Contemporary Irish Popular Culture: Transnationalism, Regionality, and Diaspora 3030942546, 9783030942540

Table of contents :
Acknowledgements
Contents
List of Figures
Chapter 1: Introduction—“Fractured Movement”: Transnationalism, Regionality, and Diaspora in Contemporary Irish Popular Culture
Neoliberal Ireland: Mapping the Contemporary Conjuncture North and South
Conjunctural Flash Points
Transnationalism, Regionality and Diaspora: Utilizing Key Terms
Methodology, Choice of Texts and Chapter Overview
Bibliography
Chapter 2: Star Leverage, Local Matters, and Transnational Media: Chris O’Dowd, Moone Boy and Puffin Rock
Shifting Masculinities in Twenty-First Century Stardom: O’Dowd’s Emergence and the Decline of Celtic Tiger Masculinities
Everyman Appeal, Demotic Corporeality, and Irish Performativity
Bridesmaids: Breakthrough Performance and the Ambivalence of Irishness
Accented Performance: O’Dowd’s Irishness as Aural Signifier and Diasporic Index
Transnationalism, Channel Identity and the Irish Sitcom
Regionalism and Nostalgia in the Irish Sitcom: Moone Boy
Economic Woes, County Pride and the ‘Returning Migrant’
Renegotiating the West Onscreen: Reflective Nostalgia, Region and the Changing Face of Ireland
Irish Animation, FDI and Regional Development
Puffin Rock: Local and International Funding Strategies and Global Appeal10
Accent and Visual Style in Puffin Rock
Conclusion
Bibliography
Chapter 3: Derry Girls and Cork Boys: Second Cities, Regional Identities and (Trans)National Tensions in the Contemporary Irish Sitcom
Regional Comedic Voices
(Trans)National Hierarchies and the City
Historical Conditions and “Second City Affect” in Cork and Derry
Spatialized Inequality and Youthful Mobility in the Young Offenders
Melodrama, Bromance and the Recuperation of the Lad in the Young Offenders
Future Girls and Present-Day Troubles: Derry Girls and “The Real Derry Girls”
Schoolgirls, Murals and Thwarting the ‘New Story’ of the City
Trans/National Television Reception and Regionalised Distinction
Conclusion
Bibliography
Chapter 4: Transnationalism, Masculinity, and Diasporic Performativity in Irish Sport: Conor McGregor and James McClean
Sporting Celebrity, Masculinity and Nation
Career Overview: Conor McGregor
Post-Celtic Tiger Recessionary Culture, Neoliberal Logics and McGregor’s Emergence
Corporeal Metaphors, Self-Regulation and Hyper-Consumerism
Historical Precedents, Social Unrest and the Sports Media Complex
The Money Fight: Racialized Sporting Spectacle in the Trump Era
Contrasting Receptions: The Perils of Transatlantic Authenticity
James McClean’s Poppy Protest and the Cultural Politics of Diasporic Non-Assimilation
James McClean: Career Overview
Social Media and Unruly Northern Nationalism
Poppies, Protest and Negotiating Media Exposure
Conclusion
Bibliography
Chapter 5: Irish Female Comedic Voices, Diasporic Melancholy, and Productive Irritation: Sharon Horgan, Aisling Bea and Maeve Higgins
Women, the Creative Industries and Irish Society
Sharon Horgan: Auteur-Entrepreneurialism, Creative Networks and Mobile Irishness
Horgan’s Migrant Narrative Voice and the Comedic Transnational Legibility of Irritation
“Be Our Yes”: Diasporic Political Activism and the Comedic Navigation of Bad Feelings
This Way Up: Melancholic Migrancy and Affective Vulnerability
Migrancy and the Spectral Metaphor of the Forgotten Irish
Maeve Higgins: Comedic Origins
Writing Migration
Juxtapositional Ethnicity and US Migration
Extra Ordinary: Localism and Transnationalism in Genre Filmmaking
Stand-Up, Cultural Scenes and Gender Equality
Conclusion: Female Comedic Voices, Affective Ambivalence and Migrant Subjectivity
Bibliography
Chapter 6: Mammies and Sons: Mobilising Maternal and Filial Affect in Mrs Brown’s Boys, 50 Ways to Kill Your Mammy, and Philomena
The Irish Mammy: From Stage to (Digital) Screen
Mrs Brown’s Boys: Regionalism, Transnationalism and Populist Appeal in the “Dublin Dame”
50 Ways to Kill Your Mammy: Filial Bonding, Transnational Maternal Affect and Generational Transition in Popular Culture
Philomena, the Hidden Diaspora, Appealable Trauma Narrative and Second-Generation Migrant Performativity
Conclusion
Bibliography
Chapter 7: Coda: The COVID-19 Pandemic and Irish Screen Media
Early Representations: Together and “Strangers on a (Dublin) Train”
Conclusion: Maintaining the Delicate Fiction of Home
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Contemporary Irish Popular Culture: Transnationalism, Regionality, and Diaspora Anthony P. McIntyre

Contemporary Irish Popular Culture “This is a beautifully written, wide-ranging, carefully historicised and theorised book that will be of great significance to anyone interested in contemporary Irish culture.” —Sinéad Moynihan, Associate Professor in American and Atlantic Literatures, University of Exeter, UK

Anthony P. McIntyre

Contemporary Irish Popular Culture Transnationalism, Regionality, and Diaspora

Anthony P. McIntyre Film University College Dublin Dublin, Ireland

ISBN 978-3-030-94254-0    ISBN 978-3-030-94255-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94255-7 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the ­publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and ­institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Mickey Rooney / Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

For Maria and Annie

Acknowledgements

I’d like to thank all those who helped in producing this book. First, thank you to Camille Davies, Jack Heeney and Imogen Higgins at Palgrave Macmillan for all their support. Two anonymous reviewers provided excellent suggestions that have improved the final work considerably. Valuable feedback was also provided by audiences at several academic conferences and seminars where I presented papers that would eventually find their way in modified form into this book. I’d like to thank audiences and speakers at the L’Irlande en series conference at Université Paris Ouest, Nanterre in 2014; the Post Celtic-Tiger Irishness Symposium at Trinity College Dublin in 2016; the Global Irish Diaspora Congress at University College Dublin in 2017; the Sports, Media and the Cultural Industries in Ireland Symposium at Dublin City University in 2018; and the European Popular Culture Association Conference 2019 at the University of Limerick. I am sincerely grateful to Diane Negra who, throughout my time at UCD has been an exemplary colleague and friend and who provided generous feedback throughout the development of this book. My research with Diane and Eleanor O’Leary on aspects of Irish contemporary culture has taken place alongside my work on this book and has informed it considerably. David McKinney, Marcus Free and Colin Coulter read work in progress at different points and offered valuable advice. Any errors within the book are, of course, my own. Portions of the present work have appeared in earlier publications. Several sections in Chap. 2 develop ideas that appeared in a version originally published as McIntyre, Anthony P., “Moone Boy and the Elision of vii

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Celtic Tiger Aspirationalism,” in New Perspectives on Irish TV Series: Identity and Nostalgia on the Small Screen (2016), ed. Flore Colouma, Oxford: Peter Lang (Reinventing Ireland Series). Chapter 4 includes material published as “Remembrance and Resistance: James McClean’s Poppy Protest and the Politics of Diasporic Non-Assimilation,” in Sport and Media in Ireland: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (2020), eds. Marcus Free and Niall O’Boyle, Cork: Cork University Press. I’d like to thank the editors of both books for the feedback and assistance provided in preparing these chapters, which are reproduced with permission of Peter Lang and Cork University Press. I’m thankful to friends who have acted as sounding boards or provided welcome distraction during the writing of this book: Vincent Foley, David McKinney, Emmet Smyth, Eugene Ryan, Jack Carolan, John McDaid, Anna Glazier and James Aitken. For providing help or inspiration at an earlier point in my learning, I’m very grateful to Noreen Carolan, Patricia Hughes, and Willy Maley. I am always thankful for my family, parents Rose and Tony and my two brothers, Jason and Connor, for their love and encouragement, good humour and support. My final and greatest debt of gratitude, not least for patience and support as I finished the manuscript, is to Maria and Annie (and Max), to whom this book is lovingly dedicated.

Contents

1 Introduction—“Fractured Movement”: Transnationalism, Regionality, and Diaspora in Contemporary Irish Popular Culture  1 2 Star Leverage, Local Matters, and Transnational Media: Chris O’Dowd, Moone Boy and Puffin Rock 23 3 Derry Girls and Cork Boys: Second Cities, Regional Identities and (Trans)National Tensions in the Contemporary Irish Sitcom 65 4 Transnationalism, Masculinity, and Diasporic Performativity in Irish Sport: Conor McGregor and James McClean109 5 Irish Female Comedic Voices, Diasporic Melancholy, and Productive Irritation: Sharon Horgan, Aisling Bea and Maeve Higgins153

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6 Mammies and Sons: Mobilising Maternal and Filial Affect in Mrs Brown’s Boys, 50 Ways to Kill Your Mammy, and Philomena203 7 Coda: The COVID-19 Pandemic and Irish Screen Media239 Index251

List of Figures

Fig. 2.1

O’Dowd’s “ordinary guy” persona is commonly foregrounded in media depictions of the comedy actor 30 Fig. 2.2 Baba, Oona and Mossy demonstrate the cute aesthetics that enable global legibility 57 Fig. 3.1 The People’s Republic of Cork image of Dónal Óg Cusack signifies a combination of progressive liberalism and commercial branding of the civic space 75 Fig. 3.2 The opening scene of The Young Offenders utilizes shallow focus to effect a spatial differentiation between Conor and Jock and the centre of the city 80 Fig. 3.3 The finale of Derry Girls’ first season contrasts political violence with the elation of youth, as the girls and James take to the stage in an exuberant act of solidarity and friendship 91 Figs. 3.4 “The Death of Innocence” and Derry Girls murals show the and 3.5 discursive construction of the Derry schoolgirl spanning both comedy and tragedy. (Photographs: Anthony P. McIntyre) 95 Fig. 4.1 McGregor’s “Dream Big” advertisement effects a conquering of space as the fighter seamlessly transitions from Crumlin to California121 Fig. 4.2 McClean’s controversial Instagram posting of March 2020 constitutes a further example of his, at times, provocative references to Irish history 139 Fig. 5.1 Sharon Horgan and Aisling Bea comedically referencing the repressive patriarchal regime in The Handmaid’s Tale in their “Be Our Yes” campaign video for Together for Yes, part of the campaign to legalise abortion in Ireland 173

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LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 6.1

Fig. 6.2

Fig. 7.1

The Fricker Irish mammy memes utilise Brenda Fricker’s role as Mrs. Brown in My Left Foot, and in particular her stern expression, connoting both the domesticity associated with previous eras and the unglamorous ‘common sense’ of the figure Posters for the cinematic release of Philomena conflate the Irish mammy with mobility through a white doodle on a plain yellow background that summarises the journey taken in the movie In “Strangers on a (Dublin) Train” emerging interpersonal protocols of the pandemic era are recast as novel and romantic

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction—“Fractured Movement”: Transnationalism, Regionality, and Diaspora in Contemporary Irish Popular Culture An ad for Three Business—a branch of the Irish telecommunications company Three—that was first broadcast in May 2019 presents a vivid picture of the global/local dynamics that animate the analyses within this book. Opening with picturesque images of the island in question— Arranmore, situated off the Donegal coast on the north west coast of Ireland—we hear a local man emotionally declare: “the greatest silence I hear on Arranmore, is the sound of children. It’s only when you don’t have it; The silence is deafening.” The ad goes on to detail how the island has been “decimated by emigration” with many of Arranmore’s people forced to leave to find work, rendering the island potentially moribund. Clearly on one level the small community in this ad functions as a microcosm of the Irish nation, that in the years following the banking crash of 2008, saw the return of economic migration, a phenomenon that disproportionately impacted younger generations. That the ad goes on to show the island is, in effect, being rescued by private business also bespeaks an Irish media culture ideologically aligned with the pro-business, neoliberal contours of the contemporary Irish state. Capitalising upon the resonance of the return of economic migration as a scar on the national psyche, Three details through this ad how it is reinvigorating the island by providing fibre broadband technology infrastructure, enabling displaced workers to come home and ensuring the children of the island benefit educationally from state-of-the-art digital © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. P. McIntyre, Contemporary Irish Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94255-7_1

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communications access. Images of a “digital hub” set up on the island, where locals can access state of the art computers are cross-cut with rugged images of the Atlantic coast, the juxtaposition itself reminiscent of many contemporary discursive constructions of Ireland as at once an ancient Celtic nation, in which landscape indelibly shapes national identity, and simultaneously a forward-facing home to global tech investment and innovation. Made prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, which would reshape attitudes to homeworking, the ad posits a scenario in which islanders can work from Donegal as well as if they were in New York or London, namechecking some of the hubs of global capitalism to which the island is now connected, highlighting a putative transnational reach that has been bestowed upon the small community by the communications company. The narrative presentation of an island facing economic and social stagnation being in effect resurrected through a significant infrastructural investment carries a powerful ideological charge resonant within the Ireland of the late 20th and early twenty-first century. “The Island” can be profitably considered alongside a set of Irish television ads for EuroMillions Lottery that have been running since 2016. The premise of the campaign is that an Irishman has become so splendidly wealthy through a win on the lottery that he has bought (or is in the process of buying, depending on the ad in question) a Mediterranean island. The first advert in this series depicts a news reporter interviewing the lucky lottery winner on a beautiful sandy beach. Upon asking how the intended purchase and donation of an island would, in fact, work, the Irishman, in a laid-back and droll utterance replies, “Ah, sure we’ll figure it out.” The scrolling news text at the bottom of the faux news report signals the transnational spread of quintessentially Irish consumer preferences facilitated by the acquisition, reading: “First shipment of cheese and onion crisps leaves Ireland. Large consignment of red lemonade to follow.” The ad ends with a shot portraying a public square in small town Ireland, with crowds gathered to watch the news reports on the acquisition of the island cheering loudly. Glimpsed for a few seconds at the end of the ad, this mise-­ en-­abyme, reminiscent of the type of public display of national identity associated with international sporting events in the vein of the Italia ‘90 soccer World Cup, effectively sutures the viewer into the subject position of one of the enthused spectators, cheering the acquisition of a fantasy island as a “win” for an Irish national culture that seemingly thrives at a global level despite its humble stature, all while its citizens maintain a calm and laid-back demeanour.

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The veracity of such a depiction as characteristic of Irish citizens post-2008 contrasts significantly with the neoliberalised working cultures and practices in place throughout Ireland. Studies showing that Irish workers reporting stress connected to their employment more than doubled between 2010 to 2015 (Russell et al. 2018) and that Irish employees work longer hours and have fewer days of paid leave than the European average (Eurofound 2017) undermine the sense of an easy-going national character that is a mainstay of media representations of the Irish, whether such depictions emanate from within or outside of Ireland. These studies, of course, were published prior to the dramatic recalibrations of working life effected by the COVID-19 pandemic, which have further exacerbated work-life imbalance in Ireland, and indeed, across the globe. One of the guiding principles of this book is that media culture is imbricated at a deep level in the hegemonic processes of sense-making that have rendered neoliberal capitalism as a ubiquitous doctrine undergirding Irish life. The lottery campaign emerged during years of state-imposed austerity (exacerbated by the state’s nationalisation of banking debt), a time that laid bare some of the more stringent and indeed cruel underpinnings of neoliberal capitalism. Literary scholar Sharae Deckard (2010), in a study tracing its origins in colonial discourse and widespread contemporary proliferation, suggests that the “paradise myth” which is central to this campaign, “sublimate(s) political resistance by offering up consoling fantasies of the expanded consumer’s paradise enabled by globalization” (13). In the case of the lottery campaign, which I am offering here alongside the Three ad as examples drawn from of an expansive media culture (and to which I add the primary case studies central to the following chapters in this book), we see that such a consoling fantasy is aligned with the idea that Ireland has an outsized impact beyond its own borders in relation to its modest size and is the wellspring of an abiding and coherent identity that persists and thrives in a contemporary era marked by intensive globalization. In different ways each of these island-themed ads present a similar ideological proposition: that the ideal Irish subject is one who transcends national borders while retaining an authentic sense of Irishness rooted in and routed through the local. Both ads in their own ways correspond to Radha S. Hegde’s (2016) contention that in the present era, “The very idea of a better life is visualised and experienced transnationally” (6). The notion of “fractured movement” that I see as a defining feature of so much twenty-first century Irish screen content, registers this seemingly paradoxical tension between the local and the global. This is, of course, a

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trope with longstanding roots that go back to such cataclysmic events as the Irish famine in the nineteenth century and the various recessionary eras since that have undergirded the Irish diaspora. Such conditions caused citizens to depart their native land in hope of finding work; or indeed we can also add the many Irish subjects who fled a country which was, until very recently, in thrall to a Catholic orthodoxy that was openly homophobic and hostile to women’s reproductive rights and labour freedoms. However, whereas in previous eras the rupture between subject and home could be more emphatic, advances in consumer mobility and communications technologies have rendered the border between home and away, the local and the transnational more porous in a manner that generates “new modalities of belonging” (Morley 2010, 3). This sense of fractured movement that I read as a key element of these new modalities of belonging, of being simultaneously drawn away and pulled back—which we might understand through the common experience of families who are spread across the world, often due to the necessity of economic migration—persistently manifests in often indirect forms in Irish popular culture. We can detect such tensions in many media contexts, including: the discursive construction of twenty-first century Irish celebrities and stars from both sports as well as film and television; different genres of screen content such as drama and horror films; comedies both cinematic and televisual; as well as in multiple instances of advertising, as demonstrated by the two “island” ads that I have considered above. Such pronounced tropes of the local/global interdependency and conflation mirror on an ideological level the economic positioning of the Irish state in the twenty-first century, on account of its reliance on non-­domestic industry due to years of aggressive pursual of foreign direct investment. This has led to Ireland being a nation exposed to the vagaries of the global economic system, another way in which the depiction of a small island at the mercy of tumultuous elements outside of its control is a resonant and apt metaphor.

Neoliberal Ireland: Mapping the Contemporary Conjuncture North and South As some scholars have suggested, the metaphorical trope of the small island serves to attenuate divisions within the nation, one which “takes particular charge in countries that have experienced the long receding

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wave of empire as violence, partition and the fragmentation of place as a subject of narrative” (Allen 2021, 3). In Ireland, of course, one major schism is the border that has separated the Republic of Ireland from Northern Ireland since 1921. This book takes what might be considered an all-island approach, while acknowledging the different affiliations people hold (whether to Britain or to Ireland) in the still-contested six counties in Northern Ireland. While including Northern Ireland in the present study presents some challenges at the level of word choice, particularly usage of the adjective “Irish” or the noun “Ireland,” the experiences of people from that part of Ireland, are central to some of the most salient aspects of Irish diasporic experience, not least being victims of persistent anti-Irish sentiment in mainland Britain, during, but not limited to the years of The Troubles. Indeed, the fractured sense of identity that manifests in texts emanating from, or symbolically rooted in, Northern Ireland highlight in an overt way some of the broader facets of home/away disjuncture that I track across this book. My focus on the sitcom Derry Girls (2018–) and the footballer James McClean in Chaps. 3 and 4, texts centred on the city of Derry/Londonderry—the obligatory dual-naming indexing the contestation over and the symbolic centrality of the city to both Nationalist and Unionist communities in the North—allows for a consideration of transnational production cultures within media industries, as well as flows of labour and capital; and a regional identity that troubles monolithic notions of national affiliation and belonging at a time when the stability of such constructs is under considerable duress. To return to word choice, I use the term “Ireland” for the most part to refer to the 26 counties, or what is otherwise known as the Republic of Ireland (though acknowledging that Ireland is the official name of the state), occasionally using the latter term to differentiate between Northern Ireland and the 26 counties; when referring to the entire 32 counties, I use phrases such as “the island of Ireland,” or “Ireland, North and South”; similarly the term “Irish” is usually used to refer to the Republic of Ireland, except in instances where it denotes an apt affiliation such as “Irish footballer James McClean.” I trust that the context of the writing will provide enough information to clarify the sense in which these words are being used. Uniting Ireland, both North and South is the dominant mode of capitalism in the late 20th and early 21st centuries: neoliberalism. Cultural studies scholar Julie Wilson (2018) pithily characterises neoliberalism as “a set of social, cultural, and political-economic forces that put competition

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at the center of social life” (3). It is this influence across multiple spheres, as well as the adaptability of this variant of capitalism that is key to its persistence, despite the notable social and financial catastrophes with which it has come to be associated, not least the “Great Recession” of 2007–2009 and the austerity policies that swiftly followed in its wake. Jamie Peck and Nik Theodore (2019) suggest the necessity of “confront[ing] neoliberalism as an emergent mode of regulation, one that has become cumulatively embedded across multiple sites and spaces such that it increasingly defines the rules of the game and the terrain of struggle, even if never acting alone or monopolizing that terrain.” (Peck and Theodore 2019, 246). The purpose of this book is to contribute to a growing body of Irish cultural studies scholarship that seeks to interrogate the role of popular culture in installing neoliberal values as common sense (see, for instance, Kiersey 2014; Brick and Davidson 2017; Free and Scully 2018; Negra and McIntyre 2020; McIntyre 2021). For scholars such as Peck and Theodore, neoliberalism is never a monolithic construct, but one that is variegated. This plasticity, in their account, should act as “an invitation to conjunctural analysis, sensitive to variable (local) projects, formations, struggles, and contestations, and at the same time recognizing the openness of emergent pathways and future horizons” (246). This approach aligns with scholarship on Irish manifestations of this economic model. Geographers Rob Kitchin et  al. (2012) in an influential article tracing the economic and spatial impacts of neoliberalism suggest that Ireland differed from the UK and the US, where neoliberalism was “an ideologically informed project” instigated under the premierships of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. For Kitchin et al., “Irish neoliberalism was produced through a set of short-term (intermittently reformed) deals brokered by the state with various companies, individuals, and representative bodies, which cumulatively restructured Ireland in unsustainable and geographically ‘uneven’ ways” (1306). Nevertheless, while neoliberalism may not have been imposed upon the Irish in the top-­ down manner of the US and the UK, the role of media figures and the culture industries more broadly was also crucial to the shifting ideological consensus that helped broker neoliberalism’s acceptance in a newly secularised Ireland and a post-conflict Northern Ireland. Irish studies scholar Joe Cleary (2018) suggests Ireland’s reputation for “creativity”—a notable neoliberal buzzword, and one which, as I detail in Chap. 5 has been seized upon with gusto by the Irish state—combined with several other factors (a mobile, educated workforce; lack of

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employment opportunities in heavy industries; a historic diaspora stretching across the globe) made the nation ripe for neoliberalization. For Cleary “the country offered not only an attractive clean slate for a neoliberal experiment in post-industrial services and new technologies sectors, but also a range of “cultural assets” useful to such experiment” (165). The neoliberal ethos was taken up wholeheartedly by home-grown companies such as Glanbia and Ryanair, the corporate values within Ireland coming to mimic those of the multinational companies attracted to Ireland. Since then, corporatism has been installed at the heart of Irish life, evident in such telling details as former Taoiseach (prime minister) Leo Varadkar’s assertion on popular talk show The Late Late Show (1962–) while in that office that he was “chairman and CEO of the organization,” or the fact that former “wolf of Wall Street” Jordan Belfort, can draw large audiences to a speaking event in the Convention Centre in Dublin (Negra and McIntyre 2020, 75). Similarly, as Cleary (2018) suggests, within the Irish cultural sector, successful acts such as U2 and Riverdance that flourished spectacularly during the Celtic Tiger era bespoke a changed entrepreneurial ethos that “brooked no distinction between symbolic and economic capital” (165) a shift further manifest in prominent cultural figures of the time such as boy band impresario Louis Walsh, Riverdance producer Moya Doherty and U2 manager Paul McGuinness. Such acts and individuals reinforced the nascent sense within Ireland that true success was only fully realised on a transnational scale. In some ways this functioned as a symbolic reciprocal corollary to all of the multinational corporations drawn to Ireland and its 12.5% corporate tax rate and highly educated and, to begin with, low paid workers (Coulter 2019, 130), bolstering a heady sense in the pre-crash years that Ireland was coming to the world, and the world to Ireland. While the Celtic Tiger era constitutes a cultural high-water mark for Irishness as a commercialised and appealing identity with global legibility (Negra 2006), conceptions of success as predicated upon a transnational entrepreneurialism have since become axiomatic. For many of the individuals analysed in the chapters to follow, such as actor-writers Chris O’Dowd (Hot Cod Productions), Sharon Horgan (Merman Productions) and Brendan O’Carroll (BOC-­ PIX; BOC Productions), as well as MMA fighter Conor McGregor (McGregor Sports and Entertainment)—considered in Chaps. 2, 5, 6 and 4 respectively—having a production company that operates internationally is an essential and somewhat unremarkable component of a professional identity within the cultural industries. As success stories with a

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heightened level of recognition through their high-profile stature, these performers model the entrepreneurialism that has become a common-­ sense aspect of neoliberal culture (Szeman 2015) while the heightened risk that attends such modes of labour usually goes unacknowledged. In Northern Ireland, the advent of neoliberalism took a different route, tied as it was to the peace process in the 1990s that eventually resulted in the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement that came into effect in 1999 and marked a symbolic end to The Troubles, the years of sectarian violence that constituted an open sore within the UK and Ireland from the late 1960s. For media scholars Stephen Baker and Greg McLaughlin (2015), two frameworks underscored the peace process: “an explicit narrative of peace and reconciliation and an implicit narrative that set about imagining Northern Ireland in terms conducive to its entry into the global free market” (108). Baker and McLaughlin posit two images as encapsulating these narratives. In one, Irish rock star and frontman of U2 Bono stands between John Hume of the Social and Democratic Labour Party and David Trimble of the Ulster Unionist Party holding their hands aloft in a picture taken just days before the referendum in 1998 to ratify the Belfast (Good Friday) agreement. The picture was seen by many as pivotal in ensuring a “yes” vote for peace. The two politicians who supplanted the moderates Hume and Trimble post-agreement are the subjects of the second picture. Taken after the installation of the new power-sharing devolved government in Northern Ireland, the picture shows two formerly hard-­ line figures Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness and the Democratic Unionist Party’s Rev. Ian Paisley seated together in multinational furniture company Ikea’s first store in the province in December 2007. The image is inadvertently captioned by Ikea’s motto of the time, “Home is the most important place in the world” in a statement that serves as ironic comment on the global and regional processes in play that the image indexes: a picture that was showing Northern Ireland as “open for business” as two erstwhile opponents in a bitter ethno-nationalist conflict smiled together on a Scandinavian sofa. The promised “peace dividend” that politicians had promised would come to Northern Ireland, the most persistently economically deprived part of the UK, as a means of sealing the Good Friday agreement, never materialised. As Colin Coulter (2019) details, while successive Conservative governments in the UK had considered Northern Ireland “a place apart,” and withheld enforcing some of the austerity measured imposed on the rest of the UK, it took a party ostensibly of the Left, Tony Blair’s Labour,

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to bring neoliberalism to Northern Ireland in earnest (127–128). The promised multinational investment in Northern Ireland though starting strong, quickly stalled and Northern Ireland maintained its position as one of the most deprived regions of the UK. The jobs that did come tended to be low-paid non-skilled positions, with a marked predominance of call centre work. Lyra McKee, the journalist whose murder at the age of 29 at the hands of Republican dissidents during a riot in Derry served as a reminder of the persistence of violence in the region, even during a time of supposed peace, wrote poignantly of being part of the “Good Friday generation, destined to never witness the horrors of war but to reap the spoils of peace.” To which she adds, “The spoils just never seemed to reach us” (McKee 2017). In Chap. 3, I place the death of McKee alongside the contemporaneous success of Derry Girls, finding in the sitcom (set at the end of the 1990s as Northern Ireland was transitioning to peace) a nostalgia for earlier promises, which, for many in McKee’s generation, failed to be fulfilled.

Conjunctural Flash Points The texts considered in this book emerge at a conjuncture marked by geopolitical turbulence and a rise in populist nationalism that is commonly seen as a by-product of decades of neoliberal policy. Media scholars Zala Volcic and Mark Andrejevic (2016) helpfully underline the role of the global in populist currents, stressing that “developments typically associated with the term ‘globalization’ go hand in hand with assertive and resurgent nationalisms—both enhancing and reconfiguring national identities” (1). These elements constitute the conjunctures considered in this book. A term often utilised in cultural studies scholarship, a conjunctural approach, such as the one taken herein, constitutes “the analysis of convergent and divergent tendencies shaping the totality of power relations within a given social field during a particular period of time” (Gilbert 2019, 6). Culture, in such an approach is only ever one field of contention, situated among and continually intersecting and interacting with “local, municipal, regional, national and international struggles (both institutional and extra-institutional), with economic processes and histories of technological change.” (Gilbert 2019, 16). Utilizing knowledge from a variety of disciplines is essential in carrying out such an analysis, and within this book I draw from scholarship in the critical humanities and social sciences, though the book itself is a work with a disciplinary home

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in cultural studies, media studies and Irish studies. The conjunctures that this book intersects with, and which are associated in some ways with the populist currents that Volcic and Andrejevic (2016) contend are precipitated by globalist and neoliberal tendencies are Trumpism in the US, Brexit in the UK, (both of which I consider in the remainder of this section) and a post-Celtic Tiger Ireland characterised for many years by austerity and economic migration. The global COVID-19 pandemic that swept the world in 2020 is dwelt upon in the coda of this book. The Brexit referendum of 2016 and Britain’s subsequent departure from the European Union demonstrates the complex interplay between nation states. The sundering of the UK from the EU has reignited tensions in Northern Ireland given the Irish border’s sudden reconfiguration as a boundary not only between Britain and Ireland, but between Britain and the EU. This momentous political recalibration has undermined the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that marked the putative end of The Troubles in Northern Ireland and the beginning of a power-sharing system underwritten by British and Irish state support. The fact that the UK has historically been the destination to which a majority of Irish emigrants depart contributes also to the fraught relations between the two nations. Certain figures and texts analysed herein (footballer McClean, Derry Girls [2018–]; Mrs Brown’s Boys [2011–] in Chap. 6; sitcoms focusing on the Irish in Britain such as Catastrophe [2015–2019] and This Way Up [2019] in Chap. 5) all register in complex ways the seismic shifts under way in the second decade of the 2000s. In particular, my examination of McClean’s refusal to wear the Earl Haig poppy year on year, while playing in the English football leagues demonstrates how a personal protest informed by the player’s experience of British militarism on the streets of Derry became a cultural lightning rod. In many ways McClean’s protest (begun in 2012) prefigured the rise of a virulent nationalism in the UK that was tied in complex ways to notions of remembrance and the valorisation of sacrifices made in conflict, in particular the First World War, and which manifested in its most potent expression in the Brexit vote to take the UK out of the European Union. The vote has compounded uncertainties in terms of national belonging that have emerged for Irish and other national subjects in these years, uncertainties often rooted in shared and troubled histories of colonialism and migration. It is important to clarify at this point that the transnational shifts I track in this book are for the most part related to anglophone countries, and

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primarily the interplay between Ireland, the US and the UK. In many ways this is due to the triangulation of diasporic movement between these nations, as well as the dominance of both the UK and the US in terms of cultural production pertaining to Ireland. Sociologist Mary J.  Hickman (2002) emphasizes this connection in her consideration of the definition and impact of the Irish diaspora, characterising it as: sizeable, of extended reach, of long duration, [providing] much of the unskilled manual labour power for the world’s two dominant economies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Britain and the USA respectively. (23)

While, of course, there have been significant migratory paths to countries such as Australia and Canada, and increasingly the Middle East both historically and in the aftermath of the post-2008 recession, migration to the US from Ireland registers highly in the national psyche, due in no small part to iconic screen representations such as The Quiet Man (1952)— which, as Sinead Moynihan (2019) argues, had an immediate and abiding impact on visual and touristic mythologies of Ireland (37)—as well as the prominence of Irish-American public figures in the high-profile realms of entertainment and politics. The most significant shift in US culture during the years covered in this book finds its symbolic focus in the emergence of Donald Trump as president and the fractious public discourse that characterised the years of his presidency (as well as the pandemic era with which it overlapped). While in Ireland Trumpism was mainly held in disdain, the most high-profile Irish sporting figure of this era, MMA fighter McGregor (considered in Chap. 4) developed a public persona that fed off the racial and gendered antagonisms that the former president stoked in public discourse in the US. The pinnacle of McGregor’s career—in terms of financial gain, if not professional comportment and success—was the 2017 “money fight,” his boxing debut against former champion Floyd Mayweather Jnr. The racial friction that characterised the promotional tour undertaken by both fighters in anticipation of the bout indexed a restive public sphere that would ultimately erupt into the Black Lives Matter protests precipitated by the murder of George Floyd at the hands of police in May 2020 in Minneapolis. Providing a marked contrast to McGregor’s race-baiting, Irish comedian, podcaster and writer Maeve Higgins’ response to Trumpism (examined in Chap. 5) was a sustained consideration of the role of immigrants (Irish and

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non-Irish) both past and present in the construction of US society in her podcast Maeve in America: Immigration IRL (2016–2017) and book Maeve in America: Essays by a Girl from Somewhere Else (2018). Higgins, along with other Irish figures examined in this book such as comedian and actress Aisling Bea (also Chap. 5) in her sitcom This Way Up (2019–), proffers a more reflective consideration of Irish identity that juxtaposes Irish whiteness and troubled pasts with those of non-white peoples who co-exist in the “diaspora spaces” (Brah 1996) in which many Irish have made their homes.

