The representation of non-Irish immigrants in recent Irish films

Abstract

This paper examines the representation of ethnic and racial minorities in Celtic Tiger and post-Celtic Tiger films such as Adam and Paul (2004), Pavee Lackeen (2005), Once (2006), The Front Line (2007), and New Boy (2007). Key areas of analysis include: how is immigration represented on screen? Whose character's point of view predominates? How much space do these ethnic minorities occupy in the shot? In order to answer these research questions, I draw on a plurality of theoretical paradigms currently employed in film theory, mainly narrative theory, critical race theory and feminist theory. As I show, the differences between these films are paramount and will inform the different ways in which recent Irish cinema represents racial and ethnic Otherness. In some films, immigrants appear mainly as decorative props and they largely function as cinematic elements which emphasise the marginalisation of other “inner” Irish outsiders, particularly drug addicts and Travellers. By contrast, other films make serious attempts to see “into” or “through” immigrant characters by fictionalising not only the point of view of natives but also of newcomers themselves.

Keywords::

• Celtic Tiger cinema
• post-Celtic Tiger cinema
• immigration
• multiculturalism
• intercultural cinema

Acknowledgements

The research reported in this article has been conducted under the auspices of project FFI2011-25453, supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, and the European Union FEDER funds. I would like to acknowledge the support of Rosa González Casademont, Encarnación Hidalgo Tenorio and Leanne Bartley, who read drafts of this paper and suggested changes.

Notes

^1.Kakasi, “Migration and Intercultural Cinema,” 45.

^2.McLoone, Irish Film, 93.

^3. This list only includes fictional films and not documentaries, an audio-visual medium which has dealt prolifically with themes of ethnicity in recent years. For an accurate taxonomy of all the films made in Ireland with a migration theme since 2000, see Kakasi, “Migration and Intercultural Cinema,” 41–2.

^4. Interestingly enough, Padraig agus Nadia and Yu Ming is Ainn Dom are films which articulate the theme of Irish multiculturalism in the Irish language.

^5. Some of these filmmakers are amateur; others are professional. On the other hand, not all the filmmakers are Irish-born. While Pavee Lackeen, for instance, is made by the British director Perry Ogden, the director of New Boy, Steph Green, is Irish-American. In any case, most of these films are supported by the Irish Film Board, and thus they form part of what Barton would call the “‘official’ Irish film culture”. The Irish Arts Council and the national broadcaster RTÉ are other usual sources of state funding. See Barton, Irish National Cinema, 105.

^6.Herr, “Images of Migration”; McGinn, “Who is Telling Irish (Short) Stories?”; Kakasi, “Migration and Intercultural Cinema.” Such studies are appearing at a time of heightened interest in the role of race and migration in contemporary Irish culture, as evidenced by recent publications on this topic (see Moynihan, “Other People's Diasporas”; Villar-Argáiz, Literary Visions).

^7.Branigan, Point of View in the Cinema; Branigan, Narrative Comprehension and Film.

^8.Branigan, Narrative Comprehension and Film, 65.

^9.Cixous, Rootprints; Cixous, Reveries of the Wild Woman; Kristeva, Strangers to Ourselves; Scarry, Body in Pain.

^10.Marks, Skin of Film; Naficy, Accented Cinema; Shohat and Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism.

^11. Shohat and Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism, 343.

^12. Ibid., 359.

^13. Marks, Skin of Film, xii.

^14.González, “Can Irish Cinema,” 52–3.

^15. Shohat and Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism, 178.

^16.Layden, “Gender and the Social Outsider,” 128.

^17. This film, however, can be more helpfully compared to Beckett's Waiting for Godot. This intertextuality is indeed acknowledged by the director himself, when he describes the film as “Laurel and Hardy on smack and Waiting for Godot”. See Huber, “Celtic Tiger Cinema,” 200. Other critics who have identified Beckett's influence in the film are Layden, “Gender and the Social Outsider,” 128; O'Connell, New Irish Storytellers, 91–2.

^18. Layden, “Gender and the Social Outsider,” 132. The viewers never find out which character is Paul and which is Adam, and, as Layden notes, it is not until the end of the film, with the credits, that such retrospective identification is possible. In this sense, the protagonists lack even the most basic marker of identity: a name. This fact increases both characters' marginalisation and insignificance within the grand narratives of Celtic Tiger modern capitalism.

^19.Moran, “Review of Adam and Paul.”

^20. All quotations from films are based on my transcription from DVD copies.

^21.Monahan, “Review of Adam and Paul,” 168.

^22. Ibid.

^23. Significantly enough, the role of the Bulgarian migrant is played by Caramitru, the former Minister of Culture in Romania, who is also a famous actor in the country, as director Abrahamson and screenwriter O'Halloran explain (Extra features, DVD).

^24. Huber, “Celtic Tiger Cinema,” 200.

^25. McLoone, Irish Film, 118.

^26. Monahan, “Review of Adam and Paul,” 167.

^27. Ibid., 168.

^28. One of these is the dream-like sequence in their friend Janine's flat, in which the audience enjoys proximity to both Adam and Paul, as we suddenly imagine a scene from their point of view. Although the audience here gets involved with both characters at the emotional level, we never know who is dreaming this sequence.

^29. O'Connell, New Irish Storytellers, 98.

