YouTube link here. Tony’s turned dark..
This week we talk about an upcoming sporting event with which we have no affiliations. Just for legal reasons, it’s important that you know that. Also, apparently William’s entire id just plays basketball. Then Tony gets anywhere from mildly to super racist. You decide! Enjoy!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
One question I wanted to ask Tony about what he said about not being able to relate to Irish culture/stories–does this apply to humorous stories as well? For instance, have you seen “Derry Girls” or “Moone Boy”, and if so, are they equally difficult to relate to?
“Banshees of Inesherin” – I know what Tony means about worrying about Martin McDonagh. It was a really melancholy movie, but also great. It’s actually generally the kind of movie that I sometimes avoid watching because of the emotional effect, but in the case of this movie, the effect was somewhat mitigated by the fact that the story seemed mythic in some ways. There were things that happened that sort of approached magic realism, and so I was a bit distanced from thinking of the characters as real people.
That said, the overall message did connect to reality and in a way that was very sad. I did get that one of the messages was about the Irish Civil War, but to me the message that hit home most was about the way men define themselves, and that was not just about men in Ireland, but more generally. I’m not sure how widespread this is culturally, but I think it affects most of the men that I know.
It’s hard to describe in a succinct way. It has to do with the importance of legacy, of heroism, of wanting one’s actions, creativity, etc. to leave a lasting mark, the discounting of the ordinary and day-to-day, and of the domestic. It makes me think about the fact that “women’s work” is often defined in terms of care and connection to others–including cleaning the home and cooking the meals, and generally this kind of work is undervalued with poor pay for domestic workers, day-care workers, and teachers, or it isn’t paid at all and not thought of as “real work” or having a “real job.”
One thing that stood out to me in that context of male self definition was who Brendan Gleeson’s character chose to sit with at the pub after he had rejected Colin Farrell’s character.
It reminded me of a friend of mine in college who, after he had decided he was an atheist, also decided that there was no purpose to his life because there was no transcendent meaning, nothing beyond life in the moment. I spent a lot of time arguing these points with him and luckily he made it through college OK and is now a biomedical researcher who also owns a horse ranch with his wife in California.
As far as the Irish and race–I do think it’s a mistake to think of people in Ireland as being white in the same way that people in the U.S. are white. Whiteness just has a different history there.
I also think about how class has so much more weight as a category–in Ireland, but also in the UK more generally. I’ve often thought this has something to do with why socialism has flourished there more than here.
Re: violence among men. I think men who are oppressed in some way–as members of a colonized group, or economically, or what-have-you, then that oppression sometimes comes out in mental/emotional disturbance because it is in direct conflict with that male self-definition, and that disturbance does come out in violence against self and other. Domestic violence and suicide, for example. And the whole “don’t call the police” thing when men fight with each other has to do, at least partially, with the fact that the authorities will not be on their side (with the exception of domestic violence where gender trumps the other forms of oppression).
That’s a very interesting question about comedy! I have, in fact, watched a bit. Off the top of my head, I watched (one episode each of) Derry Girls and Bad Sisters, and while in London watched a fair bit of Father Ted (which admittedly is less Irish and more Brit stereotypes about the Irish).
I disliked them all. Largely for similar reasons I’ve listed. Even when it’s pointing out the foibles of such cultural touchstones, it still is impossible for me to relate to. And a lot of things that are shown as “funny” in these contexts, I feel are more horrific. At least to me personally.
I agree with just about everything you said about the movie. Trish and I discussed it again last night. I think Trish is largely upset because the movie had characters she didn’t like, and yet their trials made her literally cry several times. So she’s… frustrated, I guess.
Yes, I generally don’t get along well with any strong gender definitions in a culture, my own included. Particularly strong definitions of “masculinity.”
I do think class plays a large role in what we’re talking about, and in the British Isles as a whole. I don’t relate well to a lot of Britcoms, as they are frequently about the strange issues of class. But by that token… is everything I’ve seen about Ireland just based on the same class? Are there no modern pieces of media detailing the upper class, or even middle class? And would I relate to them differently? I don’t know.
I thought of a somewhat different way of saying what I was trying to say about race and Irishness.
Being “white” is really a construct that is produced as a prop to justify the idea in the U.S. that slave status could be inherited. The only other places that I can think of that have related constructions of whiteness are South Africa and Australia, but they aren’t completely the same in their history. But then whiteness and race become something seen as natural and not constructed and that does affect most people in the world today to a certain degree. It’s just not quite the same as if you’re part of the culture where the construct originated (if that makes sense). Here’s an interesting google search result–look for “race in America” and you get articles about demographics and about racism. Look for “race in Ireland” and you get horse racing.
And though England wasn’t the only colonial power, it was the most far-reaching, so I tend to equate colonialism with Englishness, but Englishness of the upper middle-class for the most part. It was that class, even more than the aristocracy, who were colonizers. And in Ireland, there’s a lot of Anglo-Irish who are more urban and more upper middle-class. But the people in a place like Inisherin (which isn’t real but I think is based on the Aran islands) is where the Celts got pushed to–to the west in Ireland (just like the Scots Celts got pushed up North and the Welsh, south) by the invading Anglo-Saxons (I think?). Living in these pretty barren, hard-scrabble landscapes that meant they were basically left alone until someone like Cromwell tried, unsuccessfully, to dislodge them. I think some of this might enter into the movie in the sense that the islands are probably seen as the “real” Ireland (Gaelic still spoken there I think) and the mainland probably more identified as land shared with the colonizers?
Yes, often issues we have in this country related to race are similar issues related to class in the British Isles… and maybe in all of Europe? I don’t know for sure.
But it’s also unfair to think that the era of colonialism wasn’t heavily about race. At least as a scapegoat. Modern Britain may be less so (although there is PLENTY of racism still in the UK… I mean, that’s basically what Brexit is about, despite what others will tell you).
It’s entirely possible I was off-based about the role that potentially plays in Irish culture. If so, though, I have no explanation for why I have the strain relationship with its culture (well, its media) that I do. 🙂
Oh yeah, I certainly didn’t mean to imply that racism didn’t have a lot to do with colonialism. Or that Modern Britain isn’t racist. And I agree about Brexit.
It’s more that I don’t think we can use the word “white” to describe all colonizers such that the Irish are seen as part of the colonizer group. It’s pretty clear that from an English perspective anyway, the Irish are seen as inferior and in need of either control or extermination in the same way that other colonized groups were. Writing that justifies Irish colonization talks about the Irish as savage, and less evolved (even sometimes using the word “race” in it’s older sense of meaning ethnicity). Here’s Carlyle writing about the Irish in the 19th century: “The time has come when the Irish population must either be improved a little, or else exterminated.” (There’s a lot of written evidence pointing to the potato famine as to some degree the result of genocidal policies on the part of the English.) Carlyle also described the Irish as “white negroes” and says that emancipation in the West Indies has resulted in a “Black Ireland.”
Another example that gets at the difference in the way that I think race was thought of by English colonizers, and the way race was thought of in the American context is that in the American context it is being used to justify the identity of slave such that any miscegenation is seen as abhorrent. In fact, the threat of the spread of miscegenation was one of the racist arguments used by abolitionists. It was also behind Lincoln’s initial idea that at the end of the Civil War, all African-Americans should be sent back to Africa. Contrast that with the initial reaction to mixed race marriages by members of the East India Company with Indian women–such marriages were encouraged and the company offered stipends to Indian women to convert to Christianity and have their children baptized. But as the idea of race as an identity began to take hold, those attitudes shifted.
I defer to your evidence-based argument. My favorite kind of argument. 🙂