Transnationalism, Regionality and Diaspora: Utilizing Key Terms Guiding my analysis of contemporary Irish content is a focus on the interconnected concepts of transnationalism, regionality and diaspora. Singling out the first of these terms, transnationalism is often used to differentiate from the more general concept of globalization. As geographer Michael Kearney (1995) clarifies, “Whereas global processes are largely decentred from specific national territories and take place in a global space, transnational processes are anchored in and transcend one or more nation states” (548). In many of the chapters considered in this book, this anchoring occurs not only at a national, but often at a regional level. Thus, when depicted in individualised terms, say through actor O’Dowd’s connection to his hometown of Boyle in County Roscommon, the complexities of movement at different scalar levels in economic and labour spheres is rendered more legible and a demonstrable and abiding connection to the point of one’s origins emerges as a consoling narrative to make sense of a world characterised by at times unpredictable flux and movement across a variety of economic and social spheres. Anthropologist Aihwa Ong (1999) locates her preference for the term transnationalism, which for her denotes “the condition of cultural interconnectedness and mobility across space” (4), over globalization in the capaciousness of the prefix “trans.” For Ong: trans denotes both moving across space or across lines, as well as changing the nature of something. Besides suggesting new relations between nation states and capital, transnationality also alludes to the transversal, the transactional, the translational, and the transgressive aspects of contemporary behaviour and imagination that are incited, enabled, and regulated by the changing logics of states and capitalism. (4)

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A consideration of the multiple changes which contemporary Ireland North and South has undergone since it was increasingly opened to global flows of people, capital and information as the Catholic church’s hegemony waned and pre-existing political structures were reconfigured aligns with the multiple valences to which Ong ascribes this prefix, and the more specific concept of transnationalism. Writing about cinema, but in terms that are applicable to the wider terrain of Irish screen culture that I assay in this book, Rosalind Galt (2016) similarly draws attention to the prefix. For Galt, the “trans” in transnational, “is not merely a bridge between more traditional national approaches, but rather it finds something quite different in that transition. The trans-national promises to transform the object of cinema. By shifting our attention to the mode of movement between things, the transnational asks us to look at cinema in terms of processes and transits rather than objects and states.” Indeed, the “processes and transits” Galt writes of are an essential consideration in the chapters to follow, dealing as they do with the movement of specific people (as I track for instance the movement of public figures who perhaps would not have flourished as they did had they stayed within Ireland) or cultural flows (exemplified in the international success of highly regionalized texts such as Derry Girls and The Young Offenders). Further, the role of technological advances and increasingly globalized financial pathways in facilitating such variegated mobility in turn impact in crucial ways such forms of representation and the emergent modes of belonging they index. A salient example of the interconnectedness and tensions that manifest when the transnational and the regional collide in contemporary Irish screen culture can be discerned in UK police series Line of Duty (2012–2021). While set in an unnamed city in the north of England, the series is filmed in Belfast. To contrast, the opposite production pattern is in evidence in the film ‘71 (2014) which, though set in Belfast was filmed in Sheffield. These location misalignments are often related to funding structures. Media scholars Ruth McElroy and Caitriona Noonan (2019) note how policies implemented by the BBC and Channel 4 in the UK centred on regional development and decentralisation of production result in such spatial disjunctures (75–76), processes which have corollaries in film stemming from inter-regional as well as international competition to attract lucrative productions. These practices result in what film scholar Ruth Barton (2019) has termed an “uncanny recognition effect”, in which what is familiar doubles for “a partially recognisable Other” (15). Large

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drama productions such as Game of Thrones (2011–2019) and Vikings (2013–2020) filmed partially in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland respectively also align with this characterisation. Such uncanny experiences are in part an aesthetic by-product of complex funding and production infrastructures that are increasingly operating at a transnational scale. These processes, at different moments homogenising and disorienting, one may conjecture, might account for an appetite for regional authenticity in an increasingly globalised mediascape. Returning to Line of Duty, we see the possibility of viewers experiencing both spatial disorientation and an appealing regional authenticity simultaneously. Watching the series viewers even passingly familiar with Belfast can recognise various local landmarks and the primarily mainland British accents of most of the main characters can be jarring in this context. One of the lead actors, Adrian Dunbar who plays Supt. Ted Hastings, however, is from Northern Ireland, born and raised in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh. The latitude given to Dunbar by series creator and writer Jed Mercurio has led to idiomatic expressions that the actor had heard spoken by his father in Fermanagh being regularly included in the series’ scripts. Popular among these are: “Jesus, Mary and Joseph and the wee donkey,” to express surprise, and “you must think I came down the Lagan in a bubble,” as an indication that you are not as naïve as your interlocuter presumably believes. These regional expressions have generated a remarkable amount of good will (often expressed through memes of the more distinctive sayings) from fans of the show, who often refer to them as “Ted-isms.” In an unanticipated display of homage, Horror writer and pop cultural icon Stephen King acknowledged the distinctive phrasing by tweeting “NOW WE’RE SUCKING DIESEL! If you don’t get it, you missed a great series” (Toner 2021) in July 2021. The tweet was liked and shared widely among the series’ cast and its enthusiastic audience, generating several press stories on Line of Duty and its famous fan. King’s intervention highlights both the expanded reach of national television drama through emerging distribution technologies and providers and the transnational media ecology facilitated by social media platforms, as well as the capacity of regionality to pierce through an overcrowded media landscape and connect with viewers at a cultural and spatial remove. While topography and landscape are usually the primary signifiers of region in screen texts, the popularity of Hastings’ phrasing and accent might be usefully considered through the scholarly framework of critical regionality. Drawing on the work of philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix

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Guattari, who themselves were considering the writings of Franz Kafka, Neil Campbell (2016) summarizing this approach suggests that regionalism is an expression of “the minor,” something that can destabilize the smooth-running operations of dominant “major” forms. For Campbell, “to rethink region and regionalism with this in mind understands the local and specific to be interventionalist in wider, more distanced or global projects and ‘languages’ and yet, at the same time, refuses to allow the local to become static, nostalgic, or reductive” (3). In the case of Hastings’ idiomatic phrasings, we see the regional manifest as a distinctive element that became a breakout feature in an exciting though otherwise somewhat routine police procedural. My consideration of comedies Derry Girls and The Young Offenders (initially a film before its further development into a sitcom) in Chap. 3 is informed by a critical regionality approach and seeks to assay the impact of these comedies and the disruptive potential of such expressions of regionality (through accent, language, topography and landscape) to a mediascape that tends to, unchecked, generate representational norms that align with hegemonic social and spatial formations, that is, privileging metropolitan subjects residing in higher socio-economic classes. The role of diasporic populations amid the transnational and the regional is a central concern of this book. Much Irish studies scholarship has been devoted to considerations of the Irish diaspora (see, for instance, Bielenberg 2000; Hickman 2002; Moynihan 2013). As Sinéad Moynihan (2013, 12–13) notes, many scholars have raised questions about the usage of the word “diaspora,” not least for its somewhat opportunistic deployment by an Irish state seeking to exploit for economic reasons the huge number of people who feel connected to Ireland through their family heritage. This was most evident perhaps in “The Gathering,” a 2013 government-­backed project aimed at promoting Ireland to its diaspora as a tourist destination. The project attracted 440,000 tourists to Ireland adding €200 million to the Irish economy, for an advertising outlay of only €3 million (Cronin 2021, 131). As Mike Cronin details, “‘The Gathering’ relied intensively on close community engagement and on narratives that connected the diaspora back to their deeply local roots … channeling the message extensively through social media” (131). The centrality of emergent communications technologies to this project is thus also part of the narrative, comprising an increasingly pervasive infrastructural connection between the regional and the transnational.

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A less nakedly mercenary example of diaspora engagement can be found in the “#hometovote” campaigns that emerged in tandem with the progressive referenda to legalise gay marriage in 2015 and repeal the ninth amendment, allowing for abortion within Ireland in 2018 (which I consider in more detail in Chap. 5 through an analysis of a “Together for Yes” campaign video for the 2018 referendum fronted by Horgan and Bea). Again, largely facilitated through social media postings, the Irish diasporic populations mobilised at these times were for the most part young economic migrants who had left Ireland after the crash of 2008. As Hegde (2016, 105) suggests, “While the contemporary diasporic experience still has the elements of longing, memory, and entanglements, technology and the force of global economy radically rework the transnational experience in terms of a sustained connectivity and synchronicity.” Such connectivity and synchronicity were highly in evidence during both referenda. Though, as Eleanor O’Leary and Diane Negra (2016) suggest of the 2015 campaign, while it “provided a sense of unity which was dependent on the idea of a modern, inclusive Irish identity,” the cathartic images of the returning migrants served to eclipse contemporaneous statistics showing that Irish young people were leaving rather than returning in their droves, and therefore were ideologically entangled in “a fantasy that the fabric of Irish society had not been torn apart in the intervening years of austerity” (138). Nevertheless, the “longing, memory, and entanglements” to which Hegde alludes still persist across diasporic populations, and across generations. This is examined in Chap. 6 in my consideration of Philomena (2013), a comedic dramatization of the real-life experiences of Philomena Lee roughly based on journalist Martin Sixsmith’s account of the search for Lee’s child, who was taken from her when she resided in one of the state’s notorious mother and baby homes. Adding a layer of complexity to the film are the diasporic backgrounds of key creative personnel, including Steve Coogan (whose parents are Irish and who co-wrote the screenplay and starred in the film) and Dame Judi Dench, who played Lee and whose mother was Irish. The notion of diaspora, of course, is a term that applies to different national and ethnic groupings. As Liam Kennedy cautions, “We need our diaspora (and other diasporas within our shores) not only as an economic ally, but as a mirror to our national conceptions and deceptions, and as a measure of what we mean by citizenship” (Kennedy 2015). The Celtic Tiger years saw the demographic constitution of Ireland change considerably, when for the first time in Irish history immigration outpaced emigration and a corresponding increase in racial/ethnic diversity. Sociologist

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Rebecca Chiyoko King-O’Riain (2021) has skilfully traced the complex entanglement of anti-Irish racism and Irish racism that was generated through the migration of people into and out of Ireland since the 1800s. As she summarizes: “As a post-colonial nation within Europe with a strongly racialised past (non-white to white) and a history of emigration across the globe, it is now actively working to cope with rapid migration and growing racial/ethnic diversity at home and abroad” (834). O’Riain highlights the ambivalent positioning of modern-day Ireland, in which non-white and mixed-race subjects are increasingly afforded a more prominent position in the media and public office, yet reports of racist attacks remain persistently high. This changing constitution of Irish demographics is something I consider in Chap. 6 in my analysis of Baz Ashmawy and his mother Nancy, the duo who starred in reality tv hit 50 Ways to Kill Your Mammy (2014–2016). As a mixed-race public figure, Ashmawy’s professional association with his white, Catholic mother (an abiding element of his celebrity profile which persists in an extensive 2021 advertising campaign for Bank of Ireland) served—in tandem with multiple other instances of non-white celebrity Irishness including the premiership of Leo Varadkar and Phil Lynott’s rock stardom, which has been notably resuscitated in the 2021 documentary Songs for While I’m Away—to symbolically broker a transition away from the dominant racial and religious conceptions of Irishness to a more inclusive understanding.

Methodology, Choice of Texts and Chapter Overview A guiding principle in assembling the archive of texts under analysis in this book was a refusal to be hidebound by overly rigid parameters of genre or medium. Although for the most part I examine texts that fall under the capacious category of screen culture (cinema, screen-based advertising, social media, television genres; broadcast sporting events and their associated promotional materials) I do incorporate some other non-screen forms where appropriate (comedian Higgins’ memoirs and podcasts, for instance, in Chap. 5, newspaper and other print media accounts of sportsmen McGregor and McClean in Chap. 4). While in some ways this can lead to a selection of texts which don’t fit within tidy categorisations of genre or medium, I felt this expansive approach can capture the reconfiguration of national and transnational identities I track across the book more fluently than through the utilization of a more rigid schematic. The term “popular

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culture” that I deploy in the title to this book is also not without its difficulties, as Stuart Hall (1981) cautions. For my purposes, I take the term to designate the realm of cultural activity that while reaching a broad audience, still tends to be conceptualised as “low culture,” far from the rarefied realm of Art, Literature or even cinematic auteurism. While the discipline of Irish studies has begun, in fits and starts, to see such texts as advertising, sitcoms, non-traditional sports broadcasts, reality television, celebrity culture and memes as within its purview, the present study contends such an approach is essential to any account of contemporary Irishness and the shifts it has undergone in the twenty-first century. While the archive I assemble is somewhat variegated, certain genres or modes find greater representation. Comedy, whether in television sitcom form or associated hybrid genres of comedy-drama or dramedy, is a key feature of this book. This, in part, is related to comedy’s capacity, similar indeed to that of sports, to generate feelings of togetherness. As Alenka Zupančič (2020) has suggested, “Laughter is not only or simply an expression of individual relief and pleasure, it is decidedly a collective-forming affect, more so perhaps than any other” (2020, 281). Similarly, for Andy Medhurst (2007), “Above all else, comedy is an invitation to belong” (2007, 19). That comedy can foster a sense of collectivity and belonging, also registers in an opposing formation. As some feel included or part of a collective, others will also feel excluded. Mrs Brown’s Boys, a sitcom examined in Chap. 6, is perhaps particularly exemplary of this facet of comedy, given the strong polarisation the sitcom provokes, which skews along generational and regional lines. My focus on the popular aligns with the multiple scalar levels with which this study is concerned. As geographer Jason Dittmer (2005) argues “Popular culture is one of the ways in which people come to understand their position both within a larger collective identity, and within an even larger geopolitical narrative, or script” (626). This aspect of popular culture is essential for this book’s purposes, given its concern with Irishness on a regional, national, and transnational level. Part of my argument in this book centres on the expanded reach of contemporary communications channels. So, for instance, the sitcom Derry Girls, originally broadcast on Channel 4 in the UK, which I examine in Chap. 3 has an expanded reach since it has been made available internationally on streaming video on demand (SVOD) provider Netflix. This implications of this are that the vernacular language and specific accents that index the sitcom’s regionality are foregrounded, a feature of the sitcom that can both elicit positive and

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negative responses, with some finding the idiomatic phrasing refreshingly unfamiliar, while some members of the extended Irish diaspora find their inability to understand the show without subtitles an unsettling reminder of the distance between them and the site of their diasporic affiliation. The chapters that follow engage with Irish popular culture as a site wherein transnationalism, regionality and diaspora are points of deliberation and contention. As indicated above, and acknowledging the convergent qualities of contemporary media (Jenkins 2006), the media texts analysed are heterogenous, spanning cinema, television, social media, as well as the public discourses of several celebrity figures. Using these celebrities, in Chap. 2 (actor O’Dowd), Chap. 4 (sportsmen McClean and McGregor) and Chap. 5 (comedians and actresses Horgan, Bea and Higgins) as points of focalisation allows consideration of several texts that might be loosely related, but which nevertheless animate crucial dimensions of the topic at hand. The other two chapters follow a different structuring rationale. Chapter 3 takes as its focalization not a celebrity, be that a sportsman or a screen artist, but the two “second cities” on the island of Ireland—Cork and Derry—drawing upon the histories of those two cities in my reading of The Young Offenders and Derry Girls, as well as associated texts enmeshed in the discursive construction of these places. For Chap. 6, I utilize the figure of the “Irish mammy,” examining several texts that highlight a filial bond, including Mrs Brown’s Boys, O’Carroll’s spectacularly popular and polarising sitcom, comedy-drama feature Philomena and reality adventure series 50 Ways to Kill Your Mammy. These combined approaches facilitate the present book’s analysis of Irish popular culture, which, though not exhaustive, nevertheless allows consideration across a variety of critical axes, including geographical location; diasporic generational remove; representations of age, race, class, and gender; as well as different modes of “old” and “new” media, spanning a wide range of genres.

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Peck, Jamie, and Nik Theodore. 2019. “Still Neoliberalism?” South Atlantic Quarterly 118(2): 245–65. Russell, Helen, Bertrand Maître, Dorothy Watson, and Éamonn Fahey. 2018. Job Stress and Working Conditions: Ireland in Comparative Perspective  — an Analysis of the European Working Conditions Survey. Dublin: The Economic and Social Research Institute. Szeman, Imre. 2015. “Entrepreneurship as the New Common Sense.” South Atlantic Quarterly 114(3): 471–490. Toner, John. 2021. “Now We’re Sucking Diesel: Horror Legend Stephen King Loves Line of Duty.” Independent.ie. 10 July, https://www.independent.ie/ entertainment/television/tv-­news/now-­were-­sucking-­diesel-­horror-­legend-­ stephen-­king-­loves-­line-­of-­duty-­40637405.html (accessed 29 Sept. 2021) Volcic, Zala, and Mark Andrejevic. 2016. “Introduction.” In Commercial Nationalism: Selling the Nation and Nationalizing the Sell, eds., Zala Volcic and Mark Andrejevic, 1–13. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Wilson, Julie A. 2018. Neoliberalism. New York: Routledge. Zupančič, Alenka. 2020. “Preston Sturges and The End of Laughter.” Crisis and Critique 7(2): 273–289.

CHAPTER 2

Star Leverage, Local Matters, and Transnational Media: Chris O’Dowd, Moone Boy and Puffin Rock This chapter, and several of the others to follow, suggests that an analysis of contemporary iterations of stardom and celebrity provides a useful prism through which to view shifts in wider Irish society in the post-Celtic Tiger era. The heightened individualism of stardom/celebrity allows for an analysis that can span multiple textual formations, from journalistic portrayals of the individual in question and social media postings on the part of the celebrity, to media content (films and television programmes, for instance) featuring the figure, and the critical and popular reception of these. This form of cultural studies approach, when used in tandem with interdisciplinary scholarship drawn from academic fields including Sociology, History and Politics enables the generation of insights derived from multiple axes of analysis. To that end, the present chapter considers the career of Irish actor Chris O’Dowd as a site of embodied social knowledge regarding Ireland and its diasporic populations in the twenty-first century. O’Dowd—born in Sligo, raised in neighbouring Roscommon and now living in Los Angeles, having worked in London for a substantial portion of his professional career—is an example of the diasporic and transnational tendencies that are often central to a successful career in the performing arts. Although Ireland in many ways has an arts scene that belies the country’s comparatively small size, cosmopolitan centres of cultural production such as London and Los Angeles have long exerted a powerful draw upon © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. P. McIntyre, Contemporary Irish Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94255-7_2

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those trying to make their way in the creative industries (Barton and Murphy 2020). The flow of aspirants seeking a place in these industries mirrors a wider transnational movement among the Irish population with well-established roots. It has been argued that a recourse to emigration is almost instinctive in the Irish, especially in times of economic duress, with the exodus of prior generations having established a symbolic and material infrastructure for Irish people to leave their homeland for professional, economic, or other reasons (O’Toole 2016). The present chapter, through an examination of O’Dowd’s professional career limns some of the contours of contemporary Irish diasporic life patterns and the ideological shaping of this constitutive element of Irishness, particularly as they manifest in popular culture. An established body of scholarship contends that the mediated construction of stars and celebrities, figures who hold a prominent position within an ever-expanding mediascape, undergird notions of selfhood and subjectivity. The significant decline in the influence of traditional religion—Catholicism predominantly in the case of the Republic of Ireland— has seen stardom and celebrity partially fill the void left through the provision of models of behaviour, however problematic in their own ways these new social configurations may be. For sociologist Chris Rojek (2001), in this context, celebrity functions as one of several “replacement strategies that produce new orders of meaning and solidarity,” with celebrity culture, in the main, constituting “a significant institution in the normative achievement of social integration” (99). In a similar vein, P. David Marshall (1997) claims that “celebrities represent subject positions that audiences can adopt or adapt in their formation of social identities” (65), a process he sees as providing “an embodiment of collective configurations within individual representations” (51). Taking the nation as such a collective configuration, we can conceive that in a country such as Ireland, with its long histories of migration and substantial diasporic communities, the embodiment of a transnational identity that unites a sense of belonging within the home nation with the possibilities afforded by relocation is one of the key functions of contemporary Irish celebrity.1 As outlined in the introductory chapter, Ireland has for some time pursued economic policies predicated on securing outside investment and developing an open economy that positions the nation as the gateway to Europe for US corporations. This, and the dispersal of a populace that is also shaped by such economic strategies—predicated as they are on the transnational flow of people, material goods and capital—is reflected in

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complex ways through popular culture texts as well as a number of prominent multi-mediated stars and celebrities. In effect, such texts and the people involved in their production, not least celebrity figures such as O’Dowd, constitute a vital component of Ireland’s “soft power,” portraying an appealing side of the nation that countervails some of the less appealing aspects of modern Ireland on the international stage, such as its obstinate commitment to low corporate tax rates (O’Toole 2021). In part, this chapter asks how the qualities of the local and the regional reconcile with the pull of the international in contemporary Irish identity. The chapter traces O’Dowd’s career as he initially gains success in the UK and later in the US, all the while maintaining some connections with Ireland through work on films such as Calvary (2014) and the sitcom he co-wrote and acted in, Moone Boy (2012–2015), as well as social media postings and charitable endeavours. Later sections detail the key features of a performative Irishness in evidence across several the actor’s projects, including his breakout role in Bridesmaids (2011), and the combination of regionalism and global reach evident in Moone Boy as well as the long-form gangster comedy-drama Get Shorty (2017–). Consideration is given both to the actor’s corporeality, as well as the role of accent in O’Dowd’s screen roles, an aural indicator key to the actor’s diasporic identity. A later section of the chapter examines an animated cartoon for young children, Puffin Rock (2015–) to gauge how the production strategies of contemporary animation within Ireland straddle both local distinctiveness and international legibility. Securing the services of O’Dowd as narrator for Puffin Rock was an early coup for the animation house, Dog Ears, enabling the emergent production to leverage the cultural capital of the Irish actor in gaining access to overseas English-speaking markets. The cartoon has since had enormous success in non-Anglophone markets, particularly in China, and an upcoming movie feature (co-produced in China, alongside initial production partners Cartoon Saloon from Kilkenny) due for release in 2022 will see the franchise enlargement seek to capitalize on this early success. With its current transcontinental production status, the animation constitutes a notable example of the interplay between local, national and international cultural and market forces. A focus on Puffin Rock allows a consideration of both the funding infrastructures available to an all-island Irish production company (Dog Ears is situated in Derry in Northern Ireland) as well as the salience of an Irish identity when marketing audio-­ visual material across the globe, an ancillary case study that deepens this

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chapter’s consideration of local and global Irishness. Overall, the chapter argues that O’Dowd (in a manner similar to Sharon Horgan, Aisling Bea and Maeve Higgins, the female artists examined in Chap. 5)—and associated projects such as Puffin Rock—crystalize key features of an idealised Irish subject in the twenty-first century, his international success and global mobility predicated on the modification and redeployment of longstanding tropes of Irishness and leavened with a demonstrable connection to home and hearth.

Shifting Masculinities in Twenty-First Century Stardom: O’Dowd’s Emergence and the Decline of Celtic Tiger Masculinities Film scholar Ruth Barton (2006) has noted the centrality of male star discourse to contemporary notions of Irishness. While one might assume the emergence of Oscar-nominated stars such as Saoirse Ronan and Ruth Negga suggests a redress of the gender balance in terms of international stardom is currently under way (see Barrett 2015), male stars still outnumber their female compatriots by a considerable measure. O’Dowd is, along with Domhnall Gleeson, Andrew Scott, and Jamie Dornan, part of a generational cohort of prominent male Irish stars born in the late seventies and early eighties who move fluidly between television and cinema in the twenty-first century. O’Dowd has not achieved the consistent headline billing attained by more high-profile stars like Michael Fassbender and Colin Farrell, yet arguably this distance from the apex of the star system renders him a more approachable and demotic form of star, in sync with an era in which the longstanding hierarchies that obtain within the film industry are under increasing duress. After working as a jobbing actor in the UK for several years, O’Dowd first came to prominence, in the UK and Ireland, playing the hapless software support worker Roy in fellow Irishman Graham Linehan’s sitcom The IT Crowd (2006–2013). The role would prove pivotal in the actor’s career not only for giving him his first critical success, but also for facilitating his big break in the US. Bridesmaids’ director Paul Feig was an IT Crowd fan and asked O’Dowd to try the audition for the film in his own accent after an initial try in an American one failed to impress (Solomons 2011). The incident demonstrates the growing importance of transnational creative networks predicated on specific genre knowledge and appreciation—a phenomenon I deal with in more detail in considering the

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transatlantic comedy connections evident in the career of writer and performer Sharon Horgan—as well as the importance of accent to the inflection and production of texts, a point I also examine in detail in a later section of this chapter. The success of Bridesmaids—it was the highest grossing comedy of that year in the US—and the popularity of O’Dowd’s performance in the film as police officer Rhodes acted as a springboard for projects to follow, notably Sky TV’s offer for the actor to develop Moone Boy, as well as several other roles associated with Bridesmaids’ producer Judd Apatow (Girls [2012–2017]; This is 40 [2012]; Juliet, Naked [2018]). It is hard to underestimate the impact this one feature had on the development of the actor’s career. Since Bridesmaids, O’Dowd has proven himself a prolific actor taking on leading roles in a several independent films (St Vincent [2014]; Icon [2015]; Love after Love [2017]; Juliet Naked), fronting television series (Family Tree [2013]; State of the Union [2019–]; Get Shorty) and generally extending his range with a series of nuanced dramatic performances that increasingly attenuate the overt comedic tendencies evident in his earlier sitcom role in The IT Crowd and work in other British comedy films such as Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel (2009). Indeed, a common thread of many of O’Dowd’s dramatic roles— key to his performances in Bridesmaids; Juliet, Naked; and State of the Union, for instance—has been his positioning as the male participant in narratives centred on resolving contemporary intimacy dilemmas and duress. O’Dowd’s successful 2014 run on Broadway playing Lennie in a staging of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men alongside James Franco gained the Roscommon native a Tony nomination, further reinforcing his growing cachet as a dramatic actor. While O’Dowd has been growing in renown as an actor straddling comedic and dramatic modes, he hasn’t transitioned significantly beyond indie-dramas to the big box office roles claimed by some of his peers. His presence in the Marvel Cinematic Universe was a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it role in Thor: The Dark World (2013) that the actor has characteristically referenced in comedically self-deprecating terms (Singer 2019). That said, longstanding configurations of stardom have seen significant (and ongoing) recalibrations alongside the rise of cable-driven long form quality television category (Jermyn 2006). Whereas once a move to television was seen as a step down for high profile cinematic actors, increasingly many are now making the shift, drawn in part by the large canvas provided and the opportunity for complex character development (Mittell 2015). O’Dowd’s

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role as co-lead alongside Ray Romano—another actor successfully transitioning from comedic to more dramatic roles—in a celebrated drama in this mode, Get Shorty, attests to a not inconsiderable level of professional success in his field. Indeed, an analysis of twenty-first century recalibrations of stardom seem to suggest that such long form dramas sit not too far below the ubiquitous superhero franchises in terms of critical acclaim and popular appeal.

