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Sean Connery: Acting, Stardom and National Identity
Full text linkThis study provides an authoritative and comprehensive account of the career of one of one modern cinema’s most distinctive stars, an instantly recognisable cultural icon whose image and distinctive voice have penetrated deeply into global popular culture and public consciousness. The analysis highlights the importance of Connery’s unorthodox training as an actor and his early career, especially his television work that included Shakespeare, before dissecting the ‘Bond phenomenon’, which propelled Connery to international stardom on an unprecedented scale for a British actor but erased his own identity as a commodified serial star. Connery’s twenty year struggle to escape ‘Bondage’ is discussed at length: his attempts to play against that image in The Hill (1965) and The Offence (1973) and his gradual emergence as an epic, mythic presence in the mid-1970s in The Wind and the Lion, The Man Who Would Be King and Robin and Marian. The study analyses how Connery’s reinvention of himself as a father-mentor enabled him to enjoy a second period of superstardom from The Untouchables (1987) onwards, to ‘age successfully’ and to modulate his mythic persona into an all-encompassing ‘screen legend’. The significance of Connery’s complex embodiment of national identity is discussed throughout – the ways in which he imbued his screen characters with a working-class Scottishness – and through his public role as an activist campaigning for Scottish independence. The study encompasses discussion of the vexed question of Connery’s misogyny and the gender politics of his star persona. This monograph takes a particular approach to examining stardom, understood as a specific occupation, a particular form of professional cultural labour that has an industrial as well as cultural significance. Stardom is conceptualised as both a material entity – a form of economic capital that can sell films and a charismatic performer who is paid a salary – and a discourse that shapes how that labour was recognised and valued across a variety of different cultural, social and commercial contexts, which change over time. Drawing on a wide range of archival and other sources, the volume emphasises the importance of exploring stars’ working lives, situated within the particular industrial systems in which that work takes place as they struggle for creative control over their careers
Sean Connery: una vida en el cine
No full textA continuación, una retrospectiva y, a la vez, un homenaje a la vida y carrera de Sean Connery. El reconocido y aclamado actor escocés es recordado como el hombre que dio vida a la primera encarnación cinematográfica del agente James Bond (referido más de una vez en este número por los villanos a los que enfrentó), pero su ilustre filmografía se expande a una miríada de géneros, con una galería de personajes que adquieren una complejidad singular gracias al talento del intérprete.
 
Defining Britain's Most Appealing Voice : An Accent Profile of Sir Sean Connery
No full textThe aim of this paper is to explore the features that combine to make up the distinctive accent of the actor Sir Sean Connery. This study outlines the subject’s basic vowel system and compares it to data collected on the vowel systems of Received Pronunciation (RP) and Scottish Standard English (SSE) from previous research (Stuart-Smith 1999, Hawkins & Midgely 2005, Fisk 2006). Furthermore, this essay examines the degree to which other elements associated with SSE are present in the subject’s accent. These features include the Scottish Vowel Lengthening Rule (SVLR), the presence of dark /l/, rhoticity and T-glottalling. It is hypothesised that the subject speaks a modified variety of SSE yet retains the aforementioned qualities typically associated with SSE. The speech analysis software programs Wavesurfer (version 1.4.7.) and Praat (version 4.4.33.) were used to analyse sections of sound taken from a speech given by the subject at an awards ceremony. Instrumental analysis of this nature was deemed appropriate in order to establish a high degree of objectivity in this study. Of the wide range of recorded material available the subject’s acceptance speech was judged most suitable for analysis. This is a passage of spontaneous speech as opposed to a movie script, where the subject talks of his background and career. Having analysed the subject’s accent in this way, certain sociolinguistic implications can be drawn. The results suggest that Sir Sean Connery does indeed speak a variety of SSE however rather surprisingly the subject’s accent appears quite typical of his Edinburgh origins. The vowel system not only identifies the subject as an SSE speaker but also indicates traces of his working-class background e.g., the frontal quality to Connery’s realisation of /u/ and his low /I/ are typical of a working-class SSE speaker. Moreover, the general low quality found in Connery’s basic vowel system can be interpreted as revealing a little of his working-class origins. Evidence of the other features associated with SSE was also found in the subject’s accent. Durational evidence indicates (albeit tentatively at this stage) that the SVLR operates within his accent while dark /l/ and t-glottalling were also observed. While it is also apparent that Connery speaks a rhotic variety of English it is the nature and variety of his /r/ production that is most interesting. The subject appears to produce a retroflex realisation of /r/ which affects other consonants in its environment. This /r/ may be indicative of an earlier Irish influence over Connery’s accent. It should be stated that due to the nature and the limited size of this study, all findings are preliminary and more research is needed into this area before any firm conclusions can be drawn
[News Clip: Sean Connery]
No full textVideo footage from the KXAS-TV/NBC station in Fort Worth, Texas, to accompany a news story
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[News Clip: Sean Connery]
No full textVideo footage from the KXAS-TV/NBC station in Fort Worth, Texas, to accompany a news story
[News Clip: Sean Connery]
No full textVideo footage from the KXAS-TV/NBC station in Fort Worth, Texas, to accompany a news story
[News Clip: Sean Connery]
No full textVideo footage from the KXAS-TV/NBC station in Fort Worth, Texas, to accompany a news story
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