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The conflict is presented as a struggle among Irish Catholics or a conflict between the British and Irish.
Thus, by leaving the Protestant population out of the picture, the complexity of the Irish situation is often simplified. One of the weaknesses of the book is its failure to provide much background information on the film productions, as Connelly elects to focus primarily on plot development.
He offers readers little information on the filmmakers or why some films were produced. And certainly some account of how the Irish film industry developed might help clarify the cultural politics of representing the IRA. The film is essentially sympathetic to Collins as a man who led an urban guerrilla warfare campaign against the British occupation but in the end was willing to risk his life for peace.
However, many critics in both the United States and Great Britain tended to view Collins through the lens of terrorism, and the film failed to earn the anticipated box office receipts. The Fox of Glenarvon If you would like to authenticate using a different subscribed institution that supports Shibboleth authentication or have your own login and password to Project MUSE, click 'Authenticate'. View freely available titles: Book titles OR Journal titles. Project MUSE promotes the creation and dissemination of essential humanities and social science resources through collaboration with libraries, publishers, and scholars worldwide.
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This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. Without cookies your experience may not be seamless. Whether portrayed as a heroic patriot, ruthless terrorist, or troubled anti-hero, the Irish rebel has emerged as a universally recognized cinematic archetype. This illustrated history analyzes film depictions of the IRA from the Easter Rising to the peace process of the s. After studying history and literature in college and graduate school, I became fascinated with the interplay of politics and film.
I felt that any small organization that generated eighty motion pictures deserved to be analyzed in depth. Working on this book was both easier and harder than I expected. Writing about films, however, is far more time consuming than working with books. You can easily flip through a book to find a passage or double-check a quote.
With film, fast-forwarding and rewinding to locate a scene is time- consuming. In addition, writing about a controversial organization like the IRA requires careful attention to connotations. I wanted to establish an objective, even-handed account of Irish history before analyzing how events and personalities were represented on film.
The film is essentially sympathetic to Collins as a man who led an urban guerrilla warfare campaign against the British occupation but in the end was willing to risk his life for peace. An IRA victory would not affect world markets, create a haven for international terrorists, or threaten British security. In the back of the book is a huge list of movies and TV shows to pick from, along with a bibliography, Irish chronology and notes. I wanted to establish an objective, even-handed account of Irish history before analyzing how events and personalities were represented on film. The conflict is presented as a struggle among Irish Catholics or a conflict between the British and Irish.
Choosing terms to describe the region itself is a challenge. The Irish Republican Army has appeared in over eighty motion pictures, granting it an unprecedented and ironic cinematic presence. Like Basque separatists in Spain, it is involved in a protracted internecine struggle with few global ramifications. The IRA is dedicated to ending British rule in a corner of a neutral island with a population equivalent to that of West Virginia, a heavily subsidized province Britain has repeatedly stated that it has no selfish, strategic, or economic interest in retaining.
The parochial dispute between militant Irish Republicans who want a single unified Irish state and the Unionists who wish Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom claimed three thousand lives in thirty years, a devastating number for a small community, but far less significant than the loss of life in Kosovo in a single year. Other revolutionary organizations have inflicted more harm, espouse more ominous ideologies, and pose greater threats to international stability.
Yet none of these militant forces has captivated moviemakers like the Irish Republican Army. It is not the nature, size, or significance of the organization, or the value of the land in dispute, but the people it involves that attracts attention. As James MacKillop notes, as a small nation, Ireland is uniquely connected to the outside world because of the English language and its extensive diaspora. Troubles reverberate around the world. A nation of only 4.
Whether portrayed as a heroic patriot, ruthless terrorist, corrupt gangster, or troubled outcast, the Irish rebel has emerged as a universally recognized cinematic archetype. Most people do not know that the Irish Republican Army traces its roots to two organizations: The Fenians, most of them immigrants, saw themselves as an Irish government in exile.
They issued bonds, published a newspaper, named a president, and appointed ambassadors. In , over a thousand of them many Civil War veterans launched raids into Canada to pressure Britain to withdraw from Ireland. After these attacks failed, the Fenians financed a far bolder venture worthy of Jules Verne. Unable to interest the US Navy in his submarines, Irish-born inventor John Holland turned to the Fenians and built a thirty-two foot submarine to attack British ships.
The vessel made trial runs in New York harbor, firing both underwater and aerial torpedoes.