Everyman Appeal, Demotic Corporeality, and Irish Performativity Part of O’Dowd’s attraction is the contrast his everyman charm foregrounds against earlier iterations of Irish stardom in the 1990s and early 2000s, a juxtaposition evident in the actor’s delf-deprecating humour, but one that also manifests corporeally. Physically far from the matinee idol looks that are often a pre-requisite for cinematic fame, O’Dowd is on record as being grateful for the 2000s/2010s fashion for less classically handsome male leads that has, in part, been forged by comedy auteur and producer Judd Apatow and associates. O’Dowd’s physique—he is 6′3 inches tall and often strikingly larger than his co-stars—is a key feature of his screen presence. In Moone Boy, for instance, O’Dowd plays Sean, the imaginary friend of Martin Moone (David Rawls), with Sean’s hulking figure comically contrasted with the pre-adolescent Martin. His corporeality also signifies in ethnic terms, notably in Get Shorty, where the Irishman’s pale skin and large frame distance him from the predominantly Latino gang members (often shorter, with wiry physiques) of the cartel for which his character, Miles, works. The actor’s body shape aligns with a corporeal colloquialism that came into circulation in the 2010s: the ‘dadbod.’ The term signals a form of symbolically paternal male physicality that “shows signs of health and fitness but also has ‘love handles’ and is a little paunchy” (McIntyre et al. 2021, 1). The actor himself discursively claimed the corporeal type in a 2020 tweet, when he jokingly accused fellow actor Zac Efron of cultural appropriation after a New York Post article, accompanied by pictures of a shirtless and physically fit Efron, claimed fans were “shocked” by his dadbod (4). The dadbod, as I argue, along with Diane Negra and Odin O’Sullivan, presents “a (mild) refutation of the entanglement of physical fitness and moral worth … [and articulates] resistance to the norms of neoliberal embodiment” (7). For O’Dowd, this underlines his distance

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from elitist notions of stardom and Hollywood glamour, which are increasingly associated with punishing regimes of bodily regulation. This aspect of the O’Dowd’s appeal is often foregrounded in media profiles of the actor. An April 2014 issue of GQ magazine, for instance, features O’Dowd on the cover alongside a beautiful glamour model with the tagline “Frankly, we can’t believe Chris O’Dowd’s luck either!” (Fig. 2.1) The cover, and tagline, suggests that part of the star’s appeal is his evocation of an ordinariness that secures empathy with audiences, with the “we” of the headline interpellating an audience who might, by similar quirk of fate, end up in O’Dowd’s “lucky” position. This narrative of an everyman finding himself incongruously situated among the elite of the entertainment industry is further emphasized through the self-­deprecating humour O’Dowd employs in media interviews. Such self-deprecation is evident in a 2012 interview with Conan O’Brien on his TBS talk show Conan (2010–2021), in which the actor is promoting the comedy This is 40. O’Dowd discusses at length his tall physique and how unusual his body looks naked, joking that it has led to various nude scenes being omitted from films he has acted in, and drawing a contrast between his own physique and the petite frame of Megan Fox, the glamorous co-star with whom he shared a poolside scene in the movie. The interview also aligns O’Dowd with the similarly built physique of the host, and O’Brien’s own rhetorical mainstay of an ethnicized bodily self-­ deprecation (usually regarding his red hair or fair skin). A later interview on the same show in May 2020 has O’Brien clearly savouring and imitating O’Dowd’s pronunciation of his dog Potato’s name. Both the ethnically inflected corporeal comparisons and accent appreciation and mimicry on display in these interviews foreground the connections between Irish and Irish-American performative modes and serve as a public attestation of good will between Irish diasporic subjects of different generational removes from the home nation.2 O’Dowd’s demotic positioning undergirds his emergence as a post-­ Celtic Tiger figure, distanced from the perceived hedonistic excesses of Irish actors such as Colin Farrell and Jonathan Rhys Meyers, physically attractive performers who were among the most prominent exemplars of Irish male masculinity on screen at the outset of the twenty-first century. The well-documented issues with alcohol and drug misuse that have tainted the careers of Farrell and Rhys Meyers, leading to public disavowals of past behaviours and habits on the part of both actors, are not a feature of O’Dowd’s star discourse. In part this is due to a multi-mediated

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Fig. 2.1  O’Dowd’s “ordinary guy” persona is commonly foregrounded in media depictions of the comedy actor

and coherent screen presence on the part of O’Dowd. While O’Dowd has had some prominent examples of public drunkenness, particularly on an episode of British chat show The Last Leg (2012–) in October 2018,

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public opinion about the appearance was generally favourable. The actor had been noticeably inebriated, but in a very good-humoured manner, telling a rambling joke to the evident amusement of the hosts and fellow guests on the show. O’Dowd in this role personifies Irish conviviality and humour and the darker associations between alcohol and Irishness are attenuated. The seeming shift in popularity from stars imbued with a hedonistic quality to O’Dowd’s more everyman characteristics suggest the complex ways in which stardom works as a barometer of social processes. It also attests to the labile quality of Irish performativity, a somewhat capacious mode of expression that nevertheless tends to operate within a fixed set of coordinates. The shift from hedonism to the demotic qualities with which O’Dowd is associated roughly aligns with a post-Celtic Tiger national sense conveyed in national discourse, evident across a range of media, that the Irish had “lost the run of ourselves” in the preceding boom period (Free and Scully 2018). The incident on The Last Leg also demonstrates O’Dowd’s facility for correcting public missteps and the latitude afforded the performer on account of his gregarious good humour. The actor is a regular user of social media platform Twitter, and he posted the day after the production expressing both contrition and bemusement at the incident. Responding to a Twitter user who, unlike many of the responders to his tweet, criticised the actor’s performance as “embarrassing” and “distasteful,” O’Dowd posted, “I am a little embarrassed to be honest. But to keep things in perspective, it’s a tipsy comedian on a late-night chat show on Channel 4. I wasn’t doing meth on bbc breakfast. But thanks for your concern, genuinely” (Starkey 2018). Similarly, O’Dowd used humour during a podcast interview with broadcaster Louis Theroux to walk back his role in the recording of John Lennon’s “Imagine” organized by Israeli actress Gal Gadot when many parts of the world went into lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The viral video, featuring a number of celebrities singing along to the classic song, was publicly reviled as “tone deaf” in conception, given its seeming equation between the lives of Hollywood stars holed up in their mansions with the plight of others in more straitened circumstances. After laughing through the host’s straight-faced description of the song as “proving divisive on the internet,” and his subsequent jibes, O’Dowd characterises the video as part of “that first wave of creative diarrhoea that seemed to encase the world [at an early point in the pandemic],” and further concedes that “any backlash was fairly justified” (“Grounded with Louis Theroux 10. Chris O’Dowd” 2020). This mixture

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of humour and humility is in keeping with O’Dowd’s genial public persona, qualities that inform some of his more celebrated roles, such as those in Moone Boy and Bridesmaids, and which can also be brought into service on the part of the actor to stave off potential errors of judgement affecting his public persona. Indeed, the actor is a much sought-after chat show guest, and a gifted raconteur with an easy manner, qualities that harken back to Irish figures of earlier eras such as actor Niall Tóibín and comedian Dave Allen.

Bridesmaids: Breakthrough Performance and the Ambivalence of Irishness As this book suggests, Irish performativity operates within a matrix of national and international trends, inflected across a range of industrial, cultural and social axes. O’Dowd’s breakthrough transnational role occurred in a post-crash moment in which the innocence that Irishness can connote, detailed by Diane Negra in her book The Irish in Us: Irishness, Performativity and Popular Culture (2006), gained significant purchase. Bridesmaids, a breakout romantic comedy co-written by Kristin Wiig and Annie Mumolo, was in some ways remarkably attuned to its recessionary moment, acknowledging the spread of female downward mobility—as well as under- and unemployment in this era—through its portrayal of central character Annie (Wiig), a single woman who loses her bakery business in the downturn (Leonard 2014, 50). This situation is compounded for Annie by the need to deal with her best friend’s impending nuptials and the expensive rites and rituals this event entails. In the film, O’Dowd plays Rhodes, a police officer and ‘nice guy,’ who the film contrasts with Annie’s other suitor, Ted (Jon Hamm), an obnoxious, Porsche-driving city professional. The film’s consciousness of its recessionary context inflects the contrast between the two men, with the blue-collar and sensitive Rhodes juxtaposed with the rich and self-serving Ted. Both the actors and the characters they play are intertextually entwined in the film’s signification here. The presence of television drama Mad Men’s (2007–2015) Don Draper in the intertextual signification of Hamm’s character notably feeds into this contrast, his most famous role connoting corporate duplicity and avarice. While Rhodes is portrayed as gentle, sensitive, and caring, Ted is depicted as essentially self-serving and incapable of seeing Annie as anything other than a compliant and low-maintenance occasional sexual partner.

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Similarly, by playing a police officer with an Irish accent (an aspect of the actor’s performative style that I treat in detail in a later section), O’Dowd activates a further set of cultural assumptions. As Negra has argued, Irishness has been central to “American fantasies of political, familial, financial, and geographic innocence” (2006, 365), a cultural trend that gained prominence in the 1990s that briefly escalated in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in 2001. Bridesmaids, of course, contributes to a longstanding trope in US screen media of the Irish or Irish-American policeman, which, as Barton (2012) notes is well-established in US culture, often laden with negative associations of violence and alcoholism (225). Rhodes clean-living policeman foregrounds the alternative associations of innocence and recuperation Irishness can also signify in US popular culture. The character constitutes a reinvigoration of the figure of the Irish-American policemen, a representational move attenuates some of the negative stereotypes associated with the figure and a shift that harkens back to much earlier US screen representations of the Irish cop as genial paterfamilias, a trend that emerged in silent films circa 1909 (Rhodes 2012, 322–325) and which intermittently appears in the intervening years. Rhodes’ innocent demeanour—communicated in the film through character traits such as an abhorrence of littering and his continued anxiety over Annie not repairing her taillights—signal him as the right partner for Annie, a safe and comforting presence offering respite from the buffeting to which the character is exposed both financially and in her intimate life—the two elements being inextricably linked in the film’s narrative. The economically straitened conditions that the recession presented for so many are not only foregrounded in the contrast between Rhodes and Ted, but also through the excessive extravagance of some of Annie’s friends, at a time when she is struggling financially. The most notable example of this is the trivial and purposeless giving out of puppies at a wedding shower, the movie demonstrating a cynical attitude toward excessive consumerism that is a rare departure for a romantic comedy (Negra and Tasker 2014, 29n47). In the film Rhodes acts as a sounding board during the couple’s scenes together, a common sense interlocuter who calls out the outlandishness of some of her friends’ behaviours. This groundedness is communicated through features such as O’Dowd’s corporeality and, as I detail below, his accent.

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Accented Performance: O’Dowd’s Irishness as Aural Signifier and Diasporic Index As many scholars have noted, accent has historically been central in the performative repertoire of the Irish actor abroad and constitutes a crucial element in both local and international recognition (Barton 2006, 7). Taking a cue from Nicholas O’Riordan’s (2020) injunction that it is important to establish “some of the multitude of ways Irish and international filmmakers are utilising accent as a representative device” (177), this section seeks to use O’Dowd as a means of widening the scope of such a project, drawing a critical frame around television as well as cinema, and also foregrounding the agency of actors in charting some of the ways in which accent functions across contemporary Irish screen culture. Again, by emphasising the role played by diasporic performers, we can gain an insight into how movement outside of the home nation can inflect the signification of Irishness across popular culture. For the Roscommon actor, as mentioned, auditioning in his own accent was key to getting the role in Bridesmaids that brought the actor to a higher level of stardom. It is worth noting the performative context of the film and the relevance of this to the role of accent in the production. Bridesmaids was directed by Paul Feig and produced by Judd Apatow. The pair had previously worked together on several projects, notably the television series Freaks and Geeks (1999–2000), in which many of the performers associated with the producer in later projects, such as Seth Rogen, James Franco and Jason Segel featured. As noted, O’Dowd would go on to feature in further Apatow productions, and indeed alongside many of these actors. Apatow has become synonymous with a highly improvisatory approach to comedy, with performers encouraged to ad lib at length once the scripted version of the scene has been recorded. Further, Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo, Bridesmaids’ writers, had emerged through The Groundlings, an improv and sketch venue in Los Angeles. O’Dowd himself describes the heavily improvised nature of the shoot in one interview: we got the script done, then improvised a bit and then went back to the script and shot that again when we were all kind of loosened up and threw in bits of improvisation with bits of script. […] We did this improvisation when we were actually filming. (Hagerty 2011)

The relevance of such a performative mode to accent is straightforward, as the ability to improvise is dependent on a high level of cognitive agility;

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having to parse this through a “foreign” accent would no doubt impede proficiency in this regard. That said, O′Dowd’s accent in the film does seem slightly modified to aid legibility to an international audience. This is acknowledged at several points in the film such as when Ted comments, “That cop talks funny,” as Rhodes angrily walks away from a brief altercation between the pair. The fact that O’Dowd went on collaborate with Christopher Guest, another notable figure in screen improvisation, in the series Family Tree and movie Mascots (2016), using an Irish accent (of different regional modulation) in both, speaks to the centrality of this skill to the actor’s repertoire, as well as the facility a proximity to one’s own accent affords in such roles. O’Dowd’s facility with spoken language signals his successful navigation of a bi-polarity media scholar Debbie Ging (2013) identified in Celtic Tiger cinema, wherein male crisis, evident in such films as Garage (2007) and Intermission (2008) was signified through an unease with language and communication that tended to manifest in either silence or a tense hyper-verbosity (113). O’Dowd’s easy verbal manner as deployed in his various film and television roles—with some exceptions such as his role in Calvary—tends to avoid such despondent characterisations. Alongside the significant challenges that assuming an accent not one’s own entails, there is also an impact at the level of representation. O’Dowd has spoken in some detail on this topic, drawing links between accent usage on film and his own experience as a member of the Irish diaspora. I have a very simple rule, which is unless there is a very real reason not to be, I want to play Irish characters. Because I’ve travelled around an awful lot and we’re everywhere. And we’re oddly not represented. … we are represented in terms of [the amount of] actors, but they’re all playing, you know, Americans and whatnot. And then from a selfish level it’s just one less thing to worry about. (Bannon 2019)

O’Dowd’s insistence on using an Irish accent in roles unless there is a specific reason that he shouldn’t aligns in some ways with the diasporic non-assimilation that I identify in the footballer James McClean in Chap. 4. In both cases, the figure in question resists assimilative imperatives of a dominant host nation. This can take various forms such as a reluctance to attenuate political leanings, as is the case with McClean, or as with O’Dowd a professional stand that has the aim of effecting a greater level of representation for people of his own nationality.

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One notable series in which O’Dowd retains his own accent is State of the Union. A relationship drama told in short episodes of approximately 10–15  minutes in length, the first season follows Tom (O’Dowd) and Louise (Rosamund Pike) as they meet prior to their weekly couple’s counselling session.3 Written and filmed in the aftermath of Brexit, the series draws overt parallels between the couple’s fractured relationship and the cataclysmic vote. Indeed, the series’ title suggests the complex intertwinement of our intimate lives with the realm of polity, a rich vein of inquiry for twenty-first century critical theory (see, for instance, Berlant 2008; Anker 2014). Tom, a music critic recently made unemployed, has gained British citizenship in order to be eligible to vote in favour of Brexit, further alienating his wife, who works as a doctor for the NHS. As she characterises it, however, this decision was merely the culmination of a series of actions that marked an increased withdrawal from the world: “You were out long before Brexit. Friends – out. Marriage – out. Life – out.” Tom’s opinions on Brexit, contrast strongly with those of O’Dowd, who has gone on the record criticising the British government’s approach, suggesting that as a result, “Irish prosperity and peace are going to be completely usurped by Westminster. Again” (Jeffries 2019). The series is usefully considered in tandem with other recent television works featuring the Irish in Britain, such as Catastrophe (2015–2019) and This Way Up (2019–). Though mainly through suggestion, both those series have voiced the frustration of the Irish characters in relation to the shift in  status that Brexit has effected for them. One further point worth considering on topic of accent performance is the role that gender plays, in particular the latitude afforded male performers in this regard. O’Dowd isn’t alone in the Irish acting fraternity, of course, in holding on to his accent in performance. Even more notable in terms of vocal register is Liam Neeson; particularly in Taken (2008), the actor’s gravelly voice is endowed with such hyperbolic gravitas in the “particular set of skills” speech in that film that it became a much parodied, modified and shared cultural meme. As Barton notes in an interview (Maguire 2020), however, it is much less likely for renowned female Irish performers such as Saoirse Ronan, Ruth Negga or Jessie Buckley to act in their own accent than it is for male Irish actors. Barton rightly suggests this points to Irish masculinity being a more legible construct in contemporary Hollywood (Maguire 2020). We might conjecture that despite these actors in many cases having a greater level of professional acclaim than their male compatriots in the business, their agency in terms of

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shaping roles is subject to more constraint. It is noteworthy in this regard that the female actors considered in Chap. 5—Sharon Horgan and Aisling Bea—although operating at a much lower level of stardom than an actor such as Ronan, tend to maintain their own accents in performance, but often these roles are self-authored, or in a supporting capacity, and are in the lower status genre of comedy, rather than the celebrated dramatic features in which their lauded female compatriots tend to appear. Returning to O’Dowd, the non-assimilation I read in this aspect of the actor’s career can present some narrative challenges for the productions in which he performs. In Family Tree, for instance, the actor plays Tom Chadwick, a thirty-something living in London who, upon losing his job and his girlfriend, starts to trace his familial heritage, embarking on a journey that takes him from London to various parts of the US.  The series explains the different accents of Tom and his sister Bea (Nina Conti) through a backstory that sees Tom brought to Ireland at a young age by his mother after his parents’ divorce, while his sister remained with his father in London. Another example of some cognitive dissonance generated due to accent usage is evident in Get Shorty. Miles (O’Dowd) is a hitman in Nevada drawn to Hollywood to produce a film, based on the script written by one of his “hits.” In the first season finale, Miles’ Irish background is revealed, with a flashback scene showing he grew up in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, where he witnessed horrible violence and had an uncle killed. While there was little press commentary on O’Dowd’s Irish accent in the series, other than a few mentions of him retaining it in the production, a message board dedicated to the series allows for some insight into the reception. One poster on popular message board site Reddit stated “I will applaud them letting Chris O’Dowd cut loose with his accent and slang (gobshite, eejit, wanker), but finding out that he was from Enniskillen? Ah jaysus” (Finnlizzy 2017). The fact the Troubles features as backstory shouldn’t perhaps be so surprising, as traumatic events in Irish recent history are often summoned in television dramas as a convenient narrative shorthand, often in ways that strain the credulity of viewers more familiar with Ireland than most international audiences. Barton (2021) highlights the incongruous way in which season two of Northern Ireland-set crime series The Fall (2013–2016) locates the root cause of serial killer Paul Spector’s (Jamie Dornan) murderous obsession in a childhood scarred by sexual abuse at the hands of a cleric in a Catholic orphanage; this despite season one of the thriller pointedly highlighting Spector’s Jewishness—a detail that

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predicated subsequent narrative contortions. For Barton, the inclusion of such a readily identifiable narrative trope is part of the series’ negotiation between cultivating overseas legibility for multiple territories outside of Northern Ireland, and drawing upon local specificities to give the production an authenticity that helps it stand apart from the growing competition in this international genre. There is a similar element at play in Miles’ convenient backstory in Get Shorty. While much of the series’ audience in the US and other non-Irish territories would be unfamiliar with Miles’ dialect and accent to the degree that the Reddit poster is—given their evident disappointment that the character speaks in a manner more likely 60 miles away in Roscommon—the reference to the Troubles would be for the most part legible, providing a satisfying narrative backstory to justify both the character’s connection to violence and his distinctive brogue. Miles’ accent thus indexes a tension between local specificity and a global legibility and reach on the part of the television drama, as well as the complexities of maintaining a connection to one’s home on the part of the performer, and the negotiation of codes of realism that read differently inside and outside of the actor’s home nation. Such anxieties regarding vocal authenticity would of course not be a problem in the actor’s sitcom set in his home town, as I detail below.

Transnationalism, Channel Identity and the Irish Sitcom O’Dowd initially developed what would become Moone Boy as a ten-­ minute feature made for UK channel Sky One, part of its ongoing “Christmas Cracker” project, where established entertainers develop seasonal, often personal, short films. The series was then commissioned by the channel and produced by Baby Cow productions, the company founded by comedy writer/performers Steve Coogan (whose notable investment in Irishness I detail in Chap. 6) and Henry Normal. In some ways Moone Boy’s development on Sky One speaks to the problematic placement of Irish comedy in contemporary broadcasting as well as the notion of a particular comedic “fit” with a channel. As Brett Mills (2009, 52–53) has argued, different channels within national broadcasting systems have come to be associated with certain forms of comedy. Mills gives the example of UK channel ITV developing a reputation as the “people’s channel” particularly through the ‘70s and ‘80s due to a number of hit comedies set in working class milieux, a reputation strengthened by rival

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broadcaster the BBC’s image as one more reflective of middle- and upper-­ class settings. It was into this context that Channel 4 emerged, with a public service remit to reflect the ethnic diversity of Britain and to champion “alternative voices and fresh perspectives” (52). The channel has had notable successes in these areas with predominantly black cast sitcoms such as Desmonds (1989–1994) and later Chewing Gum (2015–2017) (although admittedly these have been few and far between) and more formally experimental fare such as Peep Show (2003–2015) and Jam (2000). Channel 4’s ostensible commitment to diversity and boundary-pushing content aligns in some ways with the channel being the home of arguably the most critically lauded and influential Irish sitcom: Father Ted (1995–1998). For many years Channel 4 had intermittently taken the Irish in Britain to be one of the underserved ethnic groups to which it granted representation (Pettitt 2015), and in Father Ted, it had a comedy that both served this function and playfully subverted the sitcom form (Hill 2016). In later chapters, I consider other Irish (or Irish in Britain) comedies that emerge on Channel 4 (including Derry Girls [2018–], Catastrophe and This Way Up [2019–]) that continue this association. Given its longstanding ties to Irish content then, it might be assumed that Moone Boy would ostensibly have been a better fit on Channel 4. Yet the comedy can also be legibly placed within a wider programming strategy on the part of Sky that saw it develop a number of regional comedy-dramas in the 2010s, such as Stella (2012–2017), Trollied (2011–2018), and Starlings (2012–2013) set in the Welsh valleys, the Northwest, and East Midlands of England respectively.4 These comedies are all family-centred (or with the workplace functioning as an ersatz family, as with Trollied) and frequently described as “heart-warming,” a designation ubiquitous in marketing materials for Moone Boy. One further point of alignment with Sky One’s comedy strategy is Moone Boy’s autobiographical premise, with O’Dowd commenting in a behind-the-scenes feature that most of the incidents that inspired the first series had either happened directly to him or his co-writer, Nick Vincent Murphy. Such an approach is now common for the channel, which has since developed several productions grounded in star-led autobiographical authorship discourses. These include In the Long Run (2017–2020), a comedy-drama created by British star Idris Elba based on his 1980s’ East London childhood, as well as The Reluctant Landlord (2018–), in which popular UK comedian Romesh Ranganathan fronts a “semi-­ autobiographical” sitcom where he runs a pub, as he did for a time in real

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life. As I note in Chap. 5, there is a corresponding trend in female-centred dramedy programming, though the autobiographical elements tend not to be foregrounded to the same extent in the marketing of these as they are in the examples associated with male stars. The fact that Irish sitcoms such as Father Ted and Moone Boy are being made by UK production companies and commissioned by channels such as Channel 4 and Sky One has repeatedly been portrayed as a missed opportunity on the part of the Irish national broadcaster. Reports that RTÉ passed on Father Ted before it became a hit in the UK underwrite an urban legend that co-creator Graham Linehan has repeatedly debunked. Linehan and co-creator Arthur Mathews reportedly joked at the time that it would have made as much sense offering it to Waterford Crystal, the renowned glassware manufacturer (in the joke’s logic) having as much skill in developing comedy as the Irish national broadcaster (Harrington 2015). O’Dowd raised a similar point regarding Moone Boy, stating that RTÉ didn’t have a dedicated comedy department, so he wouldn’t have known to whom to pitch the idea (Sweeney 2013). The longstanding criticism of RTÉ’s inability to produce good comedy is one that, despite some acclaimed comedies being produced over the years, is remarkably persistent. In a broadside aimed at RTÉ on this issue, journalist Hugh Linehan (2020) writes, “RTÉ’s defenders point to the same old handful of examples – the Scrap Saturdays [Scrap Saturday, RTÉ radio 1989–1991] and Hall’s Pictorial Weeklies [Hall’s Pictorial Weekly 1971–1980] – but it’s the very scarcity of these creative successes over six long decades of television history that proves the point.” The article blames an excessive bureaucracy on the part of the national broadcaster, but, as the case studies in this book and others examining artists such as Father Ted writers Linehan and Mathews (Free 2015) have shown, often it is the increased opportunity offered by relocation overseas that leads Irish talent abroad, a departure that often precipitates a fresh perspective on “home” that is crystallised in such texts. Therefore, there is a tension between the possibilities offered by migration out of Ireland and the limitations of domestic broadcasting pathways to production, tensions that are at the heart of the present book. Increasingly, as I detail in both this chapter and the one to follow, it seems that Irish definitions of success are predicated on recognition that extends beyond the nation itself, a condition that has become readily viable in an era that has seen a rise in international co-production and the emergence and dominance of streaming video on demand [SVOD]

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services with international reach, and the increased acceptance of non-­ domestic content for audiences that has arisen as a result of the preceding trends. Moone Boy gained an international audience through both its original broadcast on Sky One (available to subscribers in the UK and Ireland) and on account of its distribution through Hulu in North America, an SVOD provider, and various other syndication deals globally—it is available on Netflix in regions such as Australia and New Zealand, for instance. Hulu markets Moone Boy as a “Hulu Original,” a designation common among SVODs including Netflix and Amazon Prime, that as media scholars Karen Petruska and Faye Woods (2019) note, “communicates exclusivity and freshness,” but when used falsely, as we might take to be the case with Moone Boy given that it was commissioned by Sky One and produced by Baby Cow, “erases the production and exhibition histories of the shows in their originating countries” (50). Of course, the fact that Moone Boy is made in Ireland (filmed on location in Roscommon, with post-production in Wicklow) further complicates notions of an originating country, particularly given the commissioning broadcaster and production company are based in the UK. Petruska and Woods’ contention that such practices are often “objectionable” obtains when discussing shows made by public service broadcasters such as the BBC, which are being passed off as “original” by SVODs in other regions, for instance. However, for Irish audiences, well used to discerning national content in material originating outside of the state (even to the extent of identifying second generation Irish talent through cultural shibboleths such as names and ethnic features) the rhetorical claiming of a production on the part of an international SVOD doesn’t seem to be regarded as problematic. Indeed, a production’s distribution on an SVOD such as Netflix is often considered a point of pride, as demonstrated in the social media reaction to the Channel 4 sitcom Derry Girls gaining global distribution through Netflix, as I highlight in Chap. 3.

Regionalism and Nostalgia in the Irish Sitcom: Moone Boy One of the principal reasons for choosing O’Dowd as the opening case study for this book is the trendsetting role the actor and, in particular, his comedy Moone Boy constitutes in post-Celtic Tiger Irish popular screen culture. In key ways the comedy sitcoms and features in the chapters to follow, including The Young Offenders, Derry Girls (Chap. 3) and the

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horror comedy feature Extra Ordinary (Chap. 5) all follow a template discernible in the Sky One comedy. Shared features include an emphasis on region or rurality and a tendency towards nostalgia, but also, as suggested above, the international distribution deals that have been brokered on the part of these films and television series. The series also acknowledges, through casting choices, some of the recent shifts in Irish comedy. The parents of central character Martin Moone (David Rawls) are played by Deirdre O’Kane and Peter McDonald, both of whom featured in critically lauded and influential RTÉ comedies Paths to Freedom (2000) and Fergus’s Wedding (2002), sitcoms that signalled a more forward-looking approach to comedy on the part of the national broadcaster. Moone Boy also features Sharon Horgan and Maeve Higgins in guest-starring roles, drawing upon some of the impressive female comedic talent that has mostly found success outside of Ireland (as I detail in Chap. 5). Moone Boy follows teenager Martin, narrating his story (and increasingly that of his family and friends) as they progress from 1989 through to the ‘90s, with cultural milestones both at home (Mary Robinson’s election as president) and abroad (the fall of the Berlin Wall/the Italia ‘90 soccer World Cup) chronologically situating and often impacting on the drama. In this way, the nostalgia is more chronologically precise, matching the regional specificity that I detail below, than that of comedy-drama, Ballykissangel (1996–2001), a significant predecessor of the later comedy, but one whose presentation characters and locale was keyed more straightforwardly to an international idea of Irishness, one that draws heavily from The Quiet Man (1952). In Moone Boy, O’Dowd plays Martin’s imaginary friend Sean Murphy, who Martin shares the screen with at most times and who also narrates. This dramatic conceit is not unlike Brian Friel’s use of “inside” and “outside Gar” in his celebrated 1964 play examining the psychic toll of the compulsion to migrate, Philadelphia, Here I Come!, with Moone Boy similarly allowing the audience access to the central character’s thoughts. The opening scene from Moone Boy’s first episode clearly establishes the playful and nostalgic tenor of the show. The scene begins with shots of O’Dowd’s hometown and the line “Boyle, 1989” appearing onscreen in captions. In the scene, over which the theme tune of veteran Irish Broadcaster Gay Byrne’s RTÉ Radio 1 show (1973–1998) plays, we are introduced to Martin by the voiceover narration O’Dowd performs throughout the show. The opening line, “Ever wanted to be the imaginary friend of an idiot boy in the West of Ireland? Me neither. There you

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go,” immediately clarifies the show’s central premise, as well as the centrality of region to the text. We are initially introduced to Martin walking to school seeing a bird that he thinks is ailing and which he proceeds to give the kiss of life. At this point the local school bullies, the Bonnar brothers, introduced with a distinctive musical phrase from UK school drama Grange Hill’s (1978–2008) original theme tune, accuse Martin of “shifting” (kissing) a dead bird and proceed to beat him up to the retro sounds of a “beat ‘em up” video game. A number of nostalgic referents are invoked in this short scene. On the soundtrack alone we hear the theme songs of several chronologically situated texts: Gay Byrne’s signature theme song—‘Tico’s Tune’ used in almost every episode—, popular BBC school drama Grange Hill, and a retro video game. Another overarching reference is US children’s drama The Wonder Years (1988–1993), which like Moone Boy follows the formative years of a boy in a relatively recent historic setting (in the case of the US series, the 1960s), a debt of influence the writers have acknowledged in the name of spin-off children’s fiction novel Moone Boy: The Blunder Years (2014). These combined allusions to Irish culture (particularly in the Gay Byrne reference and the use of the dialect word “shifting”) and international media texts from the UK and beyond reflects the increasingly global nature of the cultural flows impacting Ireland from the late 1980s.5 Luke Gibbons (2002) writes of nostalgia as “the desire to return to the sense of belonging that is associated with home, and its psychological moorings in childhood and the maternal” (49). In the strange case of Chris O’Dowd playing the adult imaginary friend of a child who is based on himself, we see an overt if convoluted staging of the nostalgic impulse. This remarkably tortuous evocation of nostalgia, I argue, reflects the cultural work the series was doing in a recessionary era through its attempts to shore up a fractious present through recourse to a more optimistic past.

