This is a fascinating and technical discussion:
I found that when I was looking for discussion of how a female narrator does male voices. I'd just finished an audiobook that had a very skillful female narrator, but after watching the movie of the same book, I realized how much the narrator had influenced how I thought about the male character in the book.
She was great at producing a lower pitch for the male, but she also used a somewhat morose, gruff, flat tone. Maybe this particular character deserved that interpretation, but is that what the author intended? It's not really any different from the way actors in the movie have their interpretation of the character and don't and can't simply channel the author.
But I wondered whether female audiobook narrators are relying on a stereotype of men — that they are emotionally flat. Here's an opinion I've read in a few different places: When female audiobook narrators do males they sound like all women sound when they are mocking men and doing a "male" voice.
That might be a reason to prefer male audiobook narrators, but I've certainly noticed that a lot of them rely on the idea of women as gentle and restrained or bubbly and lightweight. The video above shows a male narrator — Travis Baldree — who is impressively serious about producing a full range of female characters. What books does he narrate? I looked it up. Not the sort of thing I'd read, but here's "Shadeslinger: The Ripple System, Book 1."
It's LitRPG. I need to look up what that is. Per Wikipedia:
LitRPG, short for Literary Role Playing Game, is a literary genre combining the conventions of computer RPGs with science-fiction and fantasy novels.... [G]ames or game-like challenges form an essential part of the story, and visible RPG statistics (for example strength, intelligence, damage) are a significant part of the reading experience.
RPGs — I had to look that up too — are role-playing video games, "where the player controls the actions of a character (or several party members) immersed in some well-defined world, usually involving some form of character development by way of recording statistics." It's funny to think of wanting to set aside the game and read that in a book, but then again, why trouble yourself with playing a game when you can just read the game-like story? And with the audiobook, you can get out of the house, go walking and running and doing your errands or commuting. You can't do those things while playing a videogame.
FROM THE EMAIL: Scott sends the "obligatory Seinfeld reference":
AND: Andrew writes: "This is one of those rare times when Seinfeld is not the go-to reference. Rather, it's Elizabeth Holmes from Theranos" — here. "If you wish to manipulate, use a deeper voice." It's weird that her manipulation worked — apparently on some ridiculous older men. To me, she sounds like a huge phony. Which is what she was.
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Temujin writes:
""Why am I doing a British accent? I'll tell you in a moment."
"It was at this point that I had to turn off the clip. He's very serious indeed. He has a great voice and takes his 'craft' very seriously. As such has probably made a living off of it. I've listened to only a couple of full audiobooks in my days, so I'd have to say the concept of how a man does women's voices or how a woman does men's voices is something I've never thought about. In fact, the last audiobook I listened to was "The Strange Death of Europe" by Douglas Murray which was non-fiction and thus the voice was of no concern.
"To me an audiobook is a reading of a book, nothing more. When we read, do we hear the voices in our own minds? I don't think so. We let the words, the dialogue, the descriptions paint a picture for us, and each of us has a bit different view of that picture. To me that's all an audiobook would be doing. Simply painting the picture. If a man is reading, you still know when the woman character is talking, and you allow the words to paint the picture. Am I wrong?
"I think that if a man tried too many 'female' voices, it would sound stupid to me. Likewise, if a woman tried to use a lowered woman's voice to sound like a man, it would sound stupid to me and take away from the words painting the picture. Like I said, I don't listen to audiobooks, but I think that would annoy me if I did."
Years ago, audiobooks were more like the way a wife and husband might take turns reading to each other. That is a wonderful activity, but face it, most husbands and wives don't want to read the same books and don't want to spend the same amount of time in books. Audiobooks are wonderfully useful for people who find sitting and reading too sedentary. For those of us who want to go for walks or get chores done or who drive cars for tedious hours, audiobooks are great.
And there's been a trend in the narrations to make them more like a theatrical performance. You have genuinely talented voice actors, sometimes well-known actors, who bring the book alive. I'm very familiar with Ron Silver reading Philip Roth's novels. There's no reason to put this down. When you read with your eyes, yes, you have to bring it to life with your mind, but if someone is reading to you, their voice is part of the process. Why should they read flatly?
Now, at some point it's too theatrical, so you should sample the audiobook before you commit. But when your taste and the narrator's voice fit, it's great.
"I think that if a man tried too many 'female' voices, it would sound stupid to me. Likewise, if a woman tried to use a lowered woman's voice to sound like a man, it would sound stupid to me..."
Yes, this is an important problem that the narrator has to deal with. That's why I put up the video. You have a voice actor very seriously working with techniques to avoid sounding stupid!
You could just decide you never want to hear any book that presents that problem. Don't listen to audiobooks or don't listen to fiction that has characters the opposite sex from the narrator. Or find books with multiple narrators that bring in females to do the females and males to do the males.
Terence writes: "For those of us of a certain age, RPG is not tied to “video”. We learned how to play using a pen and paper—as proposed by Gary Gygax from Lake Geneva, WI."
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