, Received Pronunciation and Cockney, although general London and others might be used as well. That means British actors from other parts of the UK who have to fake London-region accents or RP also count as Fake Brit... which makes a nonsense of the trope name.
The second problem is that the first sentence talks about "Southern English". I checked through the history and this added in 2014 by a troper, so isn't part of the original language of the trope description. The problem with this reference is that the South west of England have very different accents to the South-East, and they would traditionally have to change their accent, just as the stated Welsh, Scottish and Northern English actors have to. So, that needs changing to South-East.
Going back to the first problem, the trope actually excludes anyone who might have to fake a non-South-Eastern accent, such as a Northern English or Welsh accent. Fake Brit excludes those accents by stating it's "Southern English" (really South-East of England) accents. Creating the bizarre situation that a Northern English actor faking RP (for example) counts as Fake Brit (despite being British) whereas a southern English actor faking a Northern English actor is excluded from Fake Brit and effectively has to use Fake Nationality instead.
If the trope is expanded to include British actors having to fake a regional British accent they're not native to, then the trope decays beyond all meaning because it just becomes "Fake Accent". If the trope is tightened to actually be what the trope name suggests (non-British faking British), the examples will need a clean-up (for example, David Tennant faking such an accent for his role in Dr. Who would be excluded because he's a British actor).
Ultimately, this trope seems to be suffering an identity crisis. it's so hung up on the regional differences in the UK and that fact that shows/films tend to be swayed by the historical discrimination in British television against regional accents (which is the origin of the Received Pronunciation stereotyping) that it's trying to be Fake Brit + Fake Regional Accent rolled into one. This creates an unworkable contradiction in the trope where troping British actors who fake regional British accents that are different to their native one becomes farcical — where a British actor get labelled "fake Brit" just because they're from Scotland, Wales or the north of England (while British actors from the South-West are lumped in with London and the South-East as an artificial "southern English") yet both British actors and non-British actors who have to fake a Welsh or northern English trope are excluded from the current definition of Fake Brit.
I notice Fake American has a similar issue, where the entire trope discusses non-American actors faking US accents, until a throw-away line at the end of the trope description which suddenly says that American actors can count if they're faking a different American accent to their native neutral one. Not only is that, again, not an example of faking nationality, but what happens to American actors who don't have a "neutral" American accent, but are faking an accent that's different to their native one? They're suddenly excluded, too.
This issue of muddling together fake regional accents within the same nationality and fake nationality is creating overcomplications and artificial exclusions/groupings that shouldn't need to happen.
I feel there needs to be a separation here between Fake Nationality and Fake Region accents. A British person who is faking a regional British accent is not faking their nationality. Neither is an American actor who is faking a regional American accent. Keep Fake American and Fake Brit for faking nationalities and use some kind of Fake Regional Accent trope to capture the examples of faking a different region within the same nationality.
Edited by Wyldchyld on Feb 12th 2022 at 3:36:35 PM
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.
I've also seen Fake Nationality shoehorned for Fake Ethnicity, for actors who are the same nationality as their characters but not the same racial/ethnic background (eg. Lou Diamond Phillips's string of Native/Latino roles). It's not quite the same as Blackface and its sister tropes, since you can pull it off with a reasonably ethnically ambiguous actor without any modifications to their appearance.
Prompted by this TLP draft
which was recently revived.
Concerns are basically why do we need these... subtropes? "versions"? Fake Nationality already covers all the bases, so these tropes are basically The Same But More Specific. What is unique about Fake Australian or Fake Russian for those to warrant their own tropes? And what is stopping tropers from deciding to create a version for every nationality citing these versions as a reason why (as that was one justification on the Fake Italian TLP draft).
I don't think these are necessary, and I could see one justification being length (as Fake American is fairly bulky) but I would think the correct course of action would have been to hard split the American section (and other qualifying sections), not create its own trope.
CSP Cleanup Thread | All that I ask for ... is diamonds and dance floors