Economic Woes, County Pride and the ‘Returning Migrant’ Although Moone Boy is set in Boyle and the characters rarely leave the town and never depart from Ireland, the series can still be profitably read as constituting a meditation on migration. Barton (2006) has argued that one principal way of conceptualising Irish actors is by looking at the actor as symbolic emigrant and as returning migrant. At a time when the youth of the country were leaving in huge numbers due to recessionary

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economic pressures, the myth of the returning emigrant who displays affection for his hometown was powerfully encapsulated in O’Dowd’s star discourse, with the actor literally returning home to Boyle to shoot Moone Boy after the global success of Bridesmaids. As I detail in a later section of this chapter, O’Dowd’s contribution to the animations Puffin Rock (2015–) and later Here We Are: Notes for Living on Planet Earth (2020) similarly shows a dedication on the part of the actor to home-grown Irish content (the latter animated feature being an adaptation of Irish illustrator and children’s author Oliver Jeffers’ book of the same name). O’Dowd is himself cognizant of the tradition of the actor returning home to a hero’s welcome, mentioning in several interviews his recollection of attending a parade in Boyle to commemorate a visit by Maureen O’Sullivan, the actress famous for playing Jane in the Tarzan and Jane (1932–1942) Hollywood films, who was born in the town. In some interviews he suggests this event may have had a subconscious influence on his later decision to become an actor (Solomons 2011). Whether that is true or not, commitment to make multiple series of the popular show in his hometown demonstrates a relationship with the site of one’s origins of a very different order to that of O’Sullivan.6 With each series of Moone Boy shown on Sky, the series ended with a ‘making of’ documentary feature that in effect celebrates Boyle and indeed O’Dowd’s family and rural childhood. The family values I identify as key to the affective impact of Moone Boy are twofold in nature: being both inherent to the narrative of the series, as well as intertextual in the comedy’s association with O’Dowd and his familial upbringing. As such, these “making of” texts are central to the pleasures of this series and less like the usual ancillary filler that will end up on the DVD release of a programme. In addition to highlighting his hometown, O’Dowd also draws attention to his home county of Roscommon in Moone Boy, as well as his social media postings. In his study of Irish migrants’ county affiliation in England, Marc Scully (2013) persuasively argues that for such subjects, county pride functions as a particular locus of identity connoting authenticity and tradition, which further enables a distinction between primarily rural (such as Roscommon) and more urban (Dublin, Cork) counties. Scully acknowledges this sense of tradition might have exclusionary potential given the associations between county identity, the GAA, the Catholic church and particular regressive constructions of Irish masculinity on the one hand and the possibility of inter-county rivalry disaggregating Irish diasporic identity on the other. O’Dowd himself has associations with the

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GAA, having represented Roscommon at under-21 level in Gaelic football; he often tweets in support of his county. Though arguably the actor discursively embodies a more inclusionary mode of Irishness in his self-­ authored work and social media postings. Moone Boy, for instance, tends to avoid reactionary standpoints in its depiction of county pride in the series, particularly given Martin and his friend Paidraig’s embodiment of a less essentialist form of masculinity, as well as the series’ optimistic portrayal of the increasingly multicultural demographic constitution of Ireland that emerged in the 1990s (as I detail below). Not long after Moone Boy’s initial broadcast, local newspapers were quick to point out the economic boon the returning son had brought his home county, with tours of locations in the show set up and merchandise being sold (Byrne 2012).7 While the financial benefit to Roscommon may in fact have been rather modest, the symbolic significance for the region is hard to underplay. Boyle is emblematic of a range of adverse circumstances that affect small town Ireland, including rural depopulation, high unemployment and poor functional infrastructure arising from a lack of investment in rural regions, even during the “good times” of the Celtic Tiger era. Of particular note, however, is Roscommon’s notoriety within Ireland for the predominance of “boil water” notices, signifying water that is unfit for human consumption due to the presence of microscopic parasite cryptosporidium, an ongoing problem for many years that in the most recent instance persisted from March 2014 to October 2016 (O’Brien 2014; Ryan 2016). O’Dowd himself was vocal in highlighting this issue, in one interview making the point that “[I]f it was any kind of reservoir in the greater Dublin area it would have been fixed 17 months ago” (Conlon 2014). When the actor was awarded the Freedom of Roscommon in November 2014 in recognition for his “achievements on stage and screen and for his constant promotion of his home county,” he used his speech to humorously draw further attention to the county’s deprived condition. In addition to highlighting the ongoing water issue, he brought up the fact that Roscommon had the longest average life expectancy of any county in Ireland, before quipping, “I like to think it is because Roscommon people have more to live for but it is probably because without an A&E Department we are too afraid to die” (McDonagh 2014). Indeed, a particularly revealing insight into rural Ireland from the ‘making of’ feature shown on Sky One was when O’Dowd related the fact that the production team loved filming in Boyle because no adjustments had to be made to the

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street to make it look like 1989 despite the series being filmed over two decades later. This casual remark indicated how unevenly prosperity from the Celtic Tiger had been shared across the nation.8 At the time of Moone Boy’s inception, Ireland was in the throes of austerity policies that had a constrictive impact on the day-to-day lives of large swathes of the population. Evidence of this was often discursively mediated through news stories that emphasized how little money many working families had left at the end of the month once their mortgage and bills had been paid.9 Such financial precarity is present in the depiction of the Moone family in the series. Again, for instance, in a “making of” episode, O’Dowd recalls an incident that inspired one of the scenes in season two. As O’Dowd relates the story, the scene in question is intercut with his narration, showing the fictional representation of the incident as Martin’s parents Liam (Peter McDonald) and Debra (Deirdre O’Kane) are shown hiding in their living room. O’Dowd explains the scene as follows: A lot of these episodes come out of a single image that you can remember and then you build an episode around it. The whole situation with the bank manager was just totally something that happened … [My family] always owed money. The bank manager would always turn up to the house. My mum decided to just hide, she couldn’t face him, so she just hid in the dining room, behind a curtain, and just waited for him to go away. And then she heard a little tap on the window, and she turned around and he was there looking at her, through the window, and she could see him… she was just hiding behind the curtain.

The conflation of O’Dowd the person with the text of Moone Boy is evident in the representation of this anecdote, but additionally the thematic centrality of financial hardship in the series is underlined. With the threat of home seizure due to non-payment of mortgages one of the most persistent and well-documented hangovers from the fall of Celtic Tiger in Ireland and the resulting contraction of the economy, this is one way is in which Moone Boy indexed its austerity-defined moment of production. The Moone family are shown as struggling with financial privation, yet this serves to consolidate rather than fracture the intimacy of the group—a consoling fantasy within Ireland and further afield in the series’ time of release, given the abiding impact of austerity in the mid-2010s. Unfortunately, despite over a decade passing since the banking crash that precipitated the financial crisis, a report detailing the abiding impact of the

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recession highlights the spatially disproportionate nature of subsequent economic recovery, noting that the rural-urban divide has been further entrenched, with those in rural areas much more likely to be in a position of financial vulnerability (Faulkner et al. 2019).

Renegotiating the West Onscreen: Reflective Nostalgia, Region and the Changing Face of Ireland The fact that Boyle in Roscommon is in the West of Ireland is also of symbolic importance as this region has a prominent cultural relevance in ideas of cultural nationalism throughout Irish history. As Tara McPherson (2003) writes, “Regions, as imagined places, extend beyond their geographical borders, not only comprised of the mix of social and economic relations within but also in tension with those relations outside. The identity of a place is always multiple, in flux, and changeable, rather than fixed, unified or stable” (35). Bearing this in mind, we can see Moone Boy itself as participating in the renegotiation and shifting of the meaning of the West in Irish popular culture in the second decade of the twentieth century, a dynamic that I argue functions as a binary opposition to urban representations of Irishness. Moone Boy is almost at pains to emphasize its locale as can be seen from the fact that the animated title sequence of the show features a map of Ireland with Boyle the sole place marked prominently on it. This show of civic pride on the part of O’Dowd and co-writer Murphy may stem from a sense that towns in this county suffer from a lack of cultural representation in addition to the material deprivations detailed above. Although home to some cultural landmarks, notably the Irish Famine Museum in Strokestown, Roscommon’s lack of a coastline distinguishes is from traditional visual depictions of the Irish West such as those provided in Calvary, set in nearby Sligo, a film that makes vivid use of the area’s coastal beauty and the imposing presence of the mountain Ben Bulben. With its lack of clear identifying topographical features, however, Boyle, while identified as part of the West, is also able to function as synecdoche for small town Ireland. Luke Gibbons (1996) has commented that “the recourse to the West in Ireland is impelled by a search for community, a desire to escape the isolation of the self and to immerse oneself in the company of others” (13). Indeed, isolation had come to be a pervasive cultural trope in the

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depiction of masculinities in Ireland from the Celtic Tiger era on, a trope altered substantially from previous iterations due to what Barton (2014) terms “the abandoning of postcolonialism as a structuring discourse” (186). Rather than oppression situated in historical circumstance as in previous representational trends, Brian Singleton (2011) argues that such isolation was primarily economic and a result of “the centrifugal drives of a hegemonic masculinity at the very heart of the Celtic Tiger economy and social order” (16). Such representations of isolated masculinity were primarily urban, although RTÉ drama Pure Mule (2005) provided a notable exception in the Celtic Tiger years (Monaghan 2014). With Moone Boy we see a recourse to a West that is imbued with family values, a representation that functioned as a cultural corrective during a post-crash era characterised by economic vulnerabilities. Moone Boy activates what cultural theorist Svetlana Boym (2001) has termed a “reflective nostalgia,” that is, a nostalgia that doesn’t seek to reconstruct outmoded vestiges of the past, but that “can be ironic and humorous” showing that “longing and critical thinking are not opposed to one another” (49–50). An example of this is evident in the opening episode of Moone Boy’s second series “Boylè, Boylè, Boylè,” which deals with the football World Cup, Italia ‘90. The premise of the episode is that as Ireland unexpectedly progress through the tournament, the Moones have gone on holiday to a Gaeltacht (Irish-speaking) region of Donegal, where Martin’s father Liam (Peter McDonald) wants the family to connect to their national roots much to the chagrin of the other members who are more interested in the ongoing football tournament. Throughout the series, Liam is depicted as likeable, somewhat reactionary, yet ultimately committed to his family and it is often through the views of this character that the changing face of Irish society as it transitions from the ‘80s into the ‘90s is reflected. This is evident in “Boylé, Boylé, Boylé”—a regionalised reference to the “olé” chant that the Irish fans took to singing at games during Italia ‘90— when Liam comes into conflict with various family members, including his wife Debra, due to his distaste for what he terms a “British game.” While Liam displays fondness for traditional signifiers of national culture such as the Irish language and gaelic games, he eventually comes to share his family’s enthusiasm for soccer once he hears the team singing “As Ghaeilge” (in Irish). In this episode the very constructedness of an Irish identity increasingly shaped by global migration is brought to the fore. As Free (2005) notes, a narrative taking hold in Irish media at the time was

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that “British-born players represented Ireland’s emigrant history and soccer tournaments’ global reach facilitated the participation of the ‘diaspora’ in a symbolically inclusive, geographically complex and multiply hyphenated national identity” (266). The episode strategically makes use of the fact that many of the players for the 1990 Irish team of the time had English accents—and, in the notorious case of Tony Cascarino, one’s claim to hereditary Irishness was later revealed to be fabricated—in its conflation of 1990s’ World Cup celebrations and the changing face of Irish national identity. Perhaps the wittiest encapsulation of this idea occurs in the episode when Martin (homesick for Boyle and attempting to travel back) ends up watching the Ireland/Romania quarter finals in the house of immigrants after mistaking their—partially obscured—Romanian flag (Blue-Yellow-­ Red) for the blue and yellow Roscommon County colours. Moone Boy’s playful refashioning of the past enables the reconciliation of fractious attitudes toward demographic change brought about in an increasingly globalized economy with the optimism that accompanied some of the societal changes happening in the ‘90s and a recognition of the vital role of regional identity to constructions of Irishness. Moone Boy marks the beginning of a new cycle of regionally inflected Irish sitcoms, including, but not limited to Derry Girls and The Young Offenders, the comedies I analyse in the following chapter. The extended global reach of these sitcoms and features at a time of transnational SVOD growth and dominance, has provided a staging ground for arguably more authentic depictions of Irishness, that go some way to countering the overly stereotyped depictions of Irish life of previous decades that had an international reach, such as comedy-drama Ballykissangel. This vital role of such regionalised texts in shaping contemporary media constructions of Irishness that I discern in Moone Boy is also evident in much of the celebrated indigenous animation that has found global acclaim in the twenty-­ first century, evident in my consideration of Puffin Rock, the animation to which O’Dowd lends his voice as I detail in sections to follow.

Irish Animation, FDI and Regional Development Before considering Puffin Rock, the animation to which O’Dowd contributes his voice as narrator, it is first necessary to briefly sketch the history and current state of animation in Ireland. Irish animation’s evolution demonstrates the centrality of both transnational and regional influences

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to this celebrated section of Irish screen culture. There are some early examples of Irish animation from the beginning of the twentieth century, such as “Youghal Clock Gate” an animated short made in 1910 (approx.) by the Horgan brothers of Cork. Demonstrating the close affinity between photography and animation, this short film, made by some dedicated amateurs, playfully manipulates photographs of the titular landmark from Cork city, making the eighteenth century gaol tower spin on its horizontal and vertical axes, as well as exit the street where it is located only to return smoothly again from the left-hand side of the mise-en-scene. While this is somewhat technologically crude example by later standards, it is an early indication of the kind of regionality that has been an intermittent feature of Irish animation (and indeed in such Irish screen productions as Cork-­ set The Young Offenders, as I examine in Chap. 3). The transnationalism inherent to Irish animation is in a large part due to the involvement of the Irish Development Agency (IDA), a semi-state organisation that has the primary mission of attracting overseas investment to Ireland. This mirrored the wider Irish economy’s increasing reliance on Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), an economic pivot largely steered by the IDA in the latter half of the twentieth century (Barry and Ó Fathartaigh 2015). Irish animation had been primarily operated on a small scale with few dedicated artists, until the establishment of US animator Don Bluth’s company Sullivan Bluth in Ireland in 1985 (Barton 2019; Walsh 2009). The IDA was instrumental in attracting Sullivan Bluth, which had initially been established in California. The American animator’s company has had a lasting impact due to the role it played in educating generations of practitioners through its links to Ballyfermot College of Further Education. The IDA’s intervention in this realm in the 1980s also brought animation houses Murakami Wolf and Emerald City to Ireland, though all these companies were to fail in the 1990s (Burke 2009). The legacy of the animation courses at Ballyfermot (and later also at IADT), though, and the presence of these international animation houses in Ireland in the 1980s and 1990s is now discernible in the highly skilled workforce in this screen production sector that has since emerged. Commenting on the role of both the state and the grassroots campaigning of local people in setting up what was originally called Ballyfermot Senior College in light of the nomination of four of its animation course alumni in the 2010 Oscars, Fintan O’Toole (2010) writes:

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We’re used to a model of economics that sees individual effort as being entirely separate from State and social action and entrepreneurship as being unconnected to the fight for social justice. But what led to four Irish Oscar nominations in a field that barely existed in the country 25 years ago is actually the connection between these things.

Indeed, Ballyfermot’s notoriety as an area of socio-economic deprivation both at the time of the college’s inception and in the present makes the success the educational institution has generated particularly resonant as a story of regional success. The emergence of production houses connected to animators educated at Ballyfermot—such as Cartoon Saloon in Kilkenny, and Dog Ears which brought Derry City its first animation studio—demonstrate animation’s strength as a production sector that can unite the regional and the global, and one which, in the right conditions, can generate social good as well as economic reward. This is evident in both the financial boon such enterprises constitute in terms of employment (the Southeast and Foyle regions where these studios reside consistently record higher unemployment rates than the national average in Ireland and Northern Ireland respectively) but also, as I detail below, for the regional pride such studios can generate, through their artistic framing of regions (and accents) usually neglected in popular representation. As suggested, the regional regenerations such enterprises contribute to are indebted in no small part to the actions of both state and community working in concert, a model still visible in the funding mechanisms both Cartoon Saloon and Dog Ears availed of in co-producing Puffin Rock, as I further detail below. Unlike the transnational animation studios that ultimately failed in Ireland, later indigenous enterprises are thriving. Irish animation production houses such as Cartoon Saloon, Boulder Media and Brown Bag Films have been developing a growing amount of content for international distribution throughout the 2000s. Much of the content, it must be noted constitutes an outsourcing of animation in service of global networks or corporations such as Disney or Nickelodeon, and the cartoons being produced can have little discernible evidence of belonging to a national screen culture. In this regard, Cartoon Saloon and Dog Ears, are something of an exception, working primarily on their own intellectual property (IP). Other animation houses within Ireland have a more blended approach. Brown Bag Films, for instance, who produce children’s programming such as Nella the Princess Knight (2017–) for Nickelodeon, with no

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evident connection to Ireland beyond its site of production, also produces animated content such as Give Up Yer Aul Sins (2001), an Oscar nominated animated short that utilised sound recordings made in the 1960s of Irish schoolchildren in Dublin, as well as Angela’s Christmas (2017) based on American-Irish writer Frank McCourt’s Angela and the Baby Jesus (2007), a children’s story he wrote after his bestselling 1996 memoir Angela’s Ashes. The success of Irish animators in this sector is particularly notable with regard to achieving distribution through subscription video on demand (SVOD) providers. A 2017 report on the Irish audio-visual sector celebrates Ireland’s position in this regard, noting that outside of North America “no other market has animation producers with this level of access” (Olsberg•SPI with Nordicity 2017, 32). Animation’s place within the Irish audio-visual sector has also been growing apace, quadrupling in size in the 2010s (Screen Ireland 2019, 2) and in terms of production spend, eclipsing the combined total of feature and television production by the end of the decade (Animation Ireland 2020). The adept way Irish studios navigate the rapidly changing landscape of contemporary media distribution has been crucial to such sectoral growth. Cartoon Saloon’s 2020 feature Wolfwalkers, for instance, was notable for being released on Apple TV+, an SVOD service launched by the tech giant the previous year. Apple’s intervention into video streaming was contemporaneous with a similar move by Disney (with its Disney Plus service, which also is a corporate sibling of rival SVOD players Hulu and HBO Max since Disney’s March 2019 acquisition of Twentieth Century Fox), a concerted attempt on the part of established content providers and new entrants to contest current market dominance SVOD players Netflix and Amazon Prime. For Apple, the prestige associated with Cartoon Saloon, given the production house’s consistency in Academy Award nominations for its animated features, would bolster the nascent streamer’s claims to be a viable contender in an already crowded marketplace. The development of such global streaming sites, as I argue here and touch upon in later chapters, has expanded the reach of Irish content in significant ways contributing to a transnational porosity in terms of the flow of media content that enables screen content (and particularly television programming) with a national and regional inflection to find wide audiences in ways unthinkable at the turn of the millennium, a recalibration of the media environment discernible in the development and distribution of Puffin Rock.

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Puffin Rock: Local and International Funding Strategies and Global Appeal10 Puffin Rock is an animated series (and forthcoming feature film) aimed at pre-school children narrating the lives of puffins and other wildlife located on the eponymous island. Puffin Rock is variously suggested to be modelled on Rathlin Island off the coast of County Antrim in Northern Ireland or Skellig Michael off County Kerry in the Republic of Ireland, both of which host puffin colonies—a practical source of ambivalence given the role regional representation plays in securing funding both North and South of the Irish border. The central characters are Oona (Kate McCafferty) and her little brother Baba (Sally McDaid), and O’Dowd provides the voice of the unseen narrator of each episode. The cartoon series has received significant acclaim, garnering positive write ups in publications such as the New York Times (see Hale 2015, for instance) as well as being nominated for an International Emmy, winning two Kidscreen Awards and a Royal Television Award. My consideration of Puffin Rock intersects with the discussion of Irish animation provided above at several points. As I detail below, the animation provides an example of the increased tendency toward international co-production and the huge role that SVOD placement can have on the fortunes of a particular series, as well as the viability of regional specificity in a global marketplace. Financial support through funding is a crucial aid in the development of viable animated content. The development of Puffin Rock entailed securing funding through a variety of sources. Initially, Dog Ears secured financial support through the acquisition of co-producing partners, notably Penguin Books. The cartoon was a good fit with the international publishers given the longstanding (since 1940) name of their children’s imprint, Puffin Books. As Cartoon Saloon—the other co-producer of the series, alongside Dog Ears and Penguin—are based in the Republic of Ireland it meant they could avail of funding opportunities available in that state, while Dog Ears could in parallel benefit from UK funding sources. Thus, Cartoon Saloon were able to apply for development funding through Screen Ireland, while Dog Ears could follow suit in Northern Ireland via NI Screen. Additionally, both the UK and the Republic of Ireland have strategic tax benefits in place for screen content development. In the Republic of Ireland, Section 481 allows for audio-visual productions to receive a 32% tax credit on productions up to a budget of €70 million and Cartoon Saloon’s location in Kilkenny means they can avail of

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an additional 5% on top (available in 2020 and 2021 and being phased out after that) that is in place to encourage productions outside established Irish production regions of Dublin, Wicklow, and Cork (City and County). Dog Ears was able to benefit from a similar scheme offering 25% tax credit. In tandem, the two co-producers were in a transnational “sweet spot” in terms of accessing tax rebates and development funding. Ruth McElroy and Caitriona Noonan (2019), in a study of the production contexts of television drama, have drawn attention to how widespread the deployment of fiscal tools to secure investment has become, as well intra-national regional competitiveness for such productions. They detail “a highly competitive environment [comprising] substantial global competition between regions and nations keen to attract inward investment and build substantial indigenous production” (37, my emphasis). Providing such detail on the financial aspect of this production helps to illuminate both the regionality evident in Puffin Rock, but also that of Moone Boy. The sitcom’s production would no doubt have taken a similar approach to funding as the animation, as indeed would the other regionally inflected examples of comedy programming (detailed above) that Sky and other UK channels have produced in recent years, suggesting a financial imperative as to why this cycle of regional comedies has emerged in recent years. Puffin Rock’s success upon release (it initially held distribution deals with RTÉjr and Nick Junior) enabled Dog Ears and partners to secure a second series. O’Dowd’s continued involvement was key to the animation getting a second series and securing global distribution through Netflix. Since its release in China, Puffin Rock achieved the remarkable feat of being streamed over 170 million times on Chinese SVOD Tencent, another example of the particular access to SVOD providers that has been highlighted as a strength of Irish animation (Olsberg•SPI with Nordicity 2017, 32). This strong performance helped broker the co-production deal that led to the Puffin Rock movie being co-produced by Chinese animation studio China Nebula, alongside Dog Ears and Cartoon Saloon. The movie—the first animated feature to be co-produced in Northern Ireland—is being developed between Tianjin in China, Derry and Kilkenny (Daly 2019), a remarkable feat of transcontinental production, considering Puffin Rock was Dog Ears’ first foray into animated content.

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Accent and Visual Style in Puffin Rock The various aesthetic features of Puffin Rock are, of course, central to the success it has achieved. Reviews of the children’s animation consistently praise its voicework and visual style, two elements that I will be considering in turn. O’Dowd’s role as narrator of the series again brings us back to a consideration of accent as signifier. In addition to the actor’s Roscommon brogue, Puffin Rock features a number of voice actors local to the series’ production base in Derry, foremost among them is Kate McCafferty, the voice of Oona, a girl attending a local primary school near to the Dog Ears offices. Producers of the series were keen to have non-professional actors, and part of the reason was the aural contrast this would evoke between O’Dowd professional actorly intonation and that of the young girl voicing Oona. In Season One’s “The Mystery Egg” episode, for instance, we have the following exchange upon Oona’s discovery of the egg of the title: Oona: Narrator: Oona: Narrator:

It’s an egg! Yep, it’s definitely an egg, a puffin egg … maybe. It’s not a puffin egg. They’re white not blue! (flustered) Ah, that’s what I was thinking, actually… definitely not a puffin egg.

While, of course, this is difficult to communicate fully in writing, the intonations used by Oona and the narrator are notably different. In part, this comes from the voice recording method developed for the programme. The children are allowed to modify the script when necessary, so it fits something they would more comfortably say in their own day-to-day language. This method of recording enabled the children’s worldview to be indexed within the cartoon. In part, Puffin Rock references traditional nature documentaries such as those associated with David Attenborough (e.g., Life on Earth [1979], Planet Earth [2006]) with their ‘voice of god’ narration, a term signifying an omniscient narration commonly delivered in a deep ‘authoritative’ male voice. Puffin Rock gently subverts this format both through the “dad jokes” the narrator is fond of delivering and occasional lapses in his omniscience, as well as Oona’s ability to converse with and, at times, contradict the narrator, as indicated in the dialogue above. When Puffin Rock secured

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a distribution deal with Netflix the SVOD provider had the option of having the voices of the actors re-cast, presumably in more neutral accents. In the end this option was never acted upon and in all anglophone regions the original Puffin Rock accents were left intact, perhaps testament to accent’s role in providing an attractive source of distinction from the animation’s competition. The “all-Ireland” nature of the production is, of course, further signalled in the Roscommon and Derry accents of the voice actors of the programme. Alongside the accents evident in Puffin Rock, visual style is a crucial element of the animation’s aesthetics. Rendered in 2D, the mise-en-scene of the animation evinces an illustrated children’s storybook feel that signals Dog Ears’ origins as a print publisher of such books. Reception of the series often highlights the beautiful depiction of the island and wildlife that feature in the narrative, with one incisive reviewer (Jernigan 2016) likening it to renowned animator Mary Blair’s concept artwork for Disney’s Peter Pan (1953). The visual style also unsurprisingly bears a strong affinity to Cartoon Saloon’s feature output, such as Song of the Sea (2014), with its stylised animals and smooth movement, features particularly in evidence in Puffin Rock as the titular sea birds leap from land to swim gracefully through the water. Barton cites the influence of Studio Ghibli in Cartoon Saloon’s first feature The Secret of Kells’ (2009) aesthetic style, noting the necessity of Cartoon Saloon drawing upon “non-­ Hollywood, non-Disney” and merging it with Irish Celtic tropes in order to “forge a new visual identity for their film,” and indeed Irish animation as a whole given the film’s status as the first Irish animated feature (57). In Puffin Rock national distinctiveness comes largely from the careful rendering of the wildlife on the island, which features a wide variety of species common to islands off Ireland’s coast. The cutified appearance of the central puffins with their large round eyes and anatomically outsized head (see Fig. 2.2) perhaps attests to a more softened approach to animated style from Cartoon Saloon that is less resistant to visual traces of the global dominance of Disney, whose Mickey Mouse developed such features as he evolved (Gould 1979). The success of Puffin Rock in non-anglophone markets attests to the animation’s visual distinctiveness, divorced as this element would be from the signifiers of accent detailed above, and the global legibility of the cute aesthetics displayed by Oona and her sibling Baba (Dale et al. 2017).

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Fig. 2.2  Baba, Oona and Mossy demonstrate the cute aesthetics that enable global legibility

Conclusion This chapter has considered the Irish actor Chris O’Dowd and several screen projects he has appeared in (or professionally sponsored) as a case study in how popular culture is profoundly imbricated in shifting the co-­ ordinates of twenty-first century Irish identity at the different scalar levels of the local, the national and the international. O’Dowd’s position as both migrant and a prominent celebrity with the means of mobility to traverse between host and home nation means the actor exemplifies an idealised mode of subjectivity for contemporary Ireland, embodying success, international recognition, and a connection to home. Additionally, series such as Moone Boy and Puffin Rock both display an emphatic regionalism that paradoxically renders them distinctive in a global marketplace and a source of local pride for the areas depicted. This regionalism also signals both series’ embeddedness within global flows of capital and information. In the chapter to follow, I build on my examination of rural Ireland and its international legibility through an analysis of two texts set in the regional cities of Derry and Cork, that similarly index a tension between distinction and legibility on a transnational scale.

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Notes 1. Indeed, the centrality of emigration to the attainment of Irish celebrity is longstanding, as evidenced in its almost invariable narrative presence in Irish celebrity autobiographies dating from the 1960s to the present (see McIntyre and Negra 2018 for an overview of the subgenre). 2. Such fetishizations of elements of Irish identity are a feature of other Irish stars’ negotiation of US media. Loretta Goff (2019, 88–89), for instance, identifies how Saoirse Ronan’s first name, evidently perplexing in terms of pronunciation for US audiences, has been a persistent feature of her US interviews and media appearances. 3. The second season follows a different couple played by Brendan Gleeson and Patricia Clarkson, and is set in the US. 4. Sky One has in tandem developed a roster of more experimental and critically lauded comedies alongside the more “heart-warming” regionally inflected sitcoms. In its repeated commissioning of works from Julia Davis, for instance, an actress and auteur with a reputation for disturbing and dark comedy, the channel has secured prizes such as Best Comedy at the BAFTA awards. 5. Global cultural flows were evident in Ireland from much earlier, of course (see O’Leary 2018, for an account of social change in Ireland in the 1950s, for instance). But from the late 1980s the amount of global influence increased significantly on account of elements such as the launch of Sky Television challenging the national broadcaster’s monopoly on television, as well as the increased mobility that budget airlines such as Ryanair facilitated. 6. It is reasonable to assume that O’Sullivan didn’t have the same connection to Boyle that O’Dowd does. The actress was born there, but was privately educated in Dublin and London, before leaving for Hollywood at the age of 18 (Traynor 2019). 7. There were some attempts to capitalize on the series’ popularity in Boyle during its run, including a “Moone Boy trail” where fans could visit locations and access an electronic barcode which links their smart phones to an edited version of the scenes filmed at that spot (Byrne 2012). At the time of writing, the Boyle Craft Shop has a range of Moone Boy merchandise on sale. 8. O’Dowd has maintained his commitment to raising awareness of the issues facing rural Ireland in recent years in various ways. One such endeavour was his promotion of the Social Spin scheme in rural Kerry in which volunteers would drive a community-owned car to “provide a safe and sociable option to get people to and from the pub.” The scheme highlights

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issues of social isolation that are endemic in rural Ireland, and O’Dowd’s support of the programme (filming a short piece wherein he drives the car for an evening taking locals to the pub) aligns with his overall commitment to recognising rural Ireland as a distinctive and embattled space within Ireland (Neville 2019). 9. The Irish League of Credit Unions’ “What’s Left?” tracker was an important index of the impact of austerity on families in Ireland during these years, providing statistical evidence for regular news coverage delivered through a variety of domestic media outlets. See, for instance, Brophy (2014). 10. For much of the detail on Puffin Rock in the analysis to follow I am indebted to  Dog Ears’ Creative Director John McDaid, with  whom I  conducted an interview on 9 July 2021.

