FX is really killing it these days. They have three channels where before they had one, great comedies like Louie and Archer, and an all-star stable of dramas like Sons of Anarchy and the new Fargo. Rounding out those dramas and currently hitting its stride in Season 2 is The Americans, an intensely emotional show starring Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell as two undercover KGB spies living in 80s Washington D.C.
Entering the fold at the tail end of TV’s obsession with anti-heroes, The Americans is a show that yet again forces viewers (well, American viewers, for whom the show is made) to accept generally “bad” people as its protagonists. What’s unique about its approach, however, is that Rhys’ Phillip and Russell’s Elizabeth are not only undercover, but also undercover married with two American kids none the wiser about their true identity and marital issues that would put the saga of Eminem and Kim Mathers to shame.
That makes a show about undercover KGB spies immediately different—heading in it seems like you’re just watching another spy drama, but a great deal of the show is spent directly and indirectly highlighting the incredibly complex and strained relationship between its two leads. When your night job includes putting on an endless carousel of disguises and often seducing members of the opposite sex (in one case even jumping into another faux-marriage), suddenly the day life cover of two married travel agents with perfectly healthy children becomes difficult to maintain. No surprise there.
On top of that, viewers are forced to believe that the two leads’ American accents (Rhys is actually Welsh) are in the show a product of the characters putting in 20 years’ worth of practice, despite growing up in Russia. This is where things get a little weird for me personally, as a first-generation American who can perfectly understand all of the show’s many scenes spoken in Russian. When I raised the issue of Phillip and Elizabeth’s flawless American accents with my mom, a Russian immigrant who came to the states at age 32 in 1989, she scoffed immediately. “It’s impossible for them to have completely squashed out their Russian accents,” she said.
Unfortunately, this ruins the authenticity of the show for me to some extent. Her argument of course makes sense—sure, if KGB spies were sent to the U.S. to be “sleeper” agents during the Cold War, it’s understandable to have them integrate as best as possible—but to completely eliminate an accent of your native tongue that you carried for the first 20-odd years of your life? Language isn’t that easy. No matter how much practice you get. Viewed from the perspective of the writers and people behind the camera though, this suspense of disbelief is a necessary sacrifice. You can’t cast Russian actors in these roles, people that have slight accents when speaking English. It changes the entire dynamic of the show, and viewers frankly wouldn’t get behind them as they do with Rhys and Russell. Again, this is a show for Americans. It’s easier to accept Russian spies as protagonists if the actors playing them seem very, very American.
Still, with my understanding of the Russian language, it’s impossible to watch The Americans without being acutely aware that my experience is different than intended by its creators. Game of Thrones is of course a very shared experience for me with the rest of American viewers, but The Americans will forever feel much more personal. Many scenes each week follow the employees of the Russian embassy (Rezidentura), who obviously speak to each other almost exclusively in Russian. My Russian isn’t quite good enough to distinguish some of their allegedly poor accents (another gripe pointed out by my mom), but I definitely don’t need the subtitles to follow the conversation. Occasionally I’ll read them to see how they sync up with the actual dialogue (plenty is lost in translation, although not in detriment to the show’s plot), but largely, I just watch, and listen, to the show as a whole.
To avoid the risk of turning this further into one extended humblebrag (side note: being bilingual is cool, but not so much when your second language is native to a nation with a generally despicable regime), I’ll just say that it’s a very interesting phenomenon to watch a show that already features so much political charge and cultural clash, yet fully understand both sides of that. For my mom, this ability seems to completely ruin the show for her—Russian is her first language and always will be, so the fact that it’s presented in an American sense makes it hard for her to see through the inaccuracies. I, on the other hand, can claim English as my native tongue (even though prior to kindergarten it wasn’t). Being an American that can understand Russian just alerts me to the fact that I am just that when I’m watching the show.
Bottom line, The Americans at face value is already a great show. For this viewer (and probably a few others), it just so happens to go a step further and remind me of my unique identity, even if part of that is a nationality I’m not overly excited to display. So yeah, what the hell: it’s pretty cool. Здоровo, if you will.
It’s really not impossible to sound completely native. It’s just not something everyone can do. As you pointed out yourself, Matthew Rhys is Welsh but sounds completely native – actors tend to have this talent more often. You really just need an ear for subtle phonetic differences.
I’m natively bilingual in Estonian and Finnish, and I started learning English at age 7. After living in Canada for 5 years in my early 20s, I sounded completely native (to the point that I had to show people ID to make them believe I wasn’t from there). I’ve since married an American and we live back in Estonia and it took me a couple of years to get the hint of Canada out of my accent and now I just sound General American. I also speak a little bit of Russian. Even though my Russian is atrocious as far as vocabulary goes, I work with native Russian speakers and they’ve expressed surprise at my complete lack of an accent when speaking the few phrases of Russian I know I can get out. Contrast this to most Estonians at the office who may speak completely fluent Russian but have noticeable accents when doing so.
It’s something linguists call “code switching”. I find it incredibly difficult to interject one language with words from another. I’m basically holding multiple phonetic sets in my head for different languages, so when I’m speaking English, it takes significant effort to inject an Estonian word without saying it in a thick American accent. And vice versa.