^30. Ibid., 107.

^31.Gibbons, “‘Life's a Terrible Torture.’”

^32.Crosson, “Review of Pavee Lackeen,” 185–6.

^33. See Caroline Hennessy, “Movie Review of Once,” RTÉ Ten, The Entertainment Network, March 22, 2007, http://www.rte.ie/ten/2007/0322/once.html (accessed April 23, 2013); Scott, “Some Love Stories.”

^34. As O'Connell claims, this is indicative that “the narrative intimacy [is] confined to them rather than shared with the audience” (O'Connell, New Irish Storytellers, 174, emphasis in the original). But, paradoxically, this strategy could be intended to fulfil an opposite purpose. The anonymity of the characters may indicate that their emotions can be experienced by any “guy” or “girl” and therefore it may facilitate the audience's identification with the story.

^35. Hansard also appears as Outspan Foster in The Commitments.

^36. O'Connell, New Irish Storytellers, 174.

^37.Dwyer, “Street Sweethearts.”

^38.Carney, “Director John Carney Talks.”

^39.Schmid, “Sounding Modern Ireland.”

^40. Julian Name, Study Guide for the Film Once, British Schools Film Festival, 2009, http://www.agkino.de/britfilms/3/study/StudyGuide-Once.pdf (accessed April 23, 2013).

^41. Kristeva, Strangers to Ourselves, 1.

^42. See Kiberd, “Strangers in their Country,” 73.

^43.Brereton, “Branding Irish Cinema,” 35.

^44. Ibid.

^45. Ibid., 36.

^46. Girl's refusal to translate these words might also be intended to fulfil other cinematographic purposes. This scene provokes in the non-Czech-speaking spectator the same alienation experienced by immigrants in Ireland who do not master English. Indeed, a common strategy in intercultural cinema is to invoke “through inversion, the asymmetry in cultural exchange between exiles and their ‘host’ communities” (Shohat and Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism, 321).

^47. Carney, “Director John Carney Talks.”

^48. See Branigan, Narrative Comprehension and Film, 35.

^49. In the last sequence of Pavee Lackeen there is a moving piano piece by a Japanese composer and musician, as director Ogden claims (“Commented film,” Extra features, DVD). This soundtrack appears in a non-diegetic way, in contrast to the dominant sound effects used all through the movie, mainly the traffic noise of big lorries passing right beside Winnie's van.

^50. Branigan, Narrative Comprehension and Film, 49.

^51. Internal focalisation is offered only once in the case of Guy, when he is composing his song “Lies” at home. His laptop is open and there are webcam images of earlier happier times with his girlfriend. While we listen to the song, the camera repeatedly intersperses shots of Guy looking at the webcam and these images, previously on the monitor, and now suddenly occupying the whole screen. This visual strategy emphasises what is going on in Guy's mind.

^52.Ryan, “Sounding Different Voices.”

^53. Branigan, Point of View in the Cinema, 64.

^54. Ibid., 62.

^55. Branigan, Narrative Comprehension and Film, 102.

^56.Loyal and Staunton, “Dynamics of Political Economy,” 37.

^57. Marks, Skin of Film, 60.

^58. Ibid., 51.

^59. See Branigan, Point of View in the Cinema, 132–3.

^60. See Branigan, Narrative Comprehension and Film, 103.

^61. Branigan, Point of View in the Cinema, 81.

^62. Ibid., 94.

^63.Downing, “The Wounded Healer,” 42.

^64. “Gleeson and Lichtenthaeler on The Front Line,” Irish Film and Television Network, August 26, 2006, http://www.iftn.ie/news/?act1 = record&only = 1&aid = 73&rid = 4279925&tpl = archnews&force = 1 (accessed May 21, 2013).

^65. Marks, Skin of Film, 65.

^66. Scarry, Body in Pain, 4.

^67. Ibid., 30. Herr also applies Scarry's theories to talk about the terror and uncertainty experienced by migrants in their journey to a new land and how this reality has been fictionalised in films such as Zulu 9. Herr, “Images of Migration,” 113.

^68. Naficy, Accented Cinema, 115.

^69. Marks, Skin of Film, 21.

^70. Ibid., 5.

^71. Ibid., xi.

^72. Shohat and Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism, 324.

^73. Marks, Skin of Film, xiii; Cixous, Rootprints, 42.

^74.McIlroy, “Introduction,” 5.

^75. Edward Douglas, “Exclusive: New Boy Director Stephen Green,” Comingsoon.net, February 11, 2009, http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id = 52772 (accessed June 11, 2013).

^76. Ibid.

^77. Branigan, Point of View in the Cinema, 6.

^78. Branigan, Narrative Comprehension and Film, 86–103.

^79.Forceville, “Non-verbal and Multimodal Metaphor,” 21.

^80. Branigan, Narrative Comprehension and Film, 50.

^81. Marks, Skin of Film, 7.

^82. Shohat and Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism, 191.

^83. In any case, remember that Kala uses her own language when expressing her pain, which indicates that the immigrant's native idiom is granted a space of its own in the film.

^84. Marks, Skin of Film, 37; Naficy, Accented Cinema, 122.

^85. Kakasi, “Migration and Intercultural Cinema,” 48.

^86. Shohat and Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism, 346.