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Negra, Diane, and Yvonne Tasker. 2014. “Introduction: Gender and Recessionary Culture.” In Gendering the Recession: Media and Culture in an Age of Austerity, eds. Diane Negra and Yvonne Tasker, 1–30. Durham: Duke UP. Negra, Diane, Anthony P. McIntyre, and Eleanor O’Leary. 2018. “Broadcasting Irish Emigration in an Era of Global Mobility.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 22(5–6): 849–66. Neville, Steve. 2019. “Chris O’Dowd Offers Social Spin to the Pub in Initiative to Combat Rural Isolation.” Irish Examiner, 12 Dec. www.irishexaminer.com/ lifestyle/arid-­30970017.html (accessed 21 Aug. 2020). O’Brien, Tim. 2014. “‘I Will Bring Clean Water to Your Village . . . It Sounded like I Was in the Third World’.” Irish Times. www.irishtimes.com/news/ environment/i-­will-­bring-­clean-­water-­to-­your-­village-­it-­sounded-­like-­i-­was-­ in-­the-­third-­world-­1.1946535 (accessed 30 Sep. 2019). O’Dowd, Chris, and Nick V.  Murphy. 2014. Moone Boy: The Blunder Years. London: Macmillan. O’Leary, Eleanor. 2018. Youth and Popular Culture in 1950s Ireland. London: Bloomsbury. Olsberg•SPI with Nordicity. 2017. Economic Analysis of the Audiovisual Sector in the Republic of Ireland, 18 Dec. https://www.screenireland.ie/about/ industry-­reports (accessed 6 July 2021). O’Riordan, Nicholas. 2020. “The Voices of Irish Identity: A Taxonomy of Cinematic Accents.” JCMS: Journal of Cinema and Media Studies 59(4): 173–177. O’Toole, Fintan. 2010. “Oscar for Art of Possible Goes to . . . Ballyfermot.” The Irish Times, 9 Mar. 2010, www.irishtimes.com/culture/film/oscar-­for-­art-­of-­ possible-­goes-­to-­ballyfermot-­1.635161 (accessed 6 July 2021). O’Toole, Fintan. 2016. “The Irish Christmas Is a Fiction of Home.” The Irish Times, 20 Dec. https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-­o-­toole-­the-­ irish-­christmas-­is-­a-­fiction-­of-­home-­1.2911608 (accessed 8 July 2021). O’Toole, Fintan. 2021. “Government Seems Determined to Show World That Ireland Is a Rogue State.” The Irish Times. 06 July, www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-­o -­t oole-­g overnment-­s eems-­d etermined-­t o-­s how-­w orld-­t hat-­ ireland-­is-­a-­rogue-­state-­1.4612202 (accessed 08 Jul. 2021). Petruska, Karen, and Faye Woods. 2019. “Traveling without a Passport: “Original” Streaming Content in the Transatlantic Distribution Ecosystem.” In Transatlantic Television Drama: Industries, Programs, and Fans, eds. Matt Hills, Michele Hilmes, and Roberta E. Pearson, 49–69. New York: Oxford UP. Pettitt, Lance. 2015. “Televising Ireland: Emigration and Remediation in the 1980s.” Éire-Ireland 50(1–2): 156–68. Rhodes, Gary D. 2012. Emerald Illusions: The Irish in Early American Cinema 1865–1915. London: Irish Academic Press. Rojek, Chris. 2001. Celebrity. London: Reaktion.

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Ryan, Órla. 2016. “Boil Water Notice Lifted in Roscommon after 2.5 Years.” TheJournal.ie. 14 Oct. www.thejournal.ie/roscommon-­boil-­water-­ notice-­3026736-­Oct2016 (accessed 20 Aug. 2019). Screen Ireland. 2019. Annual Report: 2019. Galway: Screen Ireland. https:// w w w. s c r e e n i r e l a n d . i e / i m a g e s / u p l o a d s / g e n e r a l / S I _ A n n u a l _ Report_2019_3_%28002%29.pdf (accessed 20 Aug. 2020). Scully, Marc. 2013. “BIFFOs, Jackeens and Dagenham Yanks: County Identity, ‘Authenticity’ and the Irish Diaspora.” Irish Studies Review 21(2): 143–163. Singer, Matt. 2019. “Watch Chris O’Dowd Forget He was in ‘Thor: The Dark World’.” ScreenCrush. 06 Feb. https://screencrush.com/chris-­odowd-­forgot-­ he-­was-­in-­thor-­the-­dark-­world/ (accessed 19 Nov. 2020). Singleton, Brian. 2011. Masculinities and the Contemporary Irish Theatre. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Solomons, Jason. 2011. “Chris O’Dowd: ‘People Try to Set Me up with their Sisters’.” The Guardian. 13 Nov. www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2011/ nov/13/chris-­odowd-­interview-­bridesmaids-­comedy (accessed 20 Aug. 2019). Starkey, Adam. 2018. “Chris O’Dowd a ‘Little Embarrassed’ over Drunk The Last Leg Appearance.” Metro, 13 Oct. www.metro.co.uk/2018/10/13/chris-­ odowd-­a dmits-­h es-­a -­l ittle-­e mbarrassed-­a fter-­d r unken-­t he-­l ast-­l eg-­ appearance-­8036072/ (accessed 20 Jun. 2020). Sweeney, Ken. 2013. “O’Dowd Laughs off RTE Comedy as Crime Pays for Stars of ‘Love/Hate’.” Independent, Independent.ie, 11 Feb. www.independent.ie/ woman/celeb-­news/odowd-­laughs-­off-­r te-­comedy-­as-­crime-­pays-­for-­stars-­of-­ lovehate-­29060447.html (accessed 20 Jun. 2020). Teamcoco. 2012. “Chris O’Dowd’s Masculinity Overpowered Megan Fox  CONAN on TBS.” YouTube, 12 Dec. www.youtube.com/ watch?v=zj4MEbwjBNc (accessed 20 Aug. 2020). Traynor, Jessica. 2019. “From Roscommon to Hollywood - The Story of Maureen O’Sullivan.” The Irish Times. 26 Nov. https://www.irishtimes.com/life-­and-­ style/abroad/from-­r oscommon-­t o-­h ollywood-­t he-­s tory-­o f-­m aureen-­o -­ sullivan-­1.4094481 (accessed 20 Aug. 2020). Walsh, Thomas. 2009. “Irish Animation and Radical Memory.” In Place and Memory in the New Ireland, eds. Britta Olinder and Werner Huber, 57–66. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag.

CHAPTER 3

Derry Girls and Cork Boys: Second Cities, Regional Identities and (Trans)National Tensions in the Contemporary Irish Sitcom

This chapter seeks to look beyond an established canon of city representation within Irish screen studies to examine the specificities of place as they manifest in the two most successful Irish-set sitcoms of the 2010s. The previous chapter charts how Moone Boy (2012–2015) demonstrated a public appetite for specifically regionalised storytelling in the sitcom form that spanned the UK, Ireland and further afield. Indeed, Chris O’Dowd’s sitcom can be seen as something of a bellwether for the two sitcoms that are the primary focus of this chapter, as both Derry Girls (2018–) and The Young Offenders (feature film 2016; series 2018–) share a similarly nostalgic affective tone and a preoccupation with adolescent growing pains, although in the earlier sitcom this was inflected through its rural backdrop and a younger protagonist. Central to this project is the understanding that contemporary popular cultural manifestations of Irishness have of late achieved a resurgence in transnational mobility, primarily among anglophone nations. The previous high-point in cultural manifestations of Irishness was in the 1990s, emblematized in the global reach of Riverdance, the success of Irish authors such as Frank McCourt, and the high point of rock group U2’s stadium dominance. As Diane Negra (2006) argued, during these years, commodified Irishness was circulating in manifold cultural forms and a variety of price points (2–9). While television wasn’t as prominent in the

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circulation of Irishness in these years, there were some exceptions. Ballykissangel (1996–2001), produced by the BBC, featured Irish acting talent and was a hit in the UK and the US, though its presentation of a Quiet Man-like rural idyll seemed very much an outsiders’ view of Ireland. The current cycle of Irish television texts in circulation (such as Moone Boy, detailed in the previous chapter), seem much more rooted in an insiders’ view of Ireland, and its proliferation facilitated by the customized media consumption of the present era. Bearing this context in mind, this chapter seeks to situate the city, and, more specifically, peripheral representations of the urban, within this set of culturally mobile texts, examining both domestic and international inflections that can be discerned and contextualising these texts within a broader cultural history of the two cities represented in these comedies. Both Derry Girls and The Young Offenders chart the development of characters in their mid-to-late teens of school-going age. Derry Girls follows the lives of four schoolgirls, Erin (Saoirse-Monica Jackson), her cousin Orla (Louisa Harland), and friends Clare (Nicola Coughlan) and Michelle (Jamie-Lee O’Donnell), who attend a Catholic single-sex convent school. The group also includes Michelle’s English cousin James (Dylan Llewellyn), who has been allowed to join the girls’ school “for his own safety,”—just one of the nods to British-Irish tensions that punctuate the series—and the programme also features Erin’s immediate family in most episodes. As of the time of writing, two seasons of Derry Girls have been broadcast, and the main characters are still at school. Similarly, along with the initial feature film (2016), The Young Offenders has broadcast three seasons (2018, 2019, 2020) and a one-episode Christmas special (2018). The Cork comedy follows the lives of two eponymous schoolboys, Conor (Alex Murphy) and Jock (Chris Whalley). Other recurring characters in the series are Conor’s mother Mairéad (Hilary Rose), local Garda (police) officer Sergeant Healy (Dominic McHale) and local small-­ time criminal Billy (Shane Casey). Of the two programmes, Derry Girls is the most consistent in its chronological placement. Set at the tail end of the peace process in Northern Ireland, which is approximately dated from 1993 to the signing of the Good Friday (Belfast) agreement in 1998, notable public events such as the visit of US President Bill Clinton to Derry in 1995 (S02E06 “The President”) help anchor the mid-1990s timeframe of the series. The Young Offenders initially, in its feature film iteration, was set in the summer of

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2007. The sitcom version effectively reboots the story, retaining some plot elements as well as the same characters and performers, with the notable exception of comedian P.J. Gallagher, who was cast as a drug dealer in the movie, but plays the principal of the school the two boys attend in the series. The Young Offenders series updates the setting to the present, indexed through the personal technology being used. That said, formal elements of both series, including costume design and non-diegetic music serve to obscure a clear chronological positioning at times, enhancing the ability of both series to generate a non-specific nostalgia. Given that the final years of the Troubles in Northern Ireland constitute the historical setting for the 1990s-set Derry Girls, tracing how politically sensitive and contentious elements of this era are managed by the sitcom will be central to this analysis. Both The Young Offenders and Derry Girls are set in working-class housing estates, though the Cork-set comedy, I argue, takes socio-economic factors as a central thematic concern, reflecting on the class-inflected stigma attached to its young male protagonists. The centrality of girl- and boyhood to both series also provides an opportunity to examine how shifting gender norms manifest in these Irish pop cultural texts, and how these depictions of youth function as a conduit for transnational pop cultural trends. Lastly, the substantial transnational impact of “portal” television providers such as Netflix (Lotz 2017; Lobato 2019), as well as emerging norms of international co-funding and distribution (McElroy and Noonan 2019; Hills et  al. 2019) are considered, showing how these processes emerge as vectors of Irishness in the case studies of both Derry Girls and The Young Offenders. Taken in combination, the analysis contained in this chapter shows how the civic regionality that manifests in both comedies treads a line between a distinctive local identity and the shared features that characterise a broad swathe of peripheralized cities in contemporary neoliberalized nations.

Regional Comedic Voices As suggested in the previous chapter, regional dramas and comedies have become more prominent in the televisual landscape in recent years. With regard to sitcoms set within the island of Ireland, the twenty-first century has seen a number of highly regionalised comedies emerge such as Moone Boy, Nowhere Fast (2017), Hardy Bucks (2010–2018), and Bridget and Eamon (2016–), as well as the output of Limerick comedy group The Rubberbandits, which emerged on RTE’s Republic of Telly (2009–2016).

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A similar tendency is apparent in recent comedy hits in the UK, including Raised by Wolves (2013–2016), Detectorists (2014–2017), Back to Life (2019–), and This Country (2017–2020), comedies which followed a path set by the significant critical and popular successes of The Royle Family (1998–2012) and Gavin and Stacey (2007–). This new cycle seems marked by a reluctance to uncritically peddle regional stereotypes, and often exemplifies a mixed genre “dramedy” format that embraces melancholy and draws upon melodramatic conventions at key moments. This regionalised trend perhaps reflects growing unease that cultural flows have been dominated by metropolitan representation and may have contributed to the schisms that see a divergence in both sentiment and outcome in different regions of the UK. Decentralization initiatives have occurred within the UK at both the BBC and Channel 4, albeit due to government pressure.1 In Ireland, which attempted some decentralisation of government offices in the 2000s only to abandon the scheme in 2011, Dublin still overwhelmingly accounts for the highest average rates of pay (with 17 counties having average disposable income levels at 75% or lower than the Dublin average), and the most educated workforce (51% of the nation’s graduates) (Crowley 2019). This statistical bias in favour of the capital is matched in media representation. One review of the second season of The Young Offenders contextualised this point in a semi-humorous manner, stating: “More Cork accents are to be heard in the 29 minutes of this episode than in the entire past decade of the station’s regular output. It’s good that RTÉ is finally acknowledging sentient life beyond the [Dublin encircling motorway] M50” (Power 2019). Andy Medhurst has claimed in his book A National Joke: Popular Comedy and English Cultural Identities (2007) that comedy is “a shortcut to community” (121). However, there is clearly an ideological dimension to what regional identities are permitted expression onscreen. TV comedy scholar Brett Mills, writing on regional comedies and the BBC in 2010, claims: “[I]n order to be a national broadcaster the BBC must deny certain kinds of comedy content, and humorous voices, as much as it promotes others. For the regions and communities of the United Kingdom this can be seen as problematic” (2010, 72). Not so long ago, the idea of a hit comedy on a British channel set in Derry during the Troubles would have been unthinkable, and it seems that it still may generate significant unease. For instance, discussing the 2019 BAFTA awards ceremony where Derry Girls lost out to Julia Davis’ dark comedy Sally4Ever (2018), Guardian critic Mark Lawson, queried, “did the inexplicable overlooking

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of Derry Girls for Best Scripted Comedy reflect unease from some panellists about Northern Irish Troubles as a subject of sitcom?” (Lawson 2019). Cultural theorists Lauren Berlant and Sianne Ngai (2017) have suggested that “comedy helps us test or figure out what it means to say ‘us.’ Always crossing lines, it helps us figure out what lines we desire or can bear” (235). This sense of comedy’s role in establishing both national and other forms of belonging as well as its utility in limning the boundaries of the permissible speaks to some of the cultural work in which the sitcom is engaged. The urban settings of Derry/Londonderry (Derry from here on) and Cork and the specific histories and contemporary conditions pertaining to these two cities inextricably shape both the content and the reception of Derry Girls and The Young Offenders. This chapter seeks to unpack both how the urban shapes the content of these sitcoms, but also how the depiction of the city in these two texts has increased resonance beyond the island of Ireland, in an era where the impact of globalization has seen many formerly thriving cities struggle to adjust to the hegemonic model of the global city. One shared attribute of Derry Girls and The Young Offenders is the perception that the urban settings of Derry and Cork constitute “second cities.” This both unites the two texts and allows for an examination of how civic hierarchies impact on regional character, as well as the role popular culture plays in the construction of such forms of civic identity.

(Trans)National Hierarchies and the City Considering the cities encountered in this chapter through the prism of population rate can give an approximate indication of their cultural purchase (or lack thereof) that provides vital context for the subsequent analysis. Cork and Derry are each the second largest cities in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland respectively. Cork, with a population of approximately 210,000 lags significantly behind Dublin’s one million plus (Central Statistics Office 2017), and Derry, with over 80,000 in its metropolitan area, is second in Northern Ireland to Belfast with approximately 280,000 (Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency 2015). Together Dublin, Belfast, Cork and Derry comprise four of the five largest cities on the island of Ireland (with Limerick slightly edging above Derry in terms of population according to some sources, and Lisburn in Northern Ireland similarly gaining ground on the North West city). In terms of

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cultural visibility, both Cork and Derry are disproportionately underrepresented in comparison with their more populous neighbours in the realm of popular cultural texts such as television, films and pop music.2 This underrepresentation finds a parallel in academic forms of cultural analysis within fields such as Irish studies, and the present volume (particularly this chapter and the following) looks beyond the established canon of urban representation on the island of Ireland, which privileges both Dublin and Belfast. Given the lack of pop cultural representation and (perhaps understandably) a concomitant lack of attention within academic discourse, the surprise success of the two comedies under examination is all the more noteworthy. As such, and given the paucity of screen representation for both Cork and Derry in comparison with the capital cities of Dublin and Belfast respectively, both The Young Offenders and Derry Girls constitute a vital set of case studies for understanding the global, national and regional dynamics at play within the island of Ireland and beyond in terms of popular representation of the Irish city in the early twenty-first century. Sociological insights into the shifting nature of the city as a result of post 1970s intensifications of globalization usefully contextualise the civic stratification of the island of Ireland. In particular, Saskia Sassen’s (2001) influential account of the emergence of the “global city” is a useful guide to understanding the positioning of both Cork and Derry in relation to their more populous and influential neighbours, and also for tracing the transnational dynamics at play in post-Celtic Tiger Ireland. Many of the conditions described in the introduction to this book that manifested so remarkably during Ireland’s economic boom years comply with shifts associated with global cities, tracking the trends toward globalization more broadly. As such, an emphasis on hypermobility, international communication and the neutralisation of distance and place came to the fore, as well as a privileging of transnational corporatism in realms such as technology, finance, and, particularly in Ireland’s case, pharmaceuticals. Dublin, due to the concerted efforts of successive governments (including, but not limited to the development of the Irish Financial Services Centre in the north city docklands and strategic investment in transatlantic internet cable infrastructure) is the most obvious beneficiary within the island of Ireland with regard to harnessing global flows of people and capital (Negra and McIntyre 2020, 65–66). The “accumulation by dispossession” that geographer David Harvey (2004) sees as a cornerstone of neoliberal expansion, of necessity swells the ranks of dispossessed people,

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but also on a different scale, entire cities come to be marked by obsolescence as well. Of course, the dynamics of centre and periphery that effect such changes in terms of global and peripheralized cities, entail parallel processes within larger cities themselves, generating a spatialized polarization between the wealthy and the poor (Sassen 2019, 321) that I engage with in the following chapter in my consideration of martial arts sportsman, and Dublin native, Conor McGregor. Within disciplines such as cultural geography, urban sociology and planning studies, a growing body of work has attended to modes of civic minority, through related conceptualizations of the “second city,” “second-­tier city,” and the “peripheral city” (Hodos 2007; Brady 2016). Such veins of scholarship have underlined the central role major cities play in facilitating flows of global capital, and the subsequent adjustments entailed by smaller or less connected cities in order to avoid economic stagnation. These developments in the social sciences have seen recent parallels in literary studies (Ameel et al. 2015; Finch et al. 2017), which recognise the need to both draw upon the fields of scholarship mentioned above and effect an interdisciplinary analysis, and in doing so go beyond canonised conceptions of the city. Irish studies, a discipline whose substantial development throughout the 1990s was fuelled in part by global interest in major literary figures such as James Joyce and W.B Yeats, and an increased interest in Irish culture, has yet to fully embrace an acknowledgement of the cultural validity of civic peripheries. Recent publications still seem committed to a canonical understanding of the Irish city that rarely strays from Dublin and Belfast.3 However, it is hoped that the present study can contribute to an ongoing reconsideration In Irish studies that recognises that peripheral and second cities are representative of urbanity as much as the capitals.

Historical Conditions and “Second City Affect” in Cork and Derry My usage of the term “second city” differs somewhat from the majority of conceptualizations outlined in the previous section, focused as they predominantly are on economic power. Attending more to the relationality signified by the adjective “second,” helps provide capacity for the affective dimensions of such civic constructions, bound up as they are with feelings of competition, envy and the asymmetrical power relationships that define

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them, as well as the ongoing impact of historical conditions. Allen et al. (1998), in a pioneering study charting the influence of neoliberalism on the cultural construction of region, persuasively argue that, “every place or region ‘arrives’ at the present moment trailing long histories: histories of economics and politics, of gender, class and ethnicity; and histories, too, of the many different stories which have been told about all of these” (9). The “long histories” of Cork and Derry are, of course, an accumulation of these elements and a consideration of the “second-ness” of the cities can provide a helpful means of unpacking some of the similarities that can be discerned in these two cities and their discursive construction. A growing body of scholarship in the critical humanities has shone a light on phenomena such as the affective qualities of region (Allen et al. 1998; MacPherson 2003; Campbell, 2016) as well as the affective dimensions of cities (Thrift 2004; Bridge and Watson 2011). Affect is often considered in such scholarship as a means of unpacking intertwined elements constituting the emotional, cultural and political dimensions of the object of analysis. Many of these approaches continue the work of Marxist cultural scholar Raymond Williams, who used the phrase “structure of feeling” (Williams 1977, 132) to try to diagnose the intangible feelings that resonate in different ways among different communities. Describing the structure of feeling as “social experience in solution” (133), Williams utilizes an apt metaphor from chemistry to capture the fact such feelings are a mix, dissolved together, a pervasive mood atmosphere in which everyday life is lived. Incorporating affect as an approach can help in registering both the “intensities of feeling” (Thrift 2004) as well as minor “flattened” or “ugly feelings” (Berlant 2011; Ngai 2005) that circulate through and in relation to the cities in question. The following, although necessarily schematic, is an attempt at tracking the affective qualities of these Irish “second cities” that emerge through pop cultural manifestations such as the sitcoms and feature film that comprise the primary focus of this chapter. The identities of both Cork and Derry are marked by their histories in ways that serve to distinguish them from the capital cities of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland and further serve as wellsprings of civic pride or more ambivalent feelings. Derry’s causes for distinction are inevitably bound up with the political and social vicissitudes of Northern Ireland. A large part of Derry’s unique positioning with regard to Northern Irish identity is predicated on its demographic constitution. It was once the city in Northern Ireland with the largest proportion of the population

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that identifies as Roman Catholic/Nationalist, unlike Belfast which had a majority Protestant/Unionist population for many years. Current demographic trends suggest Belfast may soon also have a Nationalist majority, but Derry’s legibility as a majority Nationalist city is part of the legacy of partition and the Troubles. Although there is increased parity between the two major traditions in the post-Troubles era, politics in Northern Ireland has long been dominated by Unionist parties (though again, this is something that has seen some shifts in recent years). During the years in the lead up to the Troubles and beyond, this sectarian difference has resulted in claims of a longstanding discrimination against Derry in both political and economic terms. The grievance of Derry Catholics in the early years of the Troubles centred on a number of factors, including disenfranchisement; gerrymandering; discriminatory housing and job allocation through local councils; as well as police brutality. In addition, the politically motivated decision in 1965 to situate the proposed second university in Northern Ireland in the small and majority-Protestant town of Coleraine, rather than Derry, crystallized for many inhabitants (from both traditions) an understanding of the intractability of the biases against the city from the Northern Irish government in Stormont. Half a century later, far from benefiting from a post-Troubles dividend, though, politicians in the city continue to argue that the Northern Ireland executive still favours the East of the country with the vast majority of foreign direct investment (through Invest NI) arriving in Belfast or nearby Lisburn (Mullan 2020; Derry Journal 2016). The central trauma that continues to define the city, however, is the killing of 14 unarmed civilians on “Bloody Sunday,” January 30th, 1972, during an anti-internment protest organized by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (see Richtarik 1992, 14–22 for a useful overview of these years). When UK Prime Minister David Cameron, communicating the main findings of the Saville Report, stated in June 2010 that British military actions on Bloody Sunday were “unjustified and unjustifiable,” it was a cause for celebration in the city. This was not least due to the fact that the Saville report exonerated the victims and condemned the soldiers involved, a long-awaited official confirmation of the long-held belief by many in the city that the hastily conducted Widgery Report of April 1972 had been a whitewash (Foy 2010). The events and historical conditions listed above have long shaped the perception of the city both within Ireland and beyond and are key to the city’s self-image. While there have been concerted attempts, as I detail below, to create a “new story” for

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Derry, as the success of Derry Girls demonstrates, the Troubles narrative retains its centrality in mediated depictions of the city. A legacy of colonial violence is also evident in any consideration of Cork city. One particular defining event was the burning of the city that occurred in 1920, which was instigated by British auxiliary forces and saw many landmark buildings lost forever and thousands left homeless. Known as the “rebel county” due to the fact that it was a stronghold for guerrilla fighters against the British in the War of Independence, Cork is further discursively differentiated from Dublin through the often tongue-in-cheek assertion of its inhabitants that it is the “real capital of Ireland,” and natives of the city further assert their identity contra Dublin through consumer preferences: preferring Cork-based Barry’s tea over its Dublin rival Lyons, for instance.4 This sense of civic distinction has found articulation in the Peoples Republic of Cork (PROC) brand, which produces humorous merchandise inspired by socialist propaganda (neatly incorporating the county colours of red and white) and hosts a popular website. Cian O’Callaghan (2012) suggests that PROC is both “a brand that resonates with local and diasporic communities” and is “characteristic of a cultural heritage in Cork that is protective and supportive of home-grown institutions and talent” (193). This sense of cultural heritage is as much entangled in civic remembrance as it is with consumerist imperatives of the globalised present. PROC merchandise that incorporates historical images such as that of Terence MacSwiney (1879–1920), the mayor of Cork who died on hunger strike in a British jail, sits alongside prints presented in multiple languages that merge the distinctiveness of the foreign nation with Cork-specific signifiers. One print, for instance, adapts the French slogan of “Égalité, Fraternité, Liberté,” replacing the final word with “GAA,” and incorporates the image of Cork hurler Donal Óg Cusack—the first openly gay GAA player—depicted in a stereotypically Gallic rendering that includes a beret and extravagant moustache (see Fig. 3.1). In this example, we can see a complex amalgam of the local and the international that gestures toward a politically progressive identity politics—all attributes that can to a certain extent, and as I detail below, be discerned in The Young Offenders. A consideration of PROC allows for a partial understanding of some fundamental components of the affective composition of second cities. While, as I detailed above, the structure of feeling that we might attribute to a civic space is necessarily made up of a number of circulating feelings,

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Fig. 3.1  The People’s Republic of Cork image of Dónal Óg Cusack signifies a combination of progressive liberalism and commercial branding of the civic space

I suggest that, in tandem with local pride, envy is one of the central affective components of the second city. Cultural theorist Sianne Ngai (2005), in her book of the same name interrogates what she terms “ugly feelings,”—overlooked and commonly disavowed affects such as anxiety,

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irritation and paranoia—in order to recuperate their critical productivity. Part of the use value of these “minor affects,” in Ngai’s understanding, is their diagnostic potential. Unlike relatively distinctive feelings such as rage or terror, that can spur collective or individual action, it is precisely the “unsuitability of these weakly intentional feelings for forceful or unambiguous action [that] … amplifies their power to diagnose situations, and situations marked by blocked or thwarted action in particular” (27). We can apply this insight into an “against the grain” reading of the entire PROC brand, which can be understood as generative of a cluster of affects including, but not limited to, envy. As a further example, it is instructive to consider a weekly column PROC contributed to local Cork newspaper The Evening Echo in the lead up to the city’s hosting of the European Capital of Culture in 2005. The following is a characteristic example: Cork city will never and should never be the capital of Ireland. It will be the capital of itself, beginning by being the Capital of Culture. The aim must be to put a plan in place for the gradual (or preferably instant) severance between the Irish state and County Cork with the aim of creating a people’s republic where Cork people can finally govern them- selves. (People’s Republic of Cork 2004, quoted in O’Callaghan 2012)

The humorous intent of the article is unmistakable, with its satirical rendering of the pompous language of political declarations, and its exaggerative pronouncements. Yet, while local pride is undoubtedly to the fore in such writings (and the entire PROC commercial endeavour in general), the overdetermined insistence on the city’s rightful position as an autonomous entity indexes a strong element of envy towards the, unnamed, capital city of Ireland, Dublin. The fact that PROC has attained such longevity (starting as a commercial brand in 1998, with the website following in 2000), as well as the visual prominence it has obtained throughout the city with multiple murals on public display, is suggestive of a need it fulfils in terms of civic identity. This is a need further evident in the existence of humorous books such as Patrick Fitzgerald’s (2019) 101 Reasons Why Cork is Better than Dublin. While it may seem churlish to level an accusation of enviousness toward such light-hearted cultural manifestations, and by extension the city of Cork, it is not intended in a pejorative way. Ngai’s insight, that envy has through time come to be stripped of its critical agency and perceived of as an egocentric affective position (Ngai 2005,

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140), shouldn’t negate its diagnostic qualities nor invalidate the inequalities of civic stature that it highlights. While the causes of distinction are disparate for Cork and Derry, arguably it is the perceived obsolescence of these cities that make them viable staging grounds for the regionalised narratives that have gained cultural prominence in the twenty-first century. In a post-Fordist neoliberal era that has seen many regional cities with economic ties to declining industry struggle to redefine their functionality and worth, such cities define urbanity as much as the financially robust larger cities that tend to monopolise representation and attract the bulk of investment. Sassen, in tracing the emergence of the global city, sees an interconnected decline in civic peripheries. She argues that “Alongside these new global and regional hierarchies of cities is a vast territory that has become increasingly peripheral… formerly important manufacturing centers and port cities have lost functions and are in decline” (Sassen 2000, 82). This is an apt description of both Derry and Cork in some ways. The two were once thriving port cities, with Derry at its height one of the most significant sites for the production of textiles in the British empire, while Cork served as a primary conduit for agricultural exports and by the eighteenth century was regarded as “Ireland’s premier port city” (Crowley et al. 2005, 150). Of the two cities, Cork, undoubtedly, is currently the most economically robust, notable, in particular for having the second-highest concentration of pharmaceutical manufacturing world-wide and being the site of tech giant Apple’s European headquarters since 1980 (Van Egeraat and Curran 2013; Keohane 2006). However, the striking levels of poverty in the North of the city (Edwards and Linihan 2002; Ó Fátharta 2017) demonstrate the unequal development of cities under neoliberal and global economic policies that allow for the extraction of wealth from region (Harvey 2004; Sassen 2001). Northern Ireland is something of an economic anomaly, with a hugely inflated public sector that outstrips the rest of the UK as well as the Republic of Ireland. In fact, in considering Derry as a second city one has to acknowledge that its rival Belfast is far from competitive in rankings of similar cities within the UK when measured across a broad set of indicators (McAleer 2019). However, the larger city outstrips its regional neighbour in such listings. Indeed, the supposed “peace dividend” that helped sell the Good Friday agreement never materialised in the North West, and the deprivation within the city of Derry, that was a key catalyst of the Troubles at their outset, has remained (Doak 2020a).

