Word of the Day: Mélange
One of many words from French about mixtures.
noun
mé·lange mā-ˈlänj mā-ˈläⁿzh
: a mixture often of incongruous elements
a mélange of architectural styles
[David] Lynch “has to have his megaphone to make his voice sound even more nasal,” the actress Naomi Watts once said, describing his on-set carnival barking. “When he’s two feet away from you as well.” He’s liable to stretch out words like “beautiful,” imbuing them with the deep emotion of an explorer bringing home tales of briefly glimpsed miracles. His born-in-the-’40s diction makes matters even stranger: Lynch, a self-identified Eagle Scout, can be heard in one documentary repeatedly and earnestly exclaiming, “Oh my golly.”
Those words might as well be coming from the fellow monumentalized in Norman Rockwell’s 1956 painting “The Scoutmaster,” or emitting, tinnily, from a doll whose string has just been yanked. But Lynch’s old-timey lingo coexists with his ability to talk at length about rather odd subjects — like, say, a dead cat engulfed in tar. His voice echoes his films, in which the quaintness and birdsong of small-town America are as keenly felt as the blows of violent lunatics — the signature mélange that earned him the nickname “Jimmy Stewart from Mars.”
| M.D. Rodrigues, Hollywood Has Enough Fake Accents. Bring Back the Weird Voices.