One thing that might be a factor in this ability is bilingualism. Matthew Rhys, like me, is bilingual (English and Welsh) from an early age.
Thanks for the comment! The concept of code switching is very interesting. With that in mind it just becomes a question of how much effort/training these characters put into honing in on a native-sounding American accent? Was it for a couple years before being shipped out, or from an early age? If the skill’s been implanted from childhood, that’s much more believable than having it be another intensive course alongside the other physical/mental aspects of being a spy. Some muscles are much harder to train than others.
Anyway, it’s all semantics. Two years later this show is better than ever.
I read your article with a lot of interest because I was thinking the same thing about accents. As you said, I think the key to true bilingualism is age. It really is impossible unless maybe you are a super genius to become totally and utterly fluent in a foreign language as an adult. I remember reading back in the 70s and 80s about Russian intelligence agencies conducting total immersion in another language for agents and it might be possible. Who knows? Again, as you pointed out, Phillip and Elizabeth would have to have spoken English from a very early age but foreign languages I believe were taught even in early grades in Russia back then.
Rhys is Welsh, yet speaks flawless “American” english. Damian Lewis (Dick Winters, Homeland), Dominic West (McNulty on The Wire), and Idris Elba (Stringer Bell on The Wire) are British actors that one would never know from watching them act that they were anything but native-born Americans.
Rhys is Welsh, yet speaks flawless “American” english. Damian Lewis (Dick Winters, Homeland), Dominic West (McNulty on The Wire), and Idris Elba (Stringer Bell on The Wire) are British actors whom one would never know from watching them act that they were anything but native-born Americans.
Sure, but that’s just mastering another accent in a language they know very well. Miles from mastering an accent in a completely foreign language.
“Sure, but that’s just mastering another accent in a language they know very well. Miles from mastering an accent in a completely foreign language.”
Yes.
They say that age 13 is generally the cut-off for learning a new language without retaining an accent. I only speak English, but I’ve been preoccupied with this fact since I was very young and have found that it is almost always true.
I have known only two exceptions. One was my grandmother who came here from Poland in 1922 at age 18. She spoke fluent and accentless Polish, Russian, and German, all of which she had to learn as a child. When she came to the the US, she had to learn Yiddish and English. She became fluent in both. But she so wanted to be an American, that she worked on her English with the goal of eliminating any accent. And she succeeded. Somehow. Some combination of a very unusual ability and determination.
The other exception I know was a Russian who came here at age 20. I met him first maybe six months after he arrived. His English was already good, but he definitely had a Russian accent as expected. Then I did not see him again for about a year. When I did run into him again, he had absolutely no accent. I was stunned. I was only 15, but I was already fascinated by the age 13 thing. It was actually kind of a let down to me that his accent was gone, because, to a 15-year-old, it made him exotic. But, ahem, that’s secondary. I asked him how he did it and, well, it was the same answer as my grandmother’s: he was determined to get rid any trace of his accent. I said “but HOW did you do it?” He didn’t really have an answer. For him it was a matter of practice. But I agree with you and your mother and the others: it’s virtually impossible for most people to do this as adults, or near adults.
Even as an American, I guess because I have this ridiculous preoccupation w/accents, I have to try to tell myself all kinds of things about Phillip and Elizabeth to make myself believe that there English is so freakin’ not just perfect, but American. “Well, they were recruited in the first place because they were exceptional specimens of the human race.” “Well, they made it thru insane training that only those with nearly superhuman abilities and drive could withstand and this included having crazy good ears for language.” “And, on top of all that, they were trained relentlessly in English alongside all of the gazillion other crazy-ass things they had to learn for every single scenario they might possibly face.”
Still, though, I think about it literally every episode. Sometimes what I get stuck on is not actually the flawless accents, but the completely American way they say things; this is particularly so with Matthew Rhys who, of course, plays the more Americanized of the two. And maybe, since I’ve heard him with his real accent, it’s striking even just because of that; he doesn’t just have a perfect American accent; he does little things all the time that are very un-British. But Keri Russell’s Elizabeth, though not as comfortable as Phillip, also uses idioms in a way that you pretty much never hear in anyone who learned English that late.
Oh, also, I just recently watched video of one of the “illegals” who was arrested in 2010 and is now back in Russia, the father in a family that has two sons, one of whom was 16, the other 20 at the time of the arrest. (The story is disturbing as the kids lives were and still are even six years later brutally upended. Weisberg has said it was their story that, in part, made him want to write a show that centered around a family with kids.) Anyway, with this man and his wife, their English never became totally unaccented. It was close, but they could not quite pass. In part to “explain” this, and in part to give them a more “real” backstory, the couple lived in Canada for years before moving to the US. Also, ha, their spying was way — way — less dramatic than our protagonists’. Of course!
OK. I cannot believe how long I’ve gone on about this one aspect when this show is so incredibly masterful. You are still watching, so you know that this 4th season is just….sublimely good. I could go on and on about that but this comment is too long already.
Thank you. Your post is so interesting.