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To return briefly to envy as a signature affective quality of the second city, we might consider recent heated exchange in the realm of Northern Irish politics to end this section. The example is of a “banal” piece of political discourse, in the terms of Michael Billig’s (1995) concept of “banal nationalism,” where such rhetoric reinforces identity boundaries through frequency of circulation. In this instance, it is a discursive form of identity construction operating at the scale of civic rather than national identity, an unspectacular set of utterances unlikely to cause a stir outside of Northern Ireland, or, for that matter, within, and more akin to the background noise of polity that circulates primarily through local newspapers. In February 2020, a Derry Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) Sinead McLaughlin of the Nationalist SDLP party clashed with a Unionist MLA for South Belfast from the DUP party, Chris Stalford, on matters of strategic investment at a Stormont Economy committee meeting. Her main point was that Invest NI, the non-departmental public body tasked with attracting foreign direct investment to Northern Ireland, needed to start directing investment to areas where there are greater levels of unemployment and lower levels of economic activity, such as Derry. The response from Stalford was as follows: “The solution to a lack of investment in Craigavon or in Londonderry is not to try and strangle investment in Belfast. That’s the politics of envy. That’s the economics of envy.” When McLaughlin and other MLAs disagreed with Stalford’s assessment, he retorted, “Yes it is. It is envy… You will not pull Londonderry up by dragging Belfast down” (Mullan 2020). The utility of the exchange above for our present purposes resides in its overt designation of envy as an affective disposition attaching itself to political motivation. McLaughlin’s denial that envy was at play speaks to the stigma attached to the emotion, which has over its history accrued connotations of egocentricity, a lack of objectivity, and a belittling association with femininity (Ngai 2005)—which might further explain Stalford’s readiness to reach for the term in responding to a female politician. As a diagnostic indicator, as Ngai stated, it is efficient in highlighting situations “marked by blocked or thwarted action.” In this instance envy is identified in political discourse expressing a civic failure to thrive that according to one politician, is thwarted by an unjust tendency in a public body charged with attracting foreign investment to Northern Ireland as a whole to favour the capital and its environs. As indicated above, this is symptomatic of a longstanding sense that the second city has been continually

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overlooked. The defensive positioning of the South Belfast MLA, as well as the charged corporeal language deployed (“strangle”; “dragging …down”) is testament to the affective intensities that underlie such civic rivalries, and which feed into popular representation in complex ways, as I outline in sections to follow.

Spatialized Inequality and Youthful Mobility in the Young Offenders The depiction of space in both The Young Offenders and Derry Girls is a vital element in how both cities are constructed within these texts. The spatialization of The Young Offenders is in accordance with Henri LeFebvre’s (1991) influential account of the social stratification that occurs within the city space (384), which posits that those lower down on the socio-economic scale are often increasingly peripheralized. This phenomenon is evident within Cork city itself, in which the majority of areas marked by deprivation are situated in the North of the city (Edwards and Linihan 2002). The Young Offenders, from its outset, demonstrates a thematic preoccupation with the spatial dimensions of wealth and (in)equality. The opening scene of the initial feature film shows the protagonists Jock and Conor fantasizing about what they would do if they had €1 million. Rather naively misunderstanding how far that sum of money would go, the pair discuss the possibility of living in mansions—“a gaff just like the City Hall”—while being attended by English butlers in a manner akin to the super-wealthy Bruce Wayne of the Batman comic and movie franchise. The discussion occurs as the two youths sit in Bell’s Field, a small park in the northside of Cork overlooking the centre of the city. Indeed, this opening scene establishes a North/South dynamic that persists throughout the film and sitcom. The very first image is a long shot from the South of the city looking into the North and the park, before we see the pair in a two-shot. Through both dialogue and mise-en-scène the two boys are isolated in this scene from the city centre: the locus of wealth and power in Cork. The shallow depth of field photography ensures that the two boys never remain in focus when the centre of the city is clearly visualised and vice versa (see Fig. 3.2). During the discussion of a potential millionaire lifestyle, the immediate frame of reference for the boys is the spatialized distribution of wealth apparent within the city.

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Fig. 3.2  The opening scene of The Young Offenders utilizes shallow focus to effect a spatial differentiation between Conor and Jock and the centre of the city

The initial feature film aligns with a long-standing set of visual tropes in Irish cinema that depict the city as site of anomie and disappointment, a standard feature of British films set in Ireland, and the rural as an idyllic, recuperative space—a common depiction of US filmmakers (Hill 1987). This is just one of a number of British and US cinematic and televisual trends that can be detected within The Young Offenders, as I detail later. In keeping with such trends, the home lives of both Conor and Jock are portrayed as marked by deprivation. One shorthand manner in which the film communicates this is through the fact that both boys have a deceased parent. Conor, whose father—as shown in a remarkably economical scene— has died in a work accident when a hammer fell from a roof onto his head, struggles to communicate with his mother, Mairead, and is particularly wounded by her verbal admonishments; Mairead is despondent of her son’s immaturity and lack of direction. Jock, whose mother we learn has passed away through illness, is regularly beaten and robbed by his alcoholic father, and has taken up bicycle theft as a means of providing for himself. The film’s narrative is set in motion when Jock, the more adventurous of the pair, learns of an unsuccessful drug smuggling attempt off the coast of West Cork that resulted in bales of cocaine washing up on the shore. Jock decides to enlist his friend in travelling to Mizen Head in County Cork, the most South-Westerly point of Ireland, in the hopes of finding some of the valuable contraband. Taking inspiration from a real event, the

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washed-up cocaine essentially functions as a McGuffin, a symbol of the hope for a better life that the supposed €7 million they would gain from selling on their potential find would buy them. Conor’s initial reluctance to go on the trip, due to a previous commitment to help his mother, provokes the following response from Jock that expresses the essence of the film’s investment in inequality: “This could be the difference between us having an amazing life, or us having a really shit one.” The line, spoken as the boys are overlooking a vista of the city from which they are symbolically excluded, exhibits the affective envy I see as a central component of the second city. Jock’s sentiments, resonant on a scalar level with the city’s positioning in a civic hierarchy, are  perhaps one contributing factor in terms of the huge amount of good will toward the programme that the city displays. Arguably, the means of transport that we see Conor and Jock avail of reinscribes their diminished position within society. The “mobilities turn” in the humanities and social sciences has revealed how mobility and movement are entangled with relations of power, identity and embodiment (see Spinney 2009, 829–831 for a useful overview). Attending to these elements, we can see how the means of mobility Conor and Jock utilise, resonates with the broader signification of both their socio-economic positioning as well as their life-stage. Throughout The Young Offenders, both film and sitcom, Jock and Conor are primarily associated with bicycles. As opposed to the automobile, conceived in contemporary culture as the hegemonic form of ground transport and associated with virility, agency and masculine industry, the bicycle occupies a subordinate position. While mobility is seen as demonstrative of agency in many ways, one of the main visual tropes in The Young Offenders—repeated throughout the movie and the sitcom—that of the two boys frantically cycling throughout the city in order to avoid apprehension, is more ambivalent. The bicycle’s inherent liminality (Furness, in Spinney 2009, 826) is evident, for instance, in its ability to traverse both pedestrian and automotive spaces while not really “belonging” in either. This parallels the position of both Jock and Conor with regard to their relation to the city as well as their adolescent positioning on the border of childhood and adulthood. The repeated spectacle of Jock and Conor cycling through pedestrian spaces—popular tourist spot the English Market, for instance, or, frequently, outdoor steps throughout the city—in The Young Offenders highlights the boys’ ingenuity as well as a knowledge of local topography, but also, fundamentally, marks them as out of place. The repetitive pattern

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of chase throughout the city is also evocative of a journey without an end. In his influential account of the dynamics of space and place, humanist geographer Yi-Fu Tuan (1977) suggests that there is an inherent antithesis between mobility and place, with the latter needing time in order to settle its collective and personal meanings. In this cultural construction of working-­ class youth, mobility is suggestive of restricted agency and alienation. One difference between the feature film iteration of The Young Offenders and its later reimagining as a sitcom is a slight shift in how socio-economic class is spatialized. As I have detailed above, in the feature film, the city is portrayed in terms of centre and periphery, with the central characters symbolically excluded among other means through mise-en-scène and dialogue. The sitcom introduces the daughters of the school principal, Siobhan (Jennifer Barry) and Linda Walsh (Demi Isaac Oviawe), as love interests for Conor and Jock. The series further develops a prominent visual contrast between the estate where Jock, Conor and Mairead live, and the Walshs’ middle-class suburb. This contrast finds its most prominent expression in the 2017 Christmas special. The episode is set against a backdrop of protests in the boys’ unnamed housing estate which has caused the locals to block off the estate declaring it an autonomous zone. The protest is against a planned upgrade of housing, which the locals see as a cover for forced eviction of tenants. In an allusion to Cork’s designation in the region as the “real capital of Ireland,” as well as initiatives such as PROC, the banners held by the locals barricading off the area declare the estate the “Real Capital of Cork.” This light-hearted reference effectively presents a microcosm of the second city affect I trace in this chapter. During the episode Principal Walsh and his family end up trapped within the estate and are set upon within their car by a mob of angry locals, an overt and rather broad strokes acknowledgement of classed anxieties that is resolved in an improbable outbreak of harmony, once a recuperated Billy uses a snow machine to deliver a white Christmas to the local community. The rioting locals of the estate are simultaneously depicted as being prone to incoherent violence and having strong community values. This latter element is a common trope within Irish cinematic representations of the working class from the 1990s on, a portrayal particularly evident in the adaptations of Roddy Doyle’s Barrytown Trilogy (The Commitments [1991]; The Snapper [1993]; and The Van [1996]), and that has continued in more recent cinematic portrayals (Barton 2018, 191–192). Indeed, one episode of the second series of The Young Offenders has the two boys

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start a (short-lived) chip van business that bears more than a trace of influence from Stephen Frears’ The Van. The depiction of the estate as a lawless region and locus of middle-class fears follows on from similar tropings in British television series such as Shameless (2004–2013) and Misfits (2009–2013), which veer away from a social realist aesthetic with an attendant moral framing toward cartoonish, occasionally surreal, and carnivalesque representations of working-class life (Creeber 2009; Woods 2016). In his analysis of the aesthetics of Shameless, Glen Creeber (2009) suggests the show avoids “being reduced to an anthropological ‘social problem’… [and] allows its characters to implicitly celebrate their own culture and society” (436). The same could indeed be said for The Young Offenders, though the frequent carnivalesque excesses that characterise the show are balanced out by a fundamental decency. In some ways a focus on working-class and middle-class tensions obfuscates from broader operations of late capitalism that are bringing precarity to both groupings. Rather than these class factions participating in a zero-­ sum game, the striking levels of poverty in the north of the city demonstrate the unequal development of cities under neoliberal and global economic policies that allow for the extraction of wealth from region. As Kieran Keohane (2006) argues, developments from the nineteenth century on (from the actions of industrial philanthropists through to the tax policies of nation states) that saw workers and regions benefit directly from industry in terms of developments in housing and social cohesion declined as a globalized neoliberal extraction became the norm. Tracing this trend up to the present, and referencing Cork’s position as host to a number of pharmaceutical multinationals, Keohane concludes: In the twenty-first-century postnational constellation of globalization, this matrix of social integration and solidarity is disassembled. Pfizer’s shareholders enjoy facilities in Monaco, the Bahamas and gated enclosures in Southern California. Their children attend Oxbridge or private Ivy League, not the local university. They consume their culture in Cannes and Manhattan. Wealth is generated in Cork, and it is carried off in global capital flows. (149)

In The Young Offenders, the focus on tensions between the working and middle classes helps reinforce an abiding system of class representation which fails to capture the wider dynamics of late-capitalism wherein global firms are increasingly structurally disconnected from wealth redistribution

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practices. This may, of course, seem outside of the ambit of popular screen comedy, and, it is often left to low-budget independent documentary filmmaking to interrogate such developments, as evident in a film such as The Lonely Battle of Thomas Reid (2017). Yet, part of my argument within this chapter rests on the fact that the peripheralized cities and communities that find representation in these texts are exemplary of a wider global process tied to the workings of late capitalism. This establishes grounds of common empathy wherein the very strident assertions of local identity within a wider landscape of desolation become paradoxically a globally legible story, and, as I argue in due course, the comedic mode seems particularly adept at bridging such transnational boundaries.

Melodrama, Bromance and the Recuperation of the Lad in the Young Offenders One further means by which the global and the local intersect is through internationally legible genre conventions. As a number of scholars of Irish media and film have outlined, in jettisoning some of the ‘old themes’ associated with the project of national identity building that marked much of the indigenous filmmaking of the second half of the twentieth century (McLoone 2008; Ging 2013; Barton 2019), Irish film, and, increasingly, television, has been open to successful formulae from elsewhere, particularly culturally dominant commercial cinema and television from anglophone nations. While a number of different genres can be detected within The Young Offenders, such as the road movie and teen coming-of-age drama, perhaps most instructive are the bromance and the melodrama. The ending of the film and the narrative operations of the sitcom display many features of the melodrama, which, in Linda Williams’ reconception (2012), is more of a “pervasive mode” than a genre and can be detected across a variety of genre forms. Williams lists a number of features of the melodramatic mode: (1) the creation of suspense; (2) the drive to achieve moral legibility in relation to resolution of the suspense; (3) “the need to locate a goodness that deserves to live in a home ‘space of innocence’”; and—the quality that Williams suggests is no longer true in melodrama’s more recent forms—(4) excess- whether in terms of emotion, aesthetics, or spectacle (524–525). In The Young Offenders, the first two parts of the above schematic are related to the title and the presumed criminality of the protagonists. The film (and series) are ambivalent in

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their presentation of the two boys. The crimes depicted are generally petty: bicycle theft and criminal damage in the main. In the film this is framed within a comedically overreactive response from the police officer pursuant of the pair, a drug dealer, as well as a local violent thug who are both seeking the boys in the final third of the film. The use of voiceover is one means of securing audience empathy with two teenage boys (and occasionally their associates) from a social grouping that is commonly maligned in popular media and culture (Tyler 2013). Indeed, The Young Offenders plays on the ambivalence of its central characters’ outsider positioning throughout. The clothing of working-class youth is almost fetishized within the film, particularly in one scene at its outset (later recreated in the sitcom), when a split screen shot details the bodies of the two boys emphasizing their styling and behavioural consistencies: eyebrow shavings; a habit of ostentatious spitting; sovereign rings; gold chains; and tracksuits. With regard to the latter item of clothing, Joanne Turney (2019), drawing on Imogen Tyler’s work on the social abjection of particular populations under neoliberal cultures, suggests that “the tracksuit in the twenty-first century is a sign of anti-social activity and has become a symbol of the ‘happily’ dispossessed: rioters, thieves [and] the mass unemployed” (175). By deindividualizing Conor and Jock corporeally and sartorially, drawing on established signifiers of social deviance, the film in effect sets the stage for its own recuperation of these abjected figures. Conor’s voice is the primary means of this recuperation, suturing the audience into the events portrayed (both film and series), providing a commentary that foregrounds the moral decency of the pair, while privileging the subjectivity of the characters, counteracting the superficial uniformity of their initial presentation. A characteristic example of the voiceover as an agent of moral recuperation occurs in the finale of the first season of the sitcom (S01E03), which is set on the anniversary of the death of Jock’s mother. The boys and their girlfriends spend the day together, at one point visiting the graveyard in which Jock’s mum is buried, where the four youths deliver an acapella version of the U2 song “With or Without You.” The voiceover and indeed the wider narrative of the film and series present the maternal bond as symbolic of both vulnerability and a shared humanity. At the end of the episode we hear Conor’s voice stating the following: “I think there’s something inside everyone that connects them to their mam, in a way that they’re not connected to anyone else. Even if they wreck your head most of the time. It’s only when you picture your mam gone, that you realise

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how much you like them being around.” The voiceover accompanies Conor’s return home to show the tattoo his mother had forbade him from getting earlier in the episode, revealing the wording to be “I [heart] me mam.” An instrumental acoustic version of the U2 song plays on the soundtrack, and a tearful Mairead says “I love it” before the pair share an emotional embrace. The highly sentimental pitch of the ending is underlined by a title card at the end of the scene (and episode) that states, “Dedicated to all our Mams.” Returning to Williams’ description of contemporary melodrama, we see here how the emotional excess in evidence might be seen to be somewhat outré in the theorist’s view. Arguably, the straightforward melodrama in performance here is leavened by the coarseness of language, bodily humour and other elements of Bakhtinian ‘grotesque realism’ that populate the text—another symptom of the twin processes of abjection and moralised recuperation that characterise this comedy. Ed Power (2019), in a perceptive review in the Irish Times, notes that while the frequent comparisons made between The Young Offenders and Derry Girls are valid, “trace elements of Mrs Brown’s Boys swirl in its DNA as well.” The Dublin-­ set working-class comedy he refers to, and which I examine in detail in Chap. 6, has in some ways been associated with “left behind” populations as much as the urban populations we see associated with the estates of North Cork. This is partially due to a sense that Mrs Brown’s Boys (2011–) is an articulation of an older form of comedy with its roots in music hall and working men’s clubs, as well as the critical derision with which the comedy’s immense ratings have been met, seen by some as evidence of a metropolitan bias in the media that has an antipathy towards the “unsophisticated” regions and populations in which the show is appreciated. Bawdiness and melodramatic flourishes are characteristic of both The Young Offenders and Mrs Brown’s Boys, and despite the very different demographics the two comedies are aimed at, maternal affect, however dubiously articulated, serves to legitimate the working-class narratives central to both comedies. One of the salient aspects of The Young Offenders movie, a feature that marks it as indexing some of the societal shifts that have occurred within Ireland in the second decade of the twenty-first century, is its acknowledgement of same sex intimacy. Despite the comedy in many ways demonstrating an affinity with lad culture, which in some definitions centres on male exclusivity and hedonistic practices (Nichols 2018, 75), The Young Offenders avoids for the most part the overt homophobia and misogyny

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that often accompany such cultural manifestations. The comedy, while never compromising the heterosexuality of its central characters, acknowledges the possibilities of such desires. The exchange that overtly acknowledges same sex intimacy occurs between Conor and his mother when the two discuss Jock, of whom Mairead intensely disapproves. In his friend’s defence Conor says that he is “the only fella in school who kinda makes me feel warm.” Upon being pressed on this by his mother, Conor states that while he is not gay, “if I was … he’s the sort of person you’d like to be gay with.” The ambivalence Conor displays with regard to homosexuality is quite notable given the intense homophobia that often characterises laddish portrayals (Hansen-­ Miller and Gill 2011), a feature in ample evidence in popular forebear of The Young Offenders, British comedy The Inbetweeners (2008–2010, feature films 2011 and 2014), which similarly depicts the adventures of unruly schoolboys. In an analysis of popular “lad films” of the 1990s and 2000s, Daniel Hansen-Miller and Rosalind Gill (2011), detected within the texts, a “structural dependence upon a dynamic of homosociality and homophobia” (37). Many of the films Hansen Miller and Gill describe above, such as I Love You, Man (2009) and Wedding Crashers (2005) can be categorised as “bromance” narratives (DeAngelis 2014). In contrast to comedies depicting groups of friends such as The Inbetweeners, the bromance tends to depict an intense friendships between two males. These dyadic narratives have comprised some of the most popular comedies of the twenty-first century and the influence of the genre, and in particular the 2007 hit Superbad, can be readily discerned in the Irish comedy. Within The Young Offenders as noted, we can detect a breakdown in the structural dependence between homosociality and homophobia common to depictions of lads, opening up of a space of acknowledgement of same-­ sex intimacy. This, along with the comedy’s alignment with popular genre trends in the 2000s, resonates with wider changes in Irish society that have seen a rejection of many of the absolutist moral positions that characterised the years when Catholicism was a dominant ideological force in the life of the nation. The legalization of same sex marriage by referendum in 2015, as well as the repeal of the eighth amendment allowing for abortion in 2018, have been seen as signs of a progressive shift in Irish society and politics. A notable feature of both of these referenda was the suggestion of some politicians and business leaders that an adaptation of such a progressive policy agenda was essential in order to fashion Ireland as an attractive prospect for foreign direct investment. In effect, such overt progressive

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positioning helps in the construction of a transnationally legible Irish identity that resonates with the putative claims decrying inequality routinely made on the part of transnational corporations, even if, in reality, such overt demonstrations of liberal cosmopolitanism mask structural investments (in realms of tax avoidance and labour rights, for instance) that indicate the opposite (Nagle 2018). In The Young Offenders, through its incorporation of a highly regionalised narrative, internationally legible genre features and a progressively minded sexual politics, one can detect the same cultural logics evident in both the PROC image of Donal Óg Cusack referenced earlier as well as the public framing of recent constitutional amendments: an Ireland recalibrating its sense of self, but mindful of international perceptions.

Future Girls and Present-Day Troubles: Derry Girls and “The Real Derry Girls” The opening shots of Derry Girls (accompanied by The Cranberries’ 1992 hit “Dreams”) consist of a number of views of the titular city: a panoramic view of the city from a hilltop road in which we see a British Army armoured patrol truck in the foreground as some local male youths spray-­ paint over the “London” in a “Welcome to Londonderry” sign; a number of shots of the city’s historic walls (including one featuring a row of walking girls wearing traditional all-white first holy communion dresses and another contrasting shot depicting British soldiers on patrol); a shot of the Free Derry wall and the nearby mural of the 1969 photograph—taken at the outset of the Troubles—of a young boy in a gas mask at the Bogside riots; shots of the urban neighbourhood where Erin lives; a penultimate shot of the outside her bedroom window; finally, the interior of her bedroom. The set of images function as a shorthand reference to both the Troubles and the city itself, and the accompanying voiceover reinforces this impression: My name is Erin Quinn. I’m sixteen years old and I come from a place called Derry, or Londonderry depending on your persuasion, a troubled little corner in the North West of Ireland. It’s fair to say I have a somewhat complicated relationship with my home-town. You see the thing about living in Derry is there’s nowhere to hide. Everybody knows everybody, knows everything about everybody. And sometimes all I really want is to be simply left alone.

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The pay-off for this overly earnest and clichéd overview of Derry in the mid-1990s, the rhetorical corollary of the visual images, is Erin’s exasperated, “is that my diary?” as she wakes to the sound of her cousin reading her words aloud. The opening minute, both in words and images, concentrically moving from the outskirts of the divided city to the adolescent subjectivity of the teen ensconced in her bedroom, neatly spatializes the thematic interests of the series. As Lucy Mangan (2019), in a review of the series for the Guardian puts it, the Troubles background: “never overwhelms but simply throws into relief the ordinariness of the girls’ lives in the middle of extraordinary depths of conflict.” This focus on girls’ lives shapes the dynamics of the series in ways that are variously regionally specific but also transnational in scope. A growing body of scholarship on girls and girl cultures (see, for instance, Harris 2005; Driscoll 2002; Projansky 2014) has highlighted the role that highly mediated girlhood plays in social reproduction throughout popular culture. For Anita Harris, toward the end of the twentieth century the figure of the girl supplanted the role played by the adolescent in general in previous eras, functioning as a means of culturally navigating social transition: “Young women today stand in for possibilities and anxieties about new identities more generally” (2005, 2). Harris discerns a narrative of progress and risk in the girl, one predicated on her futurity, the trajectory of her life course encapsulated in a moment of transition. Given that the narrative of Derry Girls occurs at a pivotal time of transition in Irish society and culture, a social recalibration the ramifications of which are still somewhat unclear, it is perhaps unsurprising that the figure of the adolescent girl looms large in the popular configuration of this era through this text. As I discerned in my analysis of Moone Boy in the previous chapter, a recent historical setting often constitutes a cultural working through of contemporary anxieties. Whereas, as I argue, Moone Boy’s historical setting elided the hyper-consumerist Celtic Tiger era from the vantage point of a present marked by post-crash austerity out of keeping with those years of supposed excess, with Derry Girls the nostalgic impulse is at work to very different ends. The historical setting of the mid-1990s that Derry Girls returns us to constitutes a nostalgic view of the prospects associated with this era of change, encapsulated in the figure of the girl, herself a Janus-­ faced signifier of potential risk or possibility (see Coulter 2020 for another consideration Troubles-related media temporalities). Perhaps the most overt recognition of the violence and dangers of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and one that embodies the “at risk/can

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do” binary that Harris (2005) posits as a central signification of the girl, occurs at the close of season one (s01e06). The episode ends on a contrast: a school show catalyses a moment of solidarity among the girls and boy of the central grouping, while we see Erin’s family watch a news report of a terrorist bombing that happened in the province. The specific images of girlhood employed in this scene are worth consideration as they unite both the local and the transnational and constitute the series’ most overt engagement with the traumatic public events of the Troubles. The dramatic tension that organises this episode of Derry Girls centres on same sex intimacy and friendship. Indeed, the storyline works in a similar manner to The Young Offenders scene analysed above to align the series with a progressive outlook. The revelation that Clare is a lesbian, initially greeted with disgust by her friend Erin to whom she comes out, fractures the friendship group. Reconciliation occurs as Orla, portrayed as eccentric and naïve throughout the series, performs a “step aerobics” dance routine to the musical accompaniment of Madonna’s 1989 hit “Like a Prayer.” The ridicule and laughter that greets this performance among the schoolgirl audience provokes first Erin, then Clare, Michelle, and James to join their friend on stage dancing to the global hit single. The framing of the group dancing detaches them aesthetically, set apart on the school assembly stage. In these moments, the girls—and boy, who discursively adopts the title of “Derry girl” at the resolution of season two—are a picture of jouissance, spectacularised through framing, slow motion and the play of stage lights, all of which combine to create an impression of “luminosity,” theorised as an aesthetic/affective correlative to twenty-first century agentic girlhood (see discussion in Handyside 2019, 115–118). This moment utilises an international pop hit and demonstrates Fiona Handyside’s (2019) contention that “girlhood is produced through the paradoxical combination of local containment and transnational communities of affect” (118). That such a moment occurs in tandem with the first real portrayal of the effects of violence within the sitcom, demonstrates how Derry Girls posits girlhood as both affective respite from the masculine violence of the Troubles and as symbol of a post-Troubles futurity. The contrast between the affective exuberance of the girls and the horror of the bombing is produced through an abrupt cut from the Madonna song and youths’ awkward dancing (Fig.  3.3) to a quiet shot of Erin’s family gathering in front of the television news. The diegetic commentary of the report can be faintly heard explaining: “the device was detonated at 3pm; no warning was given.” The last few moments of the episode play

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Fig. 3.3  The finale of Derry Girls’ first season contrasts political violence with the elation of youth, as the girls and James take to the stage in an exuberant act of solidarity and friendship

out to the strains of The Cranberries’ “Dreams”—the song reprised from the opening of the series—accompanied by slow motion images of the girls and James dancing cut between the concerned faces of the adults, suggesting a generational contrast that underpins the sense that the adolescents are posited as symbolising a yet-to-be-realised societal harmony. The generational contrast that ends the first season of Derry Girls calls to mind one of the most notable pieces of writing by the journalist Lyra McKee, who was killed by dissident republicans in the Nationalist Creggan estate in Derry during a riot in April 2019. McKee, 29 years old at the time of her death, wrote, in a piece widely circulated in the weeks following the killing, the following reflection on the phenomenon of the high rate of post-Troubles suicide: “We were the Good Friday Agreement generation, destined to never witness the horrors of war but to reap the spoils of peace. The spoils just never seemed to reach us” (McKee 2017).5 Due to a number of factors, not least the shared youthful femininity of McKee and the sitcom protagonists, as well as the location, Derry Girls and the death of the journalist were inextricably linked in the public imagination in the weeks and months following the killing. A July 2019 feature in the New York Times on Derry Girls, for instance, devotes a substantial amount of copy to McKee (Jones 2019) and one might conjecture that it was the confluence of both this killing, a shocking event that recalled the violence

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of the worst years of the Troubles, and the surprise popularity of the sitcom, available to the newspaper’s US readership through streaming platform Netflix, that resulted in this high-profile report. Perhaps the most overt discursive conflation of the killing and the sitcom was a report in the flagship BBC current affairs programme Newsnight (1980–) entitled “The Real Derry Girls and the Dissidents,” broadcast in November 2019. Focusing on a group of women from the city who were trying to bring the killers of McKee, their friend, to justice, the Newsnight piece is overtly framed, as its title suggests, in recognition of the popular acclaim of the sitcom. The broadcast opens, like the sitcom, to the same Cranberries song and the views of the city likewise match the opening scenes of Derry Girls. A voiceover tells how this is the story of the “real Derry girls, who like their tv counterparts are gutsy, funny and brave” (my emphasis). Tellingly the attributes assigned to the campaigning women are congruent with components of “can do” girlhood, and the association with the hit comedy denotes participation (though on a limited scale) in an “economy of visibility” that is increasingly a key feature of popular feminism (Banet-Weiser 2018, 2–3). Both “The Real Derry Girls and the Dissidents” and the profile in The New York Times highlight the economic deprivation of the estates in Derry where Republican dissidents have emerged. Economic stagnation, coupled with ideological currents fomented in the three decades of conflict, have made these estates fertile ground for the “grooming”—as one contributor to the report deliberately phrased it—of disaffected young men who are caught up in the latest iteration of a cycle of violence. The narrative of a “left behind” community where the promises of globalisation have failed to materialise and in which members are drawn toward problematic eruptions of nationalist fervour is a common one in the twenty first century and is familiar from phenomena such as Brexit in the UK and Trumpism in the US. The generational legacy of the Troubles was McKee’s main journalistic theme, the unwavering pursuit of which ultimately led to her own untimely death, but is also a structuring element of Derry Girls given its temporal framing. The generational cohort from which “the real Derry girls” are drawn—women in their mid to late thirties—are roughly of the age-grouping depicted in the sitcom but now grown into adulthood. These are women who, as their testimonies indicate, experienced the tail end of the Troubles and the transition into a post-conflict society, a shift that, as the staggering youth suicide rates McKee (2017) reported on suggest, was and is indelibly shaped by the trauma of the preceding era.

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Alongside the conceptualisations of nostalgia developed in the previous chapter, queer theorist Elizabeth Freeman’s (2010) term “temporal drag” is productive for understanding some of the dimensions of Derry Girls’ chronological positioning. Taken together, Derry Girls and “The Real Derry Girls and the Dissidents” articulate a confused sense of thwarted generational progression. For Freeman, punning on the associations “drag” has with gender performativity, being boring, and as a signifier of temporal sluggishness, “temporal drag” can be understood as “a productive obstacle to progress, a usefully distorting pull backwards, and a necessary pressure upon the present tense” (64). The spectacle of the “real Derry Girls” presented in the report, a group that barring one member all hail from the LGBTI community (as did McKee), confronting the men of violence through symbolic actions such as leaving red hand prints on the Saoradh (the political party connected with the dissidents) office constitutes temporal drag in a number of ways. For one, the designation of the women as “girls,” though in some ways congruent with its deployment in popular culture, reinforces a sense of the temporal and behavioural incongruity the conflation of these real and fictionalised events achieves. As does the ‘drag’ of drawing attention to longstanding patriarchal power structures at work within nationalist communities at a time when the city is being celebrated through a pop cultural hit that showcases a more progressive narrative. Drawing on the work of Judith Butler, Freeman suggests rather than the excess of the gender binary that drag performances highlight, temporal drag constitutes “an excess … of the signifier ‘history’ rather than of ‘woman’ or ‘man’”(62).

