The Banshees of Inisherin

not with you involved begod

mainlanders whod have em

Yeah I totally get being too close to the subject matter, I've been on that side of it too

And yet, to continue to post such embarrassing opinions!

I've learned from those experiences that people aren't dumb or wrong for enjoying things just because it's operating on a different level for them.

I couldn't even really experience Whiplash or Treme because the specifics were so distracting, but it's fine if other people enjoy them without having had those specific experiences. Knowing too much about something almost invariable ruins a movie or show about it, lol.

it certainly ruined Garfield for me

Incredibly ignorant.

Ok

you know what, i just realized that i have been confusing Martin McDonagh with John Michael McDonagh, whose excellent Calvary with Gleeson (and the more problematic but still worth seeing War on Everyone) had kept me coming back to Martin McD after I hated 3 billboards (and got me into the theater for this one) because i felt like he had proven to be a capable craftsman. not so sure now!

I can't believe there is a fucking extended family of these useless cunts all doing the same job, good job they aren't plumbers!

not sure it works as plumbers promote the free flow of shit!!

(I enjoyed this movie. Just matching the current energy in here.)

lol I watched it 3 times!

lmao

John M McD's The Guard is a fairly decent film too!

Marty was an EP on that

what's the condition that describes when you really like a movie that is fairly bad? I watched Martin Eden about a dozen times even though I think it is objectively a badly written and rather daft movie.

visual masochism?

Banshees will have The Big Lebowski lasting power. On Halloween, instead of a Westerley zip-up sweater, we will fake cut off our fingers. Replace the white russian with a fiddle. In place of philosophy, we will overestimate our knowledge of the Irish Civil War.

no, because I'm talking about even though you know it's rubbish that you are watching but still find it an inexplicably an uplifting experience.

Cinemanabon

that sounds like nostalgia?

Regrettably, you can only cut off all your fingers once. Martin takes advantage.

i think i posted about him previously that three billboards was merely his doing to america what he does to Ireland

This is it. I remember someone on here saying about that film, "I prefer his stuff when it's set in Ireland"

Well, you would, not being from the place.

“People say you should only write what you know. But you only write what you know because you are too fucking stupid to make anything up.”

^^^

a quote from the "artist" himself on this

One of the parts of the essay that I kept thinking about was this:

W.B. Yeats and J.M. Synge, both Anglo-Irish—Irish, that is, but members of a Protestant ruling class descended from the original English colonial settlers—were among the most prominent of the Revival’s writers, and both contributed to this focus on rural poverty as the true soul of Irishness. As well-intentioned as the Abbey’s mission might have been as a contribution to Irish cultural self-consciousness, and as aesthetically powerful as the plays often were, this stuff unwittingly reasserted England’s colonial hegemony by staging Ireland as an unsophisticated peasant culture.

Yeats did not rate Pearse highly, believing that he had been made dangerous by 'the vertigo of self-sacrifice. As a young man, Pearse had thought badly of Yeats, dismissing him as 'a mere English poet of the third or fourth rank', but later recognised his literary achievement and invited him to speak to his pupils at St. Enda's.

Pearse was probably responsible for much of the text of the 1916 proclamation while his complex personality and passionate rhetoric still define the Rising for many people.

A fifth leader, James Connolly, is named in the rousing final stanza. Connolly, a socialist thinker and Trade Union organiser, is not mentioned in the body of the poem. With his conservative leanings, Yeats would not have had much time for Connolly's politics, but did recognise his importance as did Yeats's friend, George Russell (AE) who admired Connolly and felt that he had been the main inspiration behind the Rising:

Yeats ofc essentially recanted a lot of his original opinion (as expressed through his contemporary work) on nationalism and those parts of it he had what would we say a distaste for, but i think true to put it that he did so by elevating the nobility of it in his mind such that it became worthy of his aesthetic ideal and not by ever subjugating the latter to the realities

aesthetics and biting his own liver in poetbro impotent fury at sean mcbride are the two main facets of yeats opinions on nationalism until yerman was dead and no longer plowing (and starring nest pas) his mott

Yeah ofc he did change his views later in life but the work of his that is most known re nationalism is predating that

Yeats supported the striking workers in the lockout. R.F. Foster's VOL 1: THE APPRENTICE MAGE (1997), p.500, records his notes from a public meeting on the event which were then sent as an open letter to Jim Larkin's IRISH WORKER paper (published 1st November 1913).

I quite like the film but don't love it, don't think it's immensely great or tells me the essential truth about Ireland or anywhere. A quite distinctive quirky drama.

That’s not a correction to what I said, though. Yeats wrote about it, Connolly was out there with the workers.

Tweet thread by Drew D

I mean it’s nice and all but he doesn’t even read the essay until someone links it to him in the replies, lol

There needs to be a word for this phenomenon, where you append a 'lmao' onto any intellectual flex, in case somebody calls you on it. pic.twitter.com/XqUFA4HrDu

— Elvis Buñuelo (@Mr_Considerate) January 27, 2023

ah, that first sighting of "Irish writer" discourse of the day is always the freshest. "Wait until they find out about Brendan O'Neill" ho ho ho LMAO! etc

I haven't read any essays on the film, but tweeter Bunuelo is correct. Say what you have to say and stand by it, don't add a defensive, offensive initialism.

