Using actors as a sample is fraught with complications, but as pointed out above, doing a strained or higher voice is relatively easy. Anyone can constrict their larynx almost entirely, but they can’t make it much bigger. James Earl Jones could probably make himself sound like Pee-Wee Herman, but Paul Reubens is never going to sound like Thulsa Doom.
(It’s hilarious you thought Keillor was black. Had you ever listened to the content of the show? There might be such a thing as a black Episcopalian from rural Minnesota, but he’d be a rare bird indeed.)
It’s true that, when using the normal vocal cords, it’s easier to go higher than lower. But a lot of people subconsciously slip into the sublaryngeal folds. Most people are able to go at least two octaves lower than their normal voice without really trying. It’s pretty easy, clear your throat, then try to clear your throat while pushing enough air through it to produce a tone. With a few hours of refinement you can sound like Barry White too!
Anyway, yeah there may be a statistical difference in general anatomy, but I stand by my claim that the first two standard deviations (maybe three, but I’ll concede the extremal 5% if push comes to shove) can do a much broader vocal range than they think they can, if they’re given a little training that replicates vocal curiosity when they were toddlers.
And yes, I know now the irony of thinking Keillor was black. For a long time, mom and dad said the family was a bunch of things, including methodist (right after we were foursquare, and before foursquare we were baptist, and after methodist we were “non-denominational” which meant we were calvinists in a bad mood). Anyway I’m talking about people’s voices. Religion only served to terrify and shame me as a child. I only care about it as an adult in order to prevent it from harming children and the gullible.
I liked his crazy mood swings, he’d get easily enraged chucking shit about then he’d be super calm and collected the next moment. As a kid he was my favourite, it was years later when I realised that spiked braces to keep your pants up were a real thing and could be found in “certain shops”. And yeah, I’d always assumed that Panthro was black because of his voice. It still weirds me that Shredder was Uncle Phil.
Actually his real name was “Osbert” in the original series, says Wikipedia. In the 2011 reboot the Snarfs were apparently more cat-like, and couldn’t actually talk (though they could still say “snarf”)
That’s even worse! Not only couldn’t they be bothered to refer to him by his given name, they couldn’t even reference his place of origin, resorting instead to the utterly generic “Alien Life Form.”
At least they recognized him as a living being instead of a muppet being manipulated by the puppeteers hiding behind the furniture.
Well, my wiki link says that he hated his name, so it may be that he preferred to be called Snarf. But yeah, since the Snarfs were somewhat of a servant class in the Thundera social order, it’s even more bizarre/disturbing that they just called him Snarf. Why not just call him “Boy” and be done with it?