Schoolgirls, Murals and Thwarting the ‘New Story’ of the City The cultural figure of the schoolgirl also constitutes a temporal incongruity in some ways: the uniform eliding the temporal differences marked by changing fashions while creating an enduring symbol of youth. Indeed, the success of Derry Girls is the most recent in a notable series of schoolgirls, both real and fictional, from the Northern Irish city to have a cultural impact. At the beginning of the Troubles in 1970 a Derry schoolgirl won the Eurovision song contest for the first time for Ireland. Rosemary Scanlon, or Dana as she was known, sang “All Kinds of Everything,” an innocent pop song seemingly full of pre-adolescent wonder at the beauty of the world when she was seventeen years old. Another performance that

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perhaps signified youth in a less innocent iteration was the appearance on RTE’s Popstars, a predecessor of The X Factor, of Nadine Coyle, later of hit pop band Girls Aloud. In a much-shared clip, the then 15-year-old was discovered to have lied about her date of birth as it revealed she was too young to take part in the show. She later achieved a high level of success as she re-enlisted in UK channel ITV’s iteration of the format Popstars: The Rivals in 2002 where she was selected to be in hit pop group Girls Aloud. Both Dana and Coyle have had their status revisited in light of Derry Girls’ popular reception. For Dana, an RTÉ documentary entitled Dana: The Original Derry Girl aired in May 2020 on both RTÉ and BBC (BBC Northern Ireland as well as arts channel BBC4) and emphasised links between the older singer and politician and the sitcom, particularly her attendance at Thornhill Grammar School, also attended by Derry Girls’ writer Lisa McGee and said to be the inspiration of the school in the sitcom. Nadine Coyle, another Thornhill alumni, whose career has flagged considerably since Girls Aloud split in 2013, has repeatedly expressed a wish to appear in the sitcom in interviews. The Derry singer has also been associated with the sitcom through a television interview in which Nicola Coughlan, one of the few members of the Derry Girls cast who is not from the North West region, prepared for her Derry Girls audition by using the notorious clip where Coyle is discovered lying about her date of birth to model her accent. One other schoolgirl whose image is indelibly linked with the city is Annette McGavigan, a 14-year-old girl who died when caught in the crossfire of a shootout between the IRA and the British Army in 1971. McGavigan’s image is captured in the 1999 mural, “The Death of Innocence.” In a city not short of harrowing conflict-related stories, this one stands out. The mural in the Bogside which depicts the girl in the school uniform she was wearing (Fig. 3.4) when she died is a testament to innocence literally caught in the crossfire. The centrality of such murals to the city’s self-image was recognised when Channel 4 commissioned a local arts group to create a mural celebrating Derry Girls (Fig. 3.5). The mural places the figure of Annette McGavigan and Derry Girls in the same discursive space and demonstrates a complex interweaving of history and representation that shapes the affective impact of the schoolgirl in these texts as well as the urban topography of the city. Perhaps the most notable antecedent of Derry Girls is Margo Harkin’s 1989 film, Hush-a-Bye Baby. A drama production of the Derry Film and Television workshop, one of the regional workshops funded by Channel

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Figs. 3.4 and 3.5  “The Death of Innocence” and Derry Girls murals show the discursive construction of the Derry schoolgirl spanning both comedy and tragedy. (Photographs: Anthony P. McIntyre)

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4 in the UK, the film follows 15-year-old Goretti Friel (Emer McCourt), as she goes from being a carefree schoolgirl to a traumatised pregnant teen aware of the repressive nature of state, family and religious constraint. Hush-a-Bye Baby was one of a number of problem pregnancy films that emerged in Irish cinema in the eighties and nineties, a set of films that, as Maria Pramaggiore (2007) characterises them: “resist the relegation of the woman as mother to silent intangibility and the erasure of women’s sexual desire by the sacrificial Madonna. [These films] present alternative narratives that view identity as a work in progress and national identity as open to negotiation” (85). When viewed alongside Derry Girls, despite the 30-years difference, the same affective modalities and symbolic referents can be identified. The earlier film similarly depicts a gang of girls navigating school and friendships with the Troubles serving as its backdrop, combining international pop hits with the bedroom cultures of ‘80s girlhood. Initially focused on the ebullience of the youthful girls, the film charts a darker course from its mid-point when Goretti discovers her pregnancy. Hush-a-Bye Baby essentially moves from a representation of “can do” girlhood to a narrative of an “at risk” girl. Derry Girls arguably avoids taking any overt political stance regarding the position of women in Northern Ireland—aside from the storyline alluded to in which Clare comes out. That said, the show has helped raise the profile of a number of social justice campaigns. As mentioned, the campaign for justice for Lyra McKee drew paratextually from the sitcom in its mediation. Additionally, after the success of the abortion referendum in the Republic of Ireland, pressure mounted regarding the extension of similar rights to the women of Northern Ireland: encapsulated in the “The North is Next” banner that was held aloft during the post-referendum celebrations in Dublin. At this point, Northern Ireland had become the only region in Ireland or the UK lacking such legislation, an anomaly that was eventually overcome through legislation passed in the UK parliament in October 2019. Media reports of Derry Girls’ actresses Siobhan McSweeney (Sister Michael) and Nicola Coughlan attending a February 2019 protest at the UK Houses of Parliament circulated widely in the press and various social media accounts of people linked to the series and McSweeney also wrote an opinion piece in the UK Metro newspaper denouncing the situation in Northern Ireland (McSweeney 2019). Hush-a-Bye Baby, in contrast to the sitcom, is a film that was overtly concerned with the rights of women on the island of Ireland, as well as the status of the nationalist community and offered a strident critique of

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nationalist masculinity. One striking aspect of the film is a recurring image of the Virgin Mary that haunts Goretti as she maintains the secret of her pregnancy. In the second series of Derry Girls a plotline involving a weeping statue of the Virgin whose tears turn out to be dog urine, perhaps suggests that post-Father Ted (1995–1998) the overwhelming power that this symbol of impossible feminine aspiration once held has been neutralised and it is now a fairly uncontroversial target (Hill 2015, 235). Derry Girls’ gentle lampooning of Father Peter (Peter Campion), the priest who ran off with a hairdresser only to return to his vocation after, according to Michelle, “she moved on,” supports this characterisation. The other, more prominent, member of the clergy in the series, Sister Michael, serves as an emotional lynchpin of Derry Girls and her tacit approval of the girls’ newspaper story acknowledging lesbianism in the school exemplifies the moderate progressiveness of the sitcom. The fact that, as alluded to above, Northern Ireland—due to ideological doxa common to both Catholicism and the dominant strands of Protestantism associated with the Unionist parties—has held a more regressive position on gay rights and the rights of women, perhaps signals that, unlike the resolute critical feminism of Hush-­ a-­Bye Baby, the sitcom assumes a moderate position reflective of the realignment of values increasingly evident in this province. More so than the figure of the schoolgirl, perhaps the most recognisable visual signifier of Derry is the Free Derry wall, prominently utilised in the marketing of Derry Girls. A white gable wall with the words “You Are Now Entering Free Derry,” written in black capital letters, the landmark originally demarcated the beginning of an autonomous zone within the city that was intermittently in existence from 1969 to 1972, excluding the Royal Ulster Constabulary and British army. The mural which, as mentioned, features in the opening section of Derry Girls, is also present in the “The Real Derry Girls and the Dissidents.” The report ends with footage of the campaigners writing “6 Months on never forgotten – RIP Lyra” at the bottom of the mural. The transnational legibility of the image was reinforced in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020, in the autonomous zone set up in Seattle, referred to as “Chaz.” A sign referencing the Free Derry wall was placed at one of the entrances to Chaz, reading “You are now entering Free Cap Hill.” The autonomous zone, whether real or imagined, can be read as a structuring fantasy of the second city. This is evident in both Derry’s continued cultural investment in the Free Derry Wall as a marker of civic identity, as well as Cork city’s various assertions of autonomy (referenced both in PROC as well as The

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Young Offenders episode detailed earlier where the boys’ estate declares itself an autonomous zone). This fantasy elevates the city beyond its containment in a putatively problematic national enclosure and as such aligns in some ways with the logics of globalization, with occasionally ambivalent results. Such ambivalence is evident, for instance in the prominent referencing of Free Derry wall within Derry Girls and its relationship with the guiding narrative of Derry’s year as UK City of Culture in 2013. As urban sociologist Peter Doak (2020b) has argued, part of the narrative of the 2013 civic year-long festival was to create a “new story” for Derry, one that moved on from the associations with the Troubles. Doak details how the new story was coupled with the regeneration of the city’s waterfront, a site privileging middle-class consumption and generic tourism, “a privileged but exclusionary space” of consumer citizenship underpinned by neoliberal ideologies (53). The emphatic foregrounding of this site throughout the year was an overt attempt to decouple the city from existing visual associations, such as the city’s famed murals. As one of the organisers noted in an interview: “I suppose like the Free Derry wall is always an image that pops up, particularly in The Guardian, and that is part of the story. But there’s lots of other stories in the city to be told as well” (Fiona Kane of the Strategic Investment Board, quoted in Doak 2020b, 54). Derry Girls’ success has once again cemented the older images of the city in the public imagination with the “temporal drag” of the celebrated mural refusing to relinquish the problematic past, even as these images are viewed around the world courtesy of contemporary transnational distribution systems and emerging global viewing protocols.

Trans/National Television Reception and Regionalised Distinction Media scholar Graham Turner (2016), in considering television’s place in the contemporary mediascape, suggests that “Television is still largely defined in its institutional and industrial location, while increasingly transnational in its commercial disinterest in national borders” (61). The reconfiguration of the trans/national Turner highlights, rather than marking nation-based analyses as a “zombie category” as some scholars had rather hastily predicted, generates increased complexities of reception. In their work on transatlantic television, Matt Hills, Michele Hilmes and Roberta Pearson (2019) concur with this view: “The transnational can

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represent less of an intrusion or disruption for contemporary (fan) audiences, than a possibility to explore and perform newly emergent cultural distinctions” (17). The two primary case studies of this chapter have a transnational presence in which these ambivalences play out, primarily through positive affirmation. This is often evident in reviews of the programmes, which are frequently at pains to stress the universality of the narratives, while listing regional specific quirks or commenting upon accent intelligibility or localised idioms. Both Channel 4 and BBC3 have been attentive to regional distinctiveness in marketing Derry Girls and The Young Offenders respectively. In the run up to Derry Girls’ first broadcast, Channel 4 issued a press release entitled “Derry Girls Glossary – Learn the Local Lingo, You Eejit!” (Channel4.com 2017), which gained a wide circulation in various news and web outlets. BBC3 commissioned an extended journalistic piece for its home website that reported on the actual conditions experienced by teenagers in Cork city and the authenticity of its depiction in The Young Offenders (Day 2019), stressing the commonalities between Cork and similar peripheral cities in the UK. As a co-production with RTE, BBC3’s input was the subject of scrutiny within Ireland with many of the initial press interviews in Irish media querying whether accents or other markers of regional distinction would be attenuated in the transfer from film to sitcom (see, for instance, Clarke 2018). Increasingly social media postings taken in their original context or gathered in aggregate articles reflect the trans/national reception of the comedies. Outside of Ireland, when Derry Girls was released through Netflix in international markets, there was a flurry of social media postings on various aspects of the programme, and Irish pop cultural websites such as joe.ie and extra.ie published multiple articles aggregating Twitter responses and positive reviews in international press under titles such as “Here’s what foreign viewers have made of Derry Girls and their takes are an absolute riot” (Moore 2018). Similar articles focus on the need of other international viewers for subtitles in order to understand the characters in Derry Girls. Other aggregate articles focus on the Cork-specific referents in The Young Offenders celebrated by local viewers, such as the moment when the boys refer to “Knocknaheeney rules” (an allusion to Northside estate in Cork) before a fight (O’Shea 2019). Such social and public media responses to the two comedies reflect the regional, national and international dynamics of contemporary media. The fact that such seemingly localised regional cultures are enjoyed internationally is often seized upon as a matter of local pride within Ireland.

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Conversely, difficulties posed by accent and regionally specific cultural reference often function as markers of a cultural distinction for non-Irish viewers who, in the case of Derry Girls, appreciatively refer, for instance, to the insights into Irish history that the sitcom allows. A common element of social media reception is the response of diasporic Irish subjects (recently departed or generationally removed) who interpret the programmes as a welcome link to their heritage. Occasionally, the challenges of this can cause an element of “unpleasure,” as might be read into the comment of one Twitter user, Khushbu Shah O’Shea, who tweeted: “Had to turn on the subtitles for Derry Girls. Obviously still not as Irish adjacent as I’d like to think” (quoted in Beresford 2018). The variety of ways that these texts can serve as a proving ground for a sense of national/local identification attests to the validity of the scholarly insights above that call attention to the complexities that portal television platforms and other transnational distribution and funding structures manifest in iterations of contemporary television.

Conclusion As I have argued in this chapter, both The Young Offenders and Derry Girls participate in a variety of ways in the positioning of Cork and Derry as second cities, an identity that is transnationally legible due in some ways to the status of these locales as peripheral urban locations, demonstrating features that are in evidence throughout much of the global North and beyond. The minoritized positions of the central characters in these series, communicated variously through age, gender and class positioning, resonate homologically with the minoritized status of the second/peripheral city and provide a further point of empathy for audiences outside of Ireland. In common with many of the other case studies in this book, developments in industrial funding models and media distribution technologies facilitated their success outside of Ireland, and in the process generating transnational audiences for these highly regionalised texts and suggesting a complexity in the consumption of Irishness both at home and abroad. Helping facilitate a transnational legibility is a tendency to acknowledge progressive identity politics as well as the incorporation of genre and aesthetic features that span globalized consumer cultures, features that seem more important than an internationally legible “unmarked”

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accent. This in turn has complicated the forms of narratives circulating in relation to Irishness, helping to undermine monolithic conceptions of the nation and indexing some of the societal and economic shifts evident within the island of Ireland in the twenty-first century.

Notes 1. Such initiatives include significant relocations from London for both the BBC (Salford Media City) and Channel 4 (Leeds) (Boyle 2018, 165–166). 2. To provide an approximate gauge of the underrepresentation of the two second cities under consideration, we can look to leading scholarly work in the realm of media and popular culture. Martin McCloone’s monograph Film, Media and Popular Culture in Ireland: Cityscapes, Landscapes, Soundscapes (2007), a book that considers the island of Ireland, provides the following number of listed entries for the four cities in its index: Dublin (23); Cork (2); Belfast (29); Derry/Londonderry (0). A similar survey of the index of Ruth Barton’s Irish Cinema in the Twenty-First Century (2019), which includes a chapter entitled “Filming Northern Ireland,” provides the following: Dublin (14); Cork (4); Belfast (3); Derry/Londonderry (0), although there is an entry for Derry Girls. 3. A recent edited collection on Irish Urban Fictions (Beville and Flynn 2018) that purports to offer exciting new theorisations of the Irish city, for instance, retains the familiar focus on Dublin (with three chapters focusing on James Joyce) and Belfast; aside from these cities, there is one chapter on Limerick and one on City of Bohane (Barry) that reads that novel’s city as a fantastical mixture of Cork and Limerick. 4. I have my Corkonian colleague Eleanor O’Leary to thank for this insight. 5. See Coulter (2019, 125–127) for a detailed analysis of the failure of the ‘peace dividend’ to materialise for the communities in Northern Ireland most severely impacted by the Troubles.

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CHAPTER 4

Transnationalism, Masculinity, and Diasporic Performativity in Irish Sport: Conor McGregor and James McClean Any consideration of popular culture on the island of Ireland would be remiss in failing to acknowledge the enormous impact of sport. In terms of television viewing numbers, for instance, the top ten highest ratings programmes in the Republic of Ireland for 2019 included seven sporting events, a trend repeated year-on-year (TAM Ireland 2020). As the primary case studies in this chapter demonstrate, sport has an ambivalent affective charge, capable of stirring up strong positive and negative feelings in athletes and audiences alike. Likewise, the nation is configured in complex ways through the highly globalised, heavily corporatized and convergent characteristics of the contemporary sports-media complex. The media construction of an elite athlete such as golfer Rory McIlroy, for instance, a world champion in his sport whose national declarations for sporting events (whether that be the UK, Ireland or Northern Ireland) are heavily scrutinised, highlights the complexities of national affiliation within the island of Ireland (Liston and Kitching 2019), but also the possibility of transcending the confines of the nation state and what might be deemed the parochial concerns it houses. As a growing body of scholarship has detailed, sport is also a crucial site for understanding the impact of migration and diaspora within and beyond Ireland. As Paul Darby and David Hassan (2008) suggest, sport has been central to the migrant experience in oftentimes contrasting ways. Sport can help ease assimilation and generate acceptance in forbidding and © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. P. McIntyre, Contemporary Irish Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94255-7_4

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unwelcoming environments, as well as facilitate a means of securing notions of selfhood, fostering “the promotion and preservation of a strong sense of ethnic pride and identity” (4). In the case of Ireland, as with other nations, this is a bi-directional process. Max Mauro (2019), for instance, has detailed the fortunes of two youth soccer teams within Dublin largely made up of the children of immigrant families. In charting the racism faced by the players, as well as the social cohesion coming together to play football provides, Mauro demonstrates the complexities of achieving a sense of “cultural belonging” for minority communities within contemporary Ireland. In the summer of 2020, as the Black Lives Matter protests in the US precipitated a long-needed cultural conversation within Ireland, many harrowing accounts of overt racism (in both professional and amateur domains) in sports emerged. Whether substantial change within Irish sporting institutions will be effected is yet to be seen, but the public airing of such painful truths highlights the fallacy of an Irish self-presentation (evident within tourism materials, FDI promotion and selected output of the national broadcaster, for instance) that downplays the significant fracture lines within the nation particularly with regard to its minority subjects (including the travelling community). In addition to notions of national belonging, sport often focalizes wider cultural and social concerns. The 2018 trial of Ulster Rugby players Paddy Jackson and Stuart Olding on charges of rape and sexual assault, for instance, was an international media sensation that, while ultimately seeing the two accused acquitted, brought to light highly offensive messages shared by the players in a WhatsApp group and ignited fierce debate across the island of Ireland regarding the patriarchal and misogynistic structures that undergird Irish sporting cultures. The trial also foregrounded issues pertaining to sexual consent and the intricacies of legal process at a time when information spreads virally through social media. For sports media scholars Neil O’Boyle and Marcus Free (2020), the Jackson and Olding case illustrates “the complex intersection of ‘old’ and ‘new’ media, the ways in which sport can crystallise issues in contemporary cultural politics, both on and off the field of play, and the relationship between representation and the political economy of sports” (14). The two primary case studies of this chapter in different ways, demonstrate the ability of sporting figures to court controversy and focalise complex questions centred on notions of national belonging, ethnic and racial identity claims and contemporary ideals of masculinity.

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In order to develop these specific case studies, a theoretical framework underpinning this analysis drawing from stardom and celebrity scholarship is introduced before the chapter goes on to consider the two sportsmen in turn. In the first case study of the chapter, I examine the career of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) fighter Conor McGregor, utilising scholarship on Irish-American ethnic subjectivities to situate the fighter in a broader representational framework that highlights how race, class and nationality are inflected through the Dubliner’s celebrity identity, as well as how this high-profile figure articulated shifting notions of Irishness in a post-crash cultural landscape. My consideration of McGregor encompasses his initial popularity within Ireland, his physicality as embodiment of a specifically twenty-first century neoliberal ideal, as well as his place within a historical genealogy that can be traced back to prominent nineteenth century fighters which provide notable parallels in terms of the fighter’s ethnic positioning within the US and the racial tensions he at times leverages to his own financial benefit. One further cultural type that I argue can be discerned within McGregor’s mediated construction include the hip hop mogul of the 1990s/2000s. The section of the chapter devoted solely to McGregor ends with a detailed consideration of a profile of the fighter that appeared in popular US sports publication ESPN: The Magazine, the reception of which, I argue, highlights the divergence in public reception of the fighter in Ireland and the US. The second case study that comprises this chapter focuses on the various controversies that have seemingly dogged the career of professional footballer James McClean. While having nowhere near the level of global renown McGregor has attained, the Derry footballer has served as a cultural lightning rod for several issues pertaining to Irish diasporic identity. Whereas McGregor is primarily located in the US, McClean plays his club football in the UK, in England, a fact that is of particular importance given the player’s unabashed refusal to tone down his Northern nationalist identity, predominantly through social media–an identity that is strongly shaped by the often-painful legacy of British dominion in Ireland. I provide an overview of McClean’s career, detailing the various controversies in which he has been involved. Notably, these include his ongoing refusal to wear a Remembrance Day poppy; his polarising position on declaring for the Republic of Ireland national football team despite representing Northern Ireland as a youth player; some notable social media postings that highlight tensions involved in diasporic assimilation; and his representation within mainstream elements of the British media. Uniting all of

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these elements is McClean’s performance of what I term “diasporic non-­ assimilation.” Irish diasporic identities are, of course, pluralistic and encapsulate a range of attitudes toward the diasporic home nation. Diasporic non-assimilation signifies a reluctance to modify opinions and behaviours shaped by one’s home in order to gain acceptance and avoid conflict upon relocation. While this is obviously a trait that can exist to a greater or lesser extent in diasporic subjects, and can, of course, strengthen or attenuate significantly in different social contexts, McClean is remarkably consistent in his performance of non-assimilation as I demonstrate, and the implications of this position animate this portion of the chapter.

Sporting Celebrity, Masculinity and Nation In developing an understanding of the wider significance of both McGregor and McClean it is necessary to situate sporting celebrity within the landscape of contemporary popular culture. Scholarship on sporting celebrity has developed from and extended earlier writings on stardom that emanated from film and media studies. Key to the understanding of how stardom and celebrity might be understood is Richard Dyer’s (1979) term “structured polysemy” (3), which he offered to explain how figures subject to intensive public focus can be interpreted in different ways by different audiences, suggesting that the star often encapsulates ideological tensions within society. While Dyer’s work focused on studio-era classical Hollywood, other foundational work on stardom emphasised its tendency to cross into other cultural realms. In this vein, Christine Gledhill (1991) describes the star as “a social sign, carrying cultural meanings and ideological values, which express the intimacies of individual personality, inviting desire and identification; an emblem of national celebrity, founded on the body, fashion and personal style; a product of capitalism and the ideology of individualism, yet a site of contest by marginalised groups” (xiii). Gledhill’s description conveys the semiotic richness of the star/celebrity and in this chapter, as we will see some aspects of stardom are foregrounded in each of the figures considered. Thus, while fashion and personal style are key elements of McGregor’s self-presentation, for instance, this isn’t foregrounded in McClean’s public persona. Yet to a greater extent than McGregor, the footballer positions himself in interviews and his own media output as emblematic of a marginalised and even persecuted group identity.

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David Andrews and Steven Jackson (2001), themselves building on the work of sociologists Leo Braudy and P.  David Marshall, emphasise the emblematic nature of sports celebrities as well as their abilities to channel cultural trends and anxieties. Drawing a distinction between sportsmen and women and the more familiar figure of the film or television star, the authors point to a perceived heightened authenticity that the former derive due to their status as “real individuals participating in unpredictable contest [with] … the seeming visceral, dramatic immediacy of the sport practice provid[ing] the sports celebrity with an important veneer of authenticity, that sets him or her apart from celebrities drawn from other, more explicitly manufactured, cultural realms” (8). For both McClean whose tendency to “throw his body on the line” in his sporting performance is often remarked upon (McDonnell 2012), and McGregor, whose physicality is the subject of much media attention, such claims to authenticity are key to their cultural relevance and purchase. Arguably, the physical dimension of their public presence acts as ballast that serves to broker acceptance of (in some quarters), or at least establish a platform for, their controversial actions outside of the sporting arena. In terms of sporting celebrity, the most influential exemplar of Irish masculinity of the contemporary era is perhaps former footballer Roy Keane. Currently enjoying a career rebirth as an antagonistic pundit after a chequered management career, the former Manchester United and Republic of Ireland player shares with the two case studies for this chapter a “hard” masculine persona built upon a foundation of sporting aggression, as well as a career that has largely taken place outside of Ireland. Keane’s most successful playing years in the English premier league (1990–2005) largely overlapped with the Celtic Tiger boom period in Ireland. Free (2010) has traced how during these years Keane was variously constructed in Irish media accounts as “a figurative and literal embodiment of inexorable social economic and cultural change” and also a “symbolic means of expressing nuanced, gendered and competing varieties of Irish identity” (193). Such nuanced depictions relate to Keane’s regionalised identity as a Cork-born sportsman, as well as his position as an emigrant success-story. Free’s accounts of sporting celebrity within Ireland (including Keane, as well as boxer Katie Taylor [Free 2015]) are of value for the insights they provide into how sporting figures effectively function as vehicles for media narratives that focalize a wide range of concerns both within the nation and beyond, and this approach informs the analysis that animates this chapter.

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Within Ireland, sport has been central to nation-building. In particular, the cultural nationalism movement of the late nineteenth century mobilised sporting masculinities to redefine Ireland as a “modern, masculine nation” (Ging 2013, 25) in a manner that is still discernible today. The project had been precipitated through the establishment of the Gaelic Athletic Association in 1884, which set out to promote a specific ideal of Irish manhood through the promotion and codification of indigenous sports (McDevitt 1997). As Patrick McDevitt (1997) argues, this was an attempt to counter the colonial image of the feminised Celt, while instilling Irish indigenous sports at the heart of Irish communities and culture (see also McElligott 2016). The GAA became closely aligned with the revolutionary struggle and was one of a number of organisations banned by the British government in 1918 during the tensions that presaged the Irish war of independence. The first “Bloody Sunday” of 1920, which saw thirteen civilian spectators and a player killed by crown forces at a GAA match in Croke Park in Dublin attests to the longstanding associations between sport, violence and the nascent state. McGregor’s strategic invocations of an Irish colonial past establishes continuity with the reformulation of Irish masculinity that took place in this earlier era, but in a manner legible to US audiences. In particular, McGregor invokes the “fighting Irish” motif, a stereotype of the Irish that migrated from the “old country,” and was utilised in the US to celebrate both military and sporting achievement. McClean’s overt references to the Troubles and earlier revolutionary struggle (as shall be examined in more detail below) seem less opportunistic and more of an expression of a Northern nationalist identity that goes against the grain of some of the more sanitised “post-Troubles” narratives that have gained cultural traction in recent years, as I detailed in the previous chapter. Rather than a means of ingratiation to a (significant section of) the host nation, as we might interpret McGregor’s overtly nationalistic proclamations in the US, for McClean such invocations signify a stubborn refusal to attenuate one’s diasporic identity. Much of the scholarship listed suggest ways in which sporting celebrity symbolises the nation, as well as tensions within nationality. In McClean’s case, as we consider someone technically born in the UK and within the island of Ireland who can claim Irish citizenship, but currently resides, one presumes, in the Midlands of England, some of those tensions are notably pronounced. The footballer’s celebrity image is built upon an undeniable sporting prowess but is also clearly inflected by national and regional histories, as well as the protocols and technological infrastructures of

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contemporary media environments. McGregor similarly draws upon an overt nationalistic symbolic repertoire and is self-aware in positioning himself as a multi-mediated twenty-first century media construct. With his social media presence, sartorial exuberance, self-funded autobiographical documentaries and multiple promotional and entrepreneurial ventures, the fighter, more than most sportsmen at his level of fame in the contemporary era, shows an overt concern with the circulation of images. As such, an analysis of these sportsmen helps enrich our understanding of the complexities of contemporary Irish identities at a time when the reach of sports media is stronger than ever while serving as a conduit for competing narratives of national and regional identity.

Career Overview: Conor McGregor Between the years of 2013 and 2018, McGregor, a mixed martial arts fighter and sometime boxer from Crumlin in South Dublin, held the world in thrall with his combination of breathtaking fighting prowess and his no less spectacular gifts of braggadocio and self-promotion. At the time, the Irish nation was still coming to terms with an economic upheaval that severely recast Ireland’s position and reputation on the world stage, significantly undermined notions of national sovereignty, and ushered in an era of austerity whose repercussions are still being felt over a decade later. McGregor’s confidence and repeated successes provided a compelling contrast to the downtrodden atmosphere of those times. With his ability to successfully end a fight by knocking out an opponent within 13 seconds, as evidenced in his knock-out of José Aldo in December 2015, as well as his tendency to drape himself in the Irish flag when celebrating his wins, the fighter figuratively put Ireland back on the world stage. His phenomenal success is matched by his self-belief and arguably the athlete’s outspoken, triumphalist demeanour is one feature that in tandem with his relentless self-branding marks him as a strikingly exceptional figure in the realm of Irish sports. McGregor’s accomplishments in the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), the mixed martial arts organization where the fighter came to prominence, are unparalleled. The fighter at one point held two titles (lightweight and featherweight) and was a headline draw in four of the five most lucrative pay-per-view sales for the sporting promotions company where he came to prominence (Jabbar 2020). A November 2016 fight with Eddie Alvarez, an event held in Madison Square Garden, New York,

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broke the record for gate receipts in that storied venue (Cole 2016). His lucrative MMA career was subsequently overshadowed, at least in monetary terms, by his boxing match with Floyd Mayweather Jnr., reported to have earned the Irishman in excess of $80 million, placing the athlete at number 18 in the Forbes 2018 celebrity earnings list (Forbes 2018). At the time of writing, McGregor occupies three of the top ten pay-per-view fights of all time (Boxing and MMA), only outstripped by Mayweather’s four (Dawson 2020). After the Mayweather fight, he returned to the UFC, losing to Khabib Nurmagomedov (October 2018), and winning a fight against Donald Cerrone in January 2020, and losing to Dustin Poirer twice in 2021 (the second time through doctor stoppage due to a leg injury). The post-Mayweather years were also marked by several incidents outside of sport that have significantly tarnished the fighter’s reputation. These include an assault on an older man in a Dublin bar for which the fighter was fined €1000, and three allegations of sexual assault (two of which had charges dropped and one is still ongoing at the time of writing). In June 2020, McGregor announced his retirement from fighting, though this was received with a degree of scepticism in some quarters due to a previous claim to the same effect in March 2019 that proved false.

