Little Deaths

I’ve always had a slight problem with women who speak like Sasha Grey. Women who sound basically mallish and fringe-suburban. Like they work the checkout at Gelson’s or something. Listen to Grey ask, “Do you have anything specific in mind?” and the way she pronounces the last word as a hastened two-sylllable thing — “maayeend” — as opposed to how Angelina Jolie or Faye Dunaway in Chinatown or Obama foreign-affairs aide Samantha Power or Angie Dickinson in Dressed to Kill might say it.

I’m just saying there’s an entire culture of women out there, tens of millions of them, who speak like Grey, and I for one find it enormously deflating. Because I slightly wince inside every time I hear their inflections and the way they tend to slaughter the beauty of the English language by making it sound common and coarse. Does anyone “maayeend” if I say this?

I’m speaking as a sinner myself, or at least as someone who has slightly mispronounced my own last name for decades. I’d never heard my last name pronounced properly until a British sales guy at a British Airways office in London said it during a visit in 1980 . “Wow,” I said to myself. “So that‘s how it’s pronounced. I’ve been saying it wrong my whole life. Or rather, my New Jersey accent has prevented me from making it sound as good as the guy in the British Airways office.”

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50 thoughts on “Little Deaths”

  1. Not at all. There is a general decline in standards, manners, and civility across the board that started when the 2-income household became the norm. Children learn these lessons from “parents” at a very young age. No parents around? You can’t expect minimum wage daycare to give a damn about refining a child’s sensibilities.

    How many generations are we into this phenom? Two maybe? It’s discouraging. When both parents decided to work so people could have “nicer” things and not necessities, that was the beginning of the end. The current Wall Street collapse the culmination.

    Funny you mention Dunaway in Chinatown, one of my top 5 favorites. Her vocal inflections are wonderful in that film. Everytime I watch it I wonder how she decided upon certain phrasings. They had to be her decisions, not Polanski’s.

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  2. Damn, you’re picky — she sounds quite upscale compared to most of the Brooklyn/Bronx/Queens chicks I remember, who make Fran Drescher sound like Helen Mirren. Not to mention the unbelieveably annoying Valley-Girl-Speak which permeates most of American culture (see: any “reality” show that involves women under 35).

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  3. she talks? that’s a change from the clips I’ve seen of Sasha.

    And isn’t her “mainstream debut” Deeper Throat on Showtime? That was about as real as anything in Girlfriend Experience.

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  4. In fairness to Ms Grey, I don’ tthink Faye Dunaway’s background was as an adult film star.

    She sounds like a normal person to me. The list of Jeff’s hang-ups is really snow-balling lately. Is somebody keeping track? People named Danny and the sex scene in Munich spring immediately to mind along with (obviously) fat and old people.

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  5. Dude, Sasha Grey is a porn star, did you really expect any better from her? But the way she speaks, it doesn’t bother me since I’m Deaf. I have a BIGGER problem with people who cannot write English properly (as in spelling, grammar, and the use of language). Of course this only applies to people whose English is their native tongue.

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  6. “Like they work the checkout at Gelson’s or something.”

    Oddly enough, I think that was Grey’s second career choice.

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  7. raygo: that’s the dumbest theory of anything I’ve ever heard. and I just read an article theorizing that the drug companies unleashed this swine flu, so it’s not like i ignore dumb.

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  8. Hailing from the suburbs of Chicago, I very familiar with the suburban mall-speak inflections and I can say that based on the trailer, I don’t think Sasha Grey has them. Either that or they’re way, way, worse in the Midwest.

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  9. Her inflections aren’t bothersome. It’s her monotone that grates.

    Is this the official trailer? Odd that it sells the film as “PORN STAR SASHA GRAY IN HER FIRST MAINSTREAM MOVIE.” Seriously, outside of porn fetishists, this means nothing. Better to sell it as an upscale Soderbergh movie and leave it at that.

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  12. Wrecktem, Sasha Grey is arguably the biggest star in an industry that outgrosses legit mainstream entertainment. Someone is watching a lot of porn, and there are way too many of them to refer to them as “fetishists.” I don’t mean to argue your point, but if everyone who has seen Sasha’s adult biz work goes and sees this movie it’s going to outgross Titanic.

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  13. Lex Presents: Worst Regional American Accents:

    1) Minnesoooohhhta. Dude, just pronounce the words properly. No two ways ABOHT it.

    2) Pittsburgh. Dudes, just pruh-naaaahnce the weeerds prawperly. Naow tooooo wayz abaaaaaaht it.

    3) Boston. No explanation necessary.

    Compared to any of those three, or Deep South, or Brooklyn, or Louisiana, or Michigan accents, I’ll take Sasha’s hot, contemptful monotone ANY day.