The other tweeter he's commenting on is somewhat misleading in various ways. For one thing, Wilde is now widely thought of as an Irish writer, but about 30-40 years ago, among many British people, he wasn't. (Maybe he was in Ireland.) And while many people love Wilde, no-one would turn to him for a direct rendition of Irish experience, as he didn't write directly about Ireland.

The same is mostly true of Beckett, who mostly, after c.1940, writes about abstract or unnamed places. A great Irish writer, but not exactly a guide to Ireland.

Yeats spent much time outside Ireland but also much time in Ireland, and was a Senator and helped design the currency (for good or ill). It's reasonable to say that he had a huge amount of experience of Ireland (of a particular kind).

Joyce spent most of his life outside Ireland but wrote about an Ireland which he had intensely experienced and remembered, and with which he remained in a way obsessed. So his case is totally different from someone who didn't grow up there. (Nothing wrong with those people either.)

I've also just noticed that said tweeter spells 'umbrage' as 'umbridge'. He's spending too much time listening to The Archers.

I think anybody who posts "wait until they find out about Shane McGowan" as a witty repartee towards people who have been critical of McD are either very young or just plain clueless!

pinefox why is "lmao" offensive? Genuinely curious in case it comes over as argumentative.

xxp I don’t mean to be rude but those arguments are absolute nonsense (the ones you are responding to, not the ones you are making, which are broadly otm) that are usually put about by people with interest in denying Ireland any kind of cultural legacy. It’s not remotely good faith.

In any case, the emigrant experience is a huge part of Irishness across the generations. That Joyce lived outside Ireland is neither here nor there for the argument; he was writing from his direct experience growing up, not from something imagined. Someone else pointed out re Shane McGowan that he had written quite a lot from the diaspora point of view, which is very much its own thing and a worthy subject in and of itself.

A lot of this is tension between those of us born in Ireland and the diaspora, which has a long running element not obvious to outsiders. I don’t really care about the opinions of someone whose ancestors emigrated during the Famine regarding modern Ireland; that’s not denying their family’s origin. There’s an extremely bad faith line about “wow, you think someone born to Irish parents in London isn’t Irish enough, I wonder what you think of black Irish people,” which completely elides the fact that 1) diaspora Irish are entitled to citizenship under jus sanguinis even if their relative was a grandparent whereas the pretty racist nationality law is much harder for someone who is born to two foreign parents and 2) the opinions of someone born to one or more foreign parents in Ireland or someone from a minority background are going to be more immediately relevant and of interest than someone, such as Martin McDonagh, who never bothered thinking of his Irishness until he decided to start writing Irish plays!

And I don’t think someone from a minority background in Ireland ever has that opportunity to opt out and not have those thoughts, it is forced upon you, because Ireland is more diverse than it was when I was a child.

Anyway my tl;dr is that some diaspora have interesting things to say but their opinions are not intrinsically worthwhile by dint of being diaspora, and all the Irish-Americans mad about this essay can really just stay mad about it, because they’ve insisted on being seen in an argument that’s not really about them and more about what portrayals of the country are seen to be acceptable and true by outsiders.

xp

not posting as pinefox, but I'd guess it could be taken offensively in a "lol, you are an idiot and me, I'm the smartest person in the room and I'm laughing at you" kind of way.

Sorry, that part about opting out, I just left that thought right there: although Ireland is much more diverse than it was when I was a child, the country is still quite racist and it can’t be easy to grow up an ethnic minority there.

I can remember in the early 80's there was apparently (according to what family said) one South Asian family in the whole of Tralee.

And I mentioned it maybe on the thread about abortion, but a lot of Irish-Americans are backward fucks who have historically done things like contribute to funds to keep abortion illegal in Ireland, and whose image of the country is completely out of date. I’ve heard from friends about Irish-Americans showing up and looking askance that not everyone is white and living in thatched cottages. Usually diaspora from the UK just from proximity get it a bit more, but there’s that element as well. Basically if you have grown up gay or female or from any sort of minority in the modern country, someone clinging onto the worst aspects of the old country is…a lot.

And please don’t take this as an invitation to talk about your background if you’re Irish-American to me, I truly don’t care, because I am explaining the point of difference that exists as I have experienced it. I also have relatives from that background, it’s not something I need explained. Thanks!

I can remember in the early 80's there was apparently (according to what family said) one South Asian family in the whole of Tralee.

follow up from this guy is even worse

I’m trying to imagine any reality in which you could grow up with Irish parents in England at the height of the Troubles and not be acutely aware of Irish culture.

— William Friedkin Truths (@LazlosGhost) January 26, 2023

hah some O'Neil brained shit there

obviously the superficial cultural knowledge picked up on a two week holiday in Eire every year was invaluable. But also I'd like to thank Bono for teaching me about The Troubles!

did we ever find out if McDonagh comes from peasant stock?

I was reading earlier that Oscar Wilde's Irish mum was more likely to be from peasant stock than that bald buffoon. She claimed her grandfather was an Italian who had emigrated to Eire in the 18th century, but apparently, she actually was the grandchild of some labourers from Durham!

follow up from this guy is even worse

🐦[I’m trying to imagine any reality in which you could grow up with Irish parents in England at the height of the Troubles and not be acutely aware of Irish culture.
— William Friedkin Truths (@LazlosGhost) January 26, 2023🕸]🐦

not necessarily comfortable with midlanders speaking to a clearly islander experience itt tbh

sure I’m from an island too…the big island 😎

ms. appropriation

You know you have to watch this shite now so you can properly go in on this thread right