Finding a voice in Irish Film
• National identity and the commercial
imperative
• Is there a crisis of representation in Irish
cinema?
• Celtic Tiger Renaissance in film
• Urban based generic Hollywood product
• How do all these changes affect the
authentic ‘voice’ of Irish film?
Angela’s Ashes (1999)
• ‘Poverty-chic’ preoccupation in Frank
McCourt’s best selling novel
• Historical melodrama and Irish identity
• Appealing to the Irish Diaspora
• Limerick –’raining all the time’!
• Why such narratives appear so dated
now?
The Commitments
The Commitments (1991)
• Roddy Doyle’s working class heroes
• “They had nothing, but they were willing to
risk it all”
• the “blacks of Ireland” resonates for many
• Feel good stories that use local vernacular
• Are we laughing at, and/or with them?
• ‘aestheticisation and fetishisation of failure’
About Adam (1999) – a new city
space
• A long way from Dublin as Strumpet City?
• ‘Celtic Tiger’ and space for promiscuous
sexual abandon!
• Transglobal ‘cool’ and a city of
conspicuous consumption!
• Smug complacency: ‘the social problems
that global consumerism throws up cannot
simply be imagined out of existence’
[McLoone]
Adam and Paul
Adam and Paul (2004)
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A day in the life of two heroin addicts
Ulysses-like journey around the city
Beckett-like nihilistic critique of existence
Visual humour reminiscent of “Laurel and
Hardy”.
• Alienating voyeurism versus sentimental
identification.
Busting the Boom: The Tiger’s Tail
• Fault-lines in economy including the
prospect of a property crash
• Boorman’s film remains more sombre and
pessimistic at the outset, compared with
many other Irish films
• Commercially and critically nsuccessful,
due to a poorly developed script, which
remains a recurring weakness within much
Irish cinema
Maureen O’Hara – Irish Icon
ONCE (John Carney 2007)
• Music video and ‘feel good’ story
• Unlike the disposable culture and property
obsessed inhabitants of the Celtic Tiger –
the film valorizes ‘craft and dedication’
• New face of Ireland: 19-year-old emigrant
Marketa Irglova [post-Maureen O’Hara]
• broken vacuum cleaner used as a ‘stigma’
of her foreignness and ‘otherness’
Consumption and Media studies
• Gauging the actual or inferred pleasures
audiences receive, continues to be challenging
for national and other mainstream cinemas
• The relationship between the growth of media
audience/reception studies and their connection
with more explicit marketing and consumption
discourses in business studies aught to be
addressed head on.