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  14. Well played, Corey, but to be fair, I think she remains silent in most of her ‘adult’ features because, hey, it’s rude to talk with your mouth full. I mean, that’s just good manners on her part, really. And her speech patterns here are no different than any number of other girls in their early 20′s who like to effect a bored, jaded vibe at pretty much all times. So, I’ll reserve judgment on her until I see the flick. Hey, if she stinks in it after all, she can fall back on the other career at which she is very, very talented. As someone who likes indie film and porn, it’s really a win/win scenario for me.

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  16. Dude, Sasha Grey is a porn star, did you really expect any better from her? But the way she speaks, it doesn’t bother me since I’m Deaf. I have a BIGGER problem with people who cannot write English properly (as in spelling, grammar, and the use of language). Of course this only applies to people whose English is their native tongue.

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  17. MilkMan, I think you’re bullshitting me. Even if people have gawked and jerked to the anal stylings of Ms. Grey in the past, that hardly makes her a household name. Porn has been mainstreamed, it’s true, but not mainstreamed enough that most people a) can name even the most famous adult starlet and b) aren’t put-off by porn actors being namechecked in mainstream films.

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  21. All my friends are more familiar with Sasha Grey’s name than, say, an up-and-coming character actress like Vera Farmiga, but that may say more about the company I keep than anything else.

    Pornography has always been marginalized by mainstream society — esp. the press — so I don’t think it should come as any surprise that more people are going to recognize the name of an A-list Hollywood starlet than an A-list porn queen. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they are more familiar with the “work” of the former — in fact, I would argue quite the opposite.

    You kind of prove my point in a roundabout way by misspelling her last name. You are obviously familiar with her, but it’s not exactly the sort of name you’ve been conditioned to see in print that often (on the other hand, people that make a habit of googling their favorite porn actresses tend to learn how to spell their names in a rather swift, Pavlovian fashion).

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  22. OK, you pretty much proved my point. People may know Sasha Grey’s work, but maybe not her name. Those who do know her name are horned up fans, not the general public.

    She’s a nobody. If she dropped dead tomorrow there would be a cry of anguish from a gaggle of horned up guys, but a collective “huh?” from everyone else. Jenna Jamison, the most famous of all famous porn starlets of the past decade, is barely a blip on the pop culture radar, and she’s heads and shoulders more popular than a frisky anal-loving up-and-comer like Sasha Grey. Especially by the middle-aged Landmark Cinema crowd destined to patronize The Girlfriend Experience.

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  23. You’re right, there wouldn’t be any anguish over her death — fair enough. But that’s because Americans prefer to watch their porn in the privacy of their own homes in the wee hours. Not necessarily an activity most people have ever been honest or expressive about enjoying.

    The majority of the general public is made up of horned-up fans (male and female). I don’t know what to tell you, I guess you’re just not part of the gang. If you were, you would know her last name is Jameson…

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  24. You know it really isn’t, don’t you? No porn star goes by their real name, which is part of the problem…the anonymity. People watch anonymous, plastic people performing in the privacy of their own homes and don’t talk about it outside the house. Hardly a good way to grow your celebrity status when people won’t even talk about you.

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  26. Well, hardly any Hollywood stars use their real name, either. Other than that, I’m not going to dispute any of what you said…spot-on.

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  27. Wrecktem, I can’t tell if you’re fan who is upset that one of his favorite whores is about to become more well-known, or if you’re one of those people who insists that pornography is only consumed by a small group of lonely losers who are chronically underemployed and haven’t touched a real woman since their mother breastfed them. Judging from the nom de plume that you have chosen to use, I am leaning towards the former rather than the latter. Again, my only point was that IF the people who have seen Ms. Grey’s work, all of them, saw that she was in a movie and said to themselves, I think I’ll go see her in that, well, then, this movie would end up being a blockbuster, because A LOT of people have watched her have sex. That was my point. Not that she is famous in a popcult sense, because of course she’s not. But she is, as of today, one of the top performers in a business that grosses tens of billions of dollars a year, so, again, to assume that only a small gaggle of heavybreathers know or care who she is seems off.

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  28. Dude, the industry is *dying*. Don’t give me that “tens of billions of dollars” crap. The internet offers free porn to whoever wants it. If you’re paying for porn you’re a sucker, and that’s why the industry will die.

    Many, many people might know Sasha Grey’s quivering asshole intimately, but that doesn’t mean a) that they know or care who she is and b) that they’ll have any interest seeing an arthouse film starring the little minx. You’re really jumping to massive conclusions about this.

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  31. Funny you mention Dunaway in Chinatown, one of my top 5 favorites. Her vocal inflections are wonderful in that film. But she is, as of today, one of the top performers in a online dating business that grosses tens of billions of dollars a year.

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