Post-Celtic Tiger Recessionary Culture, Neoliberal Logics and McGregor’s Emergence It is hard to underestimate the relevance of McGregor’s class positioning in any analysis of the fighter. In one of the first major journalistic profiles of McGregor, appearing in UK newspaper The Guardian in 2015 (McRae 2015), the fighter’s working-class background is highlighted in references both to his earlier status as a trainee plumber and the fact that he was on social welfare benefits just three years prior to the interview. This was a standard detail for pieces on McGregor both internationally and in domestic coverage. In the Guardian article McGregor talks about growing up in Crumlin, a working-class area of south Dublin, and how he first started MMA as a means to defend himself in a rough area. In his social media postings and other endeavours McGregor continually evokes his working-­ class roots as a means of highlighting the extent of his success. For instance, if we consider Twitter posting from 2016, we can see the fighter allude to his Dublin background. A caption written alongside an image of his partner Dee Devlin outside of a luxury mansion reads: “From the housing

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estates to the private estates!” (@theNotoriousMMA, Aug 16th 2016). When McGregor launched his own brand of whiskey in 2018, he named it (after failing to secure “notorious” due to copyright issues) Proper No. 12 after the area code encompassing Crumlin, Dublin 12. (The fighter sold his majority stake in the brand to Proximo spirits in April 2021 for $150 million.) This urban background is continually evoked by McGregor; It functions rhetorically as both the site of his strength and a reminder of how far he has come, both financially and in his globe-trotting career physically. As the career overview of the previous section as well as the fighter’s own postings suggest, one of the main metrics of McGregor’s success is the amount of money he has generated. This is not to diminish his impressive win-rate, which as of July 2021 stands at twenty-two wins and six losses in the UFC and one loss in professional boxing. However, judging by the sheer number of social media messages the fighter posts celebrating his own affluence, McGregor himself seems to deem the material accumulation of wealth as perhaps the most important indicator of success. As alluded to earlier, McGregor established a public profile in the post-Celtic Tiger era. At this time a public narrative that “we all partied” (famously uttered by minister Brian Lenihan when pushed to defend his government’s actions in the wake of the crisis) gained traction, mainly as a means of establishing a collective responsibility for the financial recklessness of elites in the realms of banking and politics that contributed to the devastating extent of the fiscal crisis in Ireland (Negra and McIntyre 2020, 74). This move to recast market and systematic failures as the shortcomings of an aggregated citizenry, and in the case of the banking bailout, the redistribution of the results of corporate negligence onto the state and the taxpayer, characterises the neoliberalised and individualist ideologies that permeate contemporary life in Ireland in often contradictory ways. McGregor’s emergence as working-class success story and cheerleader for financial extravagance and an extreme form of self-branding cast him as a prominent and ambivalent figure when set against the backdrop of austerity. Crucial to any consideration of McGregor in these years was his enormous popularity with a younger generation of sports fans disproportionally impacted by the economic downturn. The post-crash years saw the return of economic migration on a level not experienced within Ireland since the 1980s, particularly for those in their 20s whose number within the state fell by just under a quarter in the decade after the 2008 crash

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(Negra et al. 2018, 7). With arguably the most lionised sporting event in Irish popular culture, the “Italia 90” soccer world cup, beyond the living memory of this cohort, McGregor’s winning streak of the 2010s constituted a spectacle of Irish world-beating sporting achievement that provided an affective source of buoyancy during those grim years. Indeed, one feature on McGregor for Vice Magazine, by Irish sports journalist Peter Carroll (2015), connects both the financial crisis and the generation coming of age in the worst years of austerity by heralding the Dubliner as “An icon for Ireland’s forgotten generation,” stating: He is the success story that his generation wanted to be. He is self-made, self-sufficient and he literally punches, kicks, knees and elbows his way through every obstacle that is put in front of him.

This suggestion that self-reliance is a key quality for the generational cohort referred to is perhaps unsurprising given the fact that so many of those impacted took it upon themselves to leave the state to find work in the years following the crash. As we shall see detailed below, McGregor’s mediated construction reiterates key motifs of self-reliance and transnational and well as economic mobility, qualities that no doubt resonated with a generational cohort compelled in many cases into economic migration. One overt if curious linkage between McGregor and the recession was an attempt by some of the fighter’s fans to have his image placed on the Irish one-euro coin. Though widely dismissed, the number of signatures on the petition meant that it had to be considered in the Oireachtas (the Irish legislature). Perhaps unsurprisingly, McGregor himself was a big fan of the idea. In one notable social media posting featuring an image of himself wearing sunglasses imprinted on the coin, McGregor wrote, “The boom is BACK baby!!! #FucktheRecession” (@thenotoriousMMA, Jan 13, 2016). Marking perhaps the height of McGregor-mania within Ireland, a public feeling that has since receded considerably, the associations the fighter draws between his own image and a revolt against the austerity of those times perhaps encapsulate this contradictory moment in Irish public life. The garish and brash swagger of the young Dubliner posed an affective antidote to the austerity-inflected public atmosphere of those years for sections of the population. McGregor’s primary globalized platform through these years, the pay-­ per-­view fights accessible in many countries around the world, were key to

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his initial popularity with these youthful Irish audiences at home and abroad. The fact that such broadcasts were available around the world, and on platforms that evaded the gatekeeping tendencies of establishment Irish media, created the conditions for McGregor to develop a niche following at home and among the diasporic Irish, while he amassed an international level of renown that few Irish sports figures have ever achieved. The reluctance of mainstream Irish media to take to the fighter was evident when he won the RTÉ Sportsperson of the Year award in 2017. It was common for established sports pundits to dismiss the legitimacy of the fighter as well as the UFC. Former footballer and Irish media veteran Eamon Dunphy, for instance, writing in the Daily Star, opined that it was a “shameful” that a footballer such as Robbie Brady was overlooked for the award, suggesting RTÉ was jumping on a bandwagon due to McGregor’s popularity with youth audiences (Redmond 2016). McGregor’s domestic popularity was communicated through male-­ oriented pop culture websites such as joe.ie during these years, although, once his impact on popular culture was hard for the establishment Irish press and television to ignore, particularly in the run up to the Mayweather fight, and various stories and profiles on the fighter saturated the Irish media. The specific generational context for McGregor’s iconicity in contemporary Irish sports can be detected in an advertisement he made as part of Budweiser’s “Dream Big” campaign. The 2016 advert was part of a longstanding marketing campaign in which Budweiser departed from more conventional beer advert strategies in order to create a campaign that resonated with a public experiencing considerable economic turbulence. Crystalizing many of the ideological underpinnings of the sports star, the 40-second advert starts with the fighter walking the streets of Crumlin. As McGregor strolls the setting segues from Ireland to the US, as he turns a corner in Dublin and is suddenly striding through a multi-ethnic Los Angeles. McGregor is heard throughout the advert in voiceover: Never give up on your dream; be your own inspiration – a beacon of self-­ belief. Keep proving others wrong. If your dream doesn’t scare you, it’s not big enough; so, dream as big as you dare.

The aphoristic script is akin to many of McGregor’s pronouncements on social media and in interviews, displaying an overarching emphasis on selfreliance and overcoming obstacles through willpower. The overall

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message of the advert also resonates with sociologist Jennifer M. Silva’s (2015) insights into what she terms the “neoliberal mood economy.” Examining the lives of young working-class people in the US during some of the most acute years of the post-crash recession, she found that common responses to material deprivation and the withdrawal of social safety nets among the subjects she interviewed was not to understand that many of their misfortunes had roots in systemic failure or seek to identify solutions through the collective bargaining practices that obtained in earlier eras, but to locate any failings within themselves. Silva identifies in these youths “a worldview that conceives of rights in terms of ‘I’s’ rather than ‘we’s,’” and concludes that “the cultural logic of neoliberalism resonates [for these subjects] at the deepest level of the self” (18). McGregor in some ways constitutes the other side of the coin, a self-made man who, should you believe his own hype, has risen above all obstacles through an inflexible self-resolve. Through the example of McGregor and others like him who propound intensively individualist ideological tropes of success tied to self-will, we see the discursive reinforcement of a prevailing neoliberal ideology. The advert also revisits the trope of Irish males in transit that Diane Negra (2013) identified across a range of television adverts as signifying the revitalization of beleaguered Irish male subjectivities in those recessionary years. McGregor’s smooth segue between Crumlin and Los Angeles in the advert again reinscribes the Dublin neighbourhood as site both of McGregor’s authenticity and strength and something that has to be transcended in order for him to succeed. While McGregor is foregrounded throughout the short advert, the background figures are key to his presentation. In the Crumlin section he is greeted by a neighbourly older (white) man walking his dog. As he walks the Los Angeles streets, he is scrutinised in a less friendly manner by a group of men of different (predominantly non-white) ethnicities who stop their basketball game and stare warily while McGregor strides on with purpose (Fig. 4.1). The section complies with Negra and Yvonne Tasker’s (2019) observation that “(T)he representation of mobile white men contrasts markedly with the figuring of communities of color and particularly black men as restive, policed populations associated with urban malaise and economic and cultural stagnation” (116). The racial antagonisms that animate much of the fighter’s rhetoric, which I examine below, are subtly evident in the advert, as is a symbolic conquering of space, again a recurring motif in the fighter’s self-presentation.

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Fig. 4.1  McGregor’s “Dream Big” advertisement effects a conquering of space as the fighter seamlessly transitions from Crumlin to California

Corporeal Metaphors, Self-Regulation and Hyper-Consumerism The invocation to “dream big” in the advert is part of what I would argue was a demotic element to the fighter’s mediated image at the time, the suggestion that “you too” could be the success that McGregor is with the requisite amount of will power. The physique of the athlete contributed to this structure of empathy. Standing at just 5 foot 8 inches and weighing 12 stone, McGregor is not so outlandishly muscular that he connotes a physical unattainability. Film scholar Michael DeAngelis (2016) claims that in a contemporary moment where recreational fitness has never been so popular, attainability is one of the key identificatory dynamics in star audience relations and McGregor’s popularity would seem to comply in part with this assessment. Linking such shifts in physical ideals to the increasing demands of the contemporary neoliberal workplace, DeAngelis makes the point that: “(T)he defined contours of the firm, lean post-millennial male celebrity body are contours that render ‘definition’ more readily attainable in a culture that places significant demands upon what constitutes ‘productive’ use of one’s already limited ‘free time’” (DeAngelis 2016, 199). Certainly, associated trends such as the explosion in popularity of wearable

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tracking devices that increasingly quantify the self and promote optimisation of one’s physical activity, speak to a compulsion for subjects to self-­ regulate their own performance in ways that accord with McGregor’s ethos of self-advancement and his attainable physicality. While prominent stars such as Dwayne Johnson attest to the fact that the hyper-muscular hard body that was a cultural mainstay of previous eras has not gone away, its cultural centrality has been side-lined somewhat by the more attainable lean body of the 2000s and 2010s. With muscular excess no longer serving as the ideal, the notion of productivity in relation to effort expended gives a clue as to the neoliberal underpinnings of contemporary fitness regimes. In McGregor’s case, the fact that, as indicated previously, he can end a fight in thirteen seconds with one well-executed punch, underlines the sense of the fighter as a model of ideal selfhood for the contemporary era: maximum impact attained through the bare minimum of expenditure. Sociologists Anthony Elliot and John Urry (2010) argue that the neoliberal era compels “the recasting of the self in terms of flexibility, adaptability and instant transformation” (7). It is in this context that the lean sculpted body with its short-term rewards makes cultural sense. Media scholar Jamie Hakim (2019) suggests that such developments in male corporeality point to “shifts in the configuration of contemporary hierarchies of power that have occurred since 2008  in which members of a social group that was historically able to use their minds for the purposes of value-creation is now increasingly having to rely on their bodies” (239). McGregor capitalized on this trend relatively early in his career in 2016 marketing his own “The Mac Life F.A.S.T.  Workout Programme,” and in part one of the main venues for his celebrity has been the various health and fitness magazines that are ancillary to the contemporary fitness boom.1 In the post-Celtic Tiger era in Ireland as Free and Clare Scully (2018) have perceptively argued, the post-crash public sphere was saturated with corporeal metaphors which discursively rationalized onerous cutbacks associated with fiscal austerity. In these years nationalist and neoliberal discourse intersected through injunctions favouring “the trimming of needless ‘fat’ in pursuit of ‘leaner’ government and a ‘competitive’ economy [in which] Ireland’s exceptionally low corporate tax rate (frequently claimed as ‘ours’) was deemed untouchable” (309). The persistence of such metaphors and attendant affects of shame and guilt are persistent in Irish popular culture as Free and Scully’s reading of reality fitness shows such as RTÉ’s Operation Transformation (2008–) attests.

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Such corporeal metaphors are also a recurring motif in McGregor’s self-presentation and align with many of the ideological currents of this era. For instance, in what McGregor described as one of his lowest professional moments, we see a psychic process of hubris/shame and a posited causal connection to corporeal fatness in evidence that bears notable similarities to the tropes Free and Scully detect on a national level. The fighter had agreed to go up one weight division from lightweight to welterweight to fight the American Nate Diaz in March 2016. Among other things McGregor felt a lack of hunger both physical and, as a knock-on effect, figurative was to blame for the defeat. The fighter himself explained it as follows: I entered that last fight full. I was full in every sense. My plate was full, my belly was full. That’s not why we fight. We originally fight for food, to eat. We fight hungry. The birth of fighting is to eat. So, I’m happy with the lessons learned. I feel like my gut has been emptied again, like I am hungry again. (Ain 2016)

While the pseudo-scientific evolutionary reasoning on display here is somewhat dubious the incident does highlight one of the central contradictions to McGregor’s persona: that is his paradoxical encapsulation of an extreme form of bodily self-regulation and a remarkably pronounced hyper-consumerism redolent of the most notorious extravagances of the Celtic Tiger era.

Historical Precedents, Social Unrest and the Sports Media Complex McGregor has a number of notable antecedents in (Irish-)American sporting history and two of them in particular constitute a nexus of nation, race, class and media that obtains in modified form in the contemporary era. One of the earliest of these figures was son of Irish immigrants John L. Sullivan (1858–1918), a Boston fighter, whose braggadocio and showmanship were evident from an early stage in his career, when he started out offering fifty dollars to any man who could last four rounds with him. Sullivan’s career spanned boxing’s transition from bareknuckle fights (an illicit scene largely associated with Irish communities) to a prestigious and lucrative sporting spectacle beloved of the urban working classes (Welky 1998). As sports scholar Michael T. Isenberg claims, Sullivan was “the first

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to take individual sporting celebrity from the neighbourhood to the nation [and] to take boxing from the back alley and gutter into the urban arena” (Isenberg 1994, 209). With regard to ethnic identity, Sullivan’s rise to public acclaim can be seen marking the increased acceptance of the white Irish as an acceptable American identity formation, “becoming white” in Noel Ignatiev’s (1995) well-known formulation. It also constitutes an early instance of Irish-American masculinity as synecdoche for the American working class with which much later figures such as McGregor align. The legitimization of boxing in these years was partially due to Sullivan’s popularity as well as the promotional efforts of Belfast-born publisher Richard Kyle Fox (1846–1922). Fox, the editor of proto-tabloid The Policeman’s Gazette, had pivoted the fortunes of the newspaper through a combination of sensationalist crime tales, sexually provocative stories and images, and an unwavering support for prize fighting (Reel 2001; Welky 1998). Through a series of ever grander title fights through the 1880s, when Sullivan was dominant, and the introduction of various prize “belts,” Fox revolutionised boxing. In the process he helped boost the circulation of his weekly paper to averages of around 150,000 at its peak, with special issues, such as those reporting on major prize fights selling up to 500,000 (Welky 1998, 79). The public popularity of Sullivan, in particular, whom the Gazette’s various “champions” repeatedly failed to best, guaranteed boosted circulation numbers, despite the longstanding antipathy between the fighter and the publisher/promoter. This sporting era saw huge attendances at fights in venues such as New York’s Madison Square Garden, where more than a century later another braggart showman, McGregor, would take part in the November 2016 fight that saw him crowned the UFC’s first dual-weight champion. McGregor’s similarities with Sullivan, whose dynamic with Fox has notable parallels with the Dublin fighter’s often antagonistic mutual-dependence with UFC promoter Dana White, include the occasionally erratic behaviour common to the two fighters, as well as their class positioning and ostentatious materialism (Isenberg 1994, 209). Additionally, both fighters were at their peak at a time when the sports they represented were vying for legitimacy. Just as Fox leveraged the popularity of Sullivan and the reach of his publication into the male-centric spaces of saloons and barber-shops to grow the sport of boxing and move it from the social margins to mainstream popularity in legitimate venues, so White did something similar with his brand of mixed martial arts. The

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sport which grew in popularity from the 1990s on was often deemed barbaric and medical professionals, as well as politicians, repeatedly called for it to be banned. The UFC made rule modifications to better secure fighter safety and lobbied extensively to be sanctioned in Nevada in 2001, a crucial step in the sport’s journey to legitimacy. The development of a reality television hit, The Ultimate Fighter (2005–2018) further secured the financial viability of the sporting franchise. McGregor, through his showmanship and winning ways in the 2010s, was a major factor in boosting the pay-per-view subscriptions that had earlier allowed the UFC to bypass gatekeeping television networks. The UFC in these years established a customer base upon which the promoter built an expanding multi-media empire encompassing, among other things, video games, web publishing, and a subscription-based digital platform (McClearen 2017, 3225). McGregor was at times openly resentful of the fact that the value of the UFC (owned by White and a number of early investors largely consisting of celebrity figures such as Conan O’Brien, Maria Sharapova and Mark Wahlberg) was rising considerably due to his star presence and spoke out at many interviews demanding a share of the equity (Raymond 2017). In many ways McGregor’s competitiveness and hunger for financial reward outside of the MMA octagon (later boxing ring) underpins his personification of neoliberal selfhood. McGregor’s relentless pursuit of financial gain reached its apotheosis in the “money fight” with Floyd Mayweather Jr. This bout, as I detail below, was characterised by an ill-tempered and racially charged promotional tour in which each of the fighters badmouthed the other in four cities spanning North America and Europe (Los Angeles; New  York; Toronto; and London). The fight has a distinct historical precedent: African American Jack Johnson’s bout with Caucasian fighter Jim Jeffries in 1910. Renowned for originating the term “the great white hope,” in reference to Jeffries, the fight was framed in no uncertain terms as a clash that would see honour restored to white American masculinity after the world heavyweight boxing title was taken by a black man for the first time. A number of earlier fighters, including Sullivan, refused to “cross the colour line” and fight an African American (Isenberg 1994, 209). The author and then sports reporter Jack London, who made no secret of his racial preferences, called on the retired Jeffries to “emerge from his alfalfa farm and remove that smile off Johnson’s face” when Johnson won the title in 1908 (Rozen 2010). Again, in this instance, we see the confluence of major sports, technological and entrepreneurial endeavour in the realm of media. Dubbed the

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“fight of the century,” twelve companies formed a syndicate to produce a film that would enable viewers around the world to witness the fight, investing in improved camera technology that would better capture the historic event. Box office receipts from the movie were estimated to reach one million dollars (from an investment of $200,000), huge sums of money for the time (Orbach 2010, 274). This potential yield was, of course, predicated on a Jeffries win that never materialized. As legal scholar Barak Orbach (2010), reflecting on the aftermath of Jeffries’ defeat, describes it: “Johnson’s victory over the great white hope shook the nation, prompted deadly racial riots throughout the country, and led to a massive, decentralized wave of censorship of boxing films” (276). Media scholar Anna McCarthy (1997) has shown how the Jeffries-Johnson fight might also be understood as a precursor of live televisual fight nights, a genealogy that can be traced through theatre television, cable television pioneers such as HBO, right up to the pay-per-view fights from which McGregor has amassed so much of his wealth. A large screen relaying telegraph reports of the Johnson-Jeffries fight in illuminated nine feet tall letters was set up in a Chicago South Side auditorium by the black newspaper The Defender. This innovation allowed the African American boxing fans of the city to come together, as McCarthy details it, “provid[ing] seemingly immediate, collective access to an otherwise inaccessible, racially charged spectacle” (314). The McGregor-Mayweather bout didn’t generate the legal entanglements and widespread public disorder of its 1910 forebear. However, it can be seen as a prescient social barometer for a nation that in three years’ time, in the summer of 2020, saw widespread protests and civil unrest throughout the US (and indeed beyond) as part of the Black Lives Matter protests that followed the death of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police.

The Money Fight: Racialized Sporting Spectacle in the Trump Era As suggested above, it is tempting to read the McGregor-Mayweather fight through the lens of the protests that ignited across the US and beyond in the summer of 2020. Certainly, both occurred within the presidency of Donald Trump, a time when sport’s well-established propensity to precipitate debates centred on complex societal issues became acute (Andrews 2019). In sports as diverse as American football, women’s

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soccer, NASCAR racing and gymnastics, social fissures became topics of public debate, often stoked by the social media postings of the US president. American football quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s “taking of the knee”— kneeling with one knee in protest at racial police brutality during the playing of the national anthem—was a notable catalyst for a series of public interventions in sports arenas throughout the US. Instead of providing a respite from a fractious public sphere, sporting spectacle was increasingly an arena in which the deep wounds of this nation were exposed. As Victoria E. Johnson (2019) argues, sport is the foremost site for the expression of post-racial ambivalence in the US. That is, sport both makes claims to be an ultimate “colour-blind” meritocratic endeavour: only the fastest, fittest, most gifted sports professional can make the grade; at the same time, discursive constructions of sports players of colour through popular media are often racially coded in terms which subtly diminish the work rate and intelligence of non-white athletes (154). It was in this context that the overt racism on display in the run up to the Mayweather-­ McGregor “money fight” might be understood. However, as historical antecedents highlighted in the preceding section demonstrate, boxing has a chequered history of capitalizing on racial and ethnic rivalries in order to generate hype and sell tickets. The racial coding manifest in the discursive construction of other sports is a pale reflection of the overt race-baiting, homophobia and misogyny on display during McGregor and Mayweather’s promotional tour. One commentator wrote of the tour that it signalled boxing as, “a warped and backward dimension of the sports world where racism, sexism and the ugly underbelly of American hate is strategically showcased to generate interest and sell tickets” (Beydoun 2017). In McGregor and Mayweather (nicknamed “money” due to his extravagant spending), boxing had produced two avaricious showmen more than willing to peddle to the baser instincts of the sport in order to secure a lucrative pay-out. The degree of offensiveness across the whole of the pre-fight promotional tour was pitched quite high from the outset. Perhaps the most inflammatory remarks came from McGregor at Los Angeles’s Staples Centre at the first promotional event of the tour. McGregor, seeing his upcoming opponent shadowboxing, mimicked throwing cash at the boxer taunting, “dance for me, boy.” The term “boy” is significantly loaded when used against black men. Legal scholar and cultural critic Khaled A.  Beydoun (2017) wrote of McGregor’s usage of the term, that it

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“conjures up imagery of slavery, Jim Crow and the residual racism still prevailing in the United States” and functioned as a de facto substitute for the N-word. In the face of mounting criticism over his usage of the term, McGregor doubled down, stating that he himself was black “from the waist down” making a sexual gesture to secure the racist stereotype. The fighters also incorporated misogynistic and homophobic rhetoric into their trash talk, referring to each other as “bitch” throughout the campaign, while in the London event Mayweather branded McGregor a “faggot.” The promotional tour was merely the most high-profile example of McGregor’s marshalling of racially inflammatory language in order to both denigrate opponents and bolster his fan-base. In promotional events for UFC fights, which were commonly against opponents who were from the US but of Latino heritage or from South American nations, McGregor was often particularly creative in his racially insensitive put-downs. For instance, in a striking comment made to the Brazilian José Aldo at a promotional event in Rio de Janeiro, McGregor bragged that in an earlier era he would “invade [Aldo’s] favela on horseback, and would kill anyone who wasn’t fit to work, but we’re in a new time, so I’ll whoop his ass instead.” (MacKenna 2020). In these and other comments, McGregor displayed a facility for alluding to racially charged past events and practices in a manner that draws attention to the fighter’s own ethnic positioning. As scholars such as Negra and Hamilton Carroll have argued, Irishness in the US context often connotes a form of “enriched whiteness” (Negra 2006, 1) enabling non-minority subjects to symbolize something other than privilege. Carroll (2011) argues that: Irishness ethnicizes whiteness and provides a means by which whiteness can particularize itself; it offers … a way of owning and celebrating white identity in the wake of multiculturalism and identity politics by transforming the symbolic power of whiteness into a minoritized identity. (132)

With a habit of draping himself in the Irish flag after his wins, it is clear that McGregor’s Irishness is central to his sporting identity. The flag is also a prominent feature among the throngs of Irish supporters who travel to the fights; and his international fixtures also functioned as points of connection for diasporic Irish who emigrated in such significant numbers in the last decade. However, it is arguably McGregor’s Irishness within a US context that facilitates a disavowal of the racial implications of his various incendiary comments and actions. Such an understanding implies that, as

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someone not raised in the US, he is unaware of the racially problematic associations of the word “boy,” for instance, when used to refer to an African American male. On a broader level beyond McGregor’s individual biography though, this conforms with the cultural trend whereby “white masculinity places itself in other identity locations (white trash, queer, blue-collar, Irish) in order to disavow that it is normative” (Carroll 2011, 7). In some ways, McGregor’s racist outbursts belie the centrality of African-American cultural tropes to his mediated persona. The fighter displays overt behavioural and cultural alignments with a number of elements central to hip hop culture. In part, this manifests through various forms of cultural homage. McGregor’s nickname “The Notorious” is in part an allusion to Biggie Smalls, “The Notorious B.I.G.,” a Brooklyn hip hop artist whose tracks McGregor often uses as his entrance music for fights. Indeed, in one interview McGregor talks about how he prefers a combination of Irish traditional folk music and rap—in this case Sinead O’Connor singing “The Foggy Dew’” segueing into Smalls’ track “Hypnotized”—a concatenation of African American and Irish experience in music.2 McGregor also regularly quotes the late rapper in his social media postings and even went so far as to commission a painting of himself, counting a large wad of dollar bills in a Coogi sweater, a recreation of an iconic picture of Smalls that appeared in Vibe magazine in 1996. The valorisation of wealth through ostentatious display such an image manifests is a key feature of McGregor’s mediated presentation of self. This, and the fighter’s various entrepreneurial ventures, mark McGregor as exhibiting what Julie Wilson (2018) has termed “neoliberal hustle.” For Wilson, “hustle represents the new ideal of labor… in which earlier ideas of labor rooted in class are replaced with neoliberal ideas of labor rooted in human capital and self-enterprise” (117). While the overt self-­ promotional tactics McGregor displays are not entirely without precedent within Irish culture—Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary is one prominent figure whose sensationalist approach overlaps with McGregor’s—the fighter’s continued reference to his penurious beginnings and invocation of a violent masculinity has much in common with the hip hop mogul. Christopher Murray Smith describes this cultural figure that rose to prominence in the 1990s: The hip-hop mogul is not intelligible without credible accounts of the lavish manner in which he leads his life, nor is he intelligible unless his largesse

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connotes not only his personal agency but also a structural condition that squelches the potential agency of so many others. (Smith 2003, 71)

McGregor’s brash self-promotion and denigration of opponents complies with this characterisation, as does his continued reference to his time in receipt of welfare benefits. This time of the fighter’s life when state intervention provided a safety net to ensure his well-being, is repeatedly utilised to provide a contrast to his current position within the ranks of the moneyed elite. For cultural theorist William Connolly (2013), such a disavowal of state support is a notably gendered action. Describing the “double logic” of the masculinisation of market idols and feminisation of state supports, Connolly writes: Corporate elites, sports heroes, financial wizards and military leaders project images of independence mastery and virility that can make them attractive models of identification, whereas state welfare programs, market regulations, retirement schemes and health care, while essential to life, may remind too many of the very fragilities, susceptibilities and dependencies they strive to deny or forget. (24)

In McGregor’s case, by repeated invocation of his mastery of his own narrative he attenuates such feminine associations. One particular action that crystalizes the fighter’s position in this regard was his purchase and naming of a luxury yacht in 2017. Such an ostentatious purchase is by no means out of character for McGregor, and indeed, he has since upgraded to a larger boat. His decision to name the boat “the 188,” a reference to the amount of his weekly social welfare payment when out of work, serves as a triumphalist repudiation of his prior “feminised” status as a welfare recipient. The fighter made multiple references to the origins of the name in social media postings and interviews and the naming of the boat has had a persistent afterlife in media profiles: evidence of the successful cultivation of a resonant backstory on the part of the Dubliner that underlines his masculinity.

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Contrasting Receptions: The Perils of Transatlantic Authenticity The rather selective and strategic deployment of McGregor’s working-­ class background and Dublin neighbourhood, as mentioned, often serve as focal points for media depictions of the fighter. One instance in which this approach highlighted a fracture between McGregor’s image in the US and perceptions of him within Ireland emerged on publication of a profile of the sportsman that appeared in US publication ESPN: The Magazine. The piece, “Crossing Crumlin Road” by Wright Thompson, appeared in 2017 in the lead up to the Mayweather fight. The article goes out of its way to draw parallels between inner city Dublin and areas of urban deprivation commonly populated by non-white populations in the US. While no doubt intended to shore up McGregor’s reputation in the US, within Ireland the article largely had the opposite effect, with many taking to social media to ridicule to exaggerative description of the fighter’s Crumlin upbringing. One article in the Irish Times mercilessly highlighted the various “purple passages” in the rather overcooked profile and collected some of the more notable social media repudiations of the piece (O’Connell 2017). While the gangland feuds that the article references are a very real source of violence and misery in Dublin and other Irish cities, the details included in the piece, including references to rocket launcher smuggling and the inability of young men to walk their partners home for fear of crossing into the wrong neighbourhood were overly sensationalist and drew the ire of local politicians and the ridicule of many other Dubliners. There was a sense from some that this was a well-worn tale by now, and McGregor was milking his past to create a narrative that would put money in his pockets. As one journalist who had covered McGregor from his earliest years in the UFC wrote: you can’t excuse a growing narrative that power-washes away McGregor’s more dubious but well-discussed friendships and links within the city. Communities like those McGregor came from have been dragged down by drug pushers … but rather than step away, that gangster life is part of the image he is desperate to portray. (MacKenna 2020)

For many Irish people, the sports star’s erratic behaviour of recent years diminished his personal appeal. The two allegations of sexual assault

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levelled against the sportsman in Ireland cast a dark shadow, as, of course, did the assault of an older man in a Dublin bar who reportedly was dismissive of McGregor’s “Proper 12” whiskey. The fighter is still a huge draw, particularly in the US, where he generates the bulk of his revenue through his various endorsement deals and entrepreneurial ventures (including the $150 million he amassed when he sold off his stake in the whiskey brand in 2021). This disparity in reception within Ireland and elsewhere (in this case, the US) speaks to the polysemic nature of Irishness. This is at the heart of the next case study as well.

James McClean’s Poppy Protest and the Cultural Politics of Diasporic Non-Assimilation In November 2018, on the pitch of an English Championship football club, Stoke City, a by-now-familiar narrative was playing out. Footballer James McClean, a Stoke player hailing from Derry City in Northern Ireland was being incessantly booed by a small contingent of both home and visiting supporters as their side played Middlesbrough FC. The often times vitriolic abuse coming from the home stands also finds its twenty-­ first century corollary in the trolling and hate messages that McClean receives online in social media. This is nothing new for the player; in fact, the debate and controversy surrounding McClean has itself become a late autumn fixture of the football calendar in England since November 2012. McClean’s annual refusal to wear the Earl Haig poppy, a symbol of remembrance for those who have died in conflict, reignites a well-rehearsed debate that pits patriotism and national pride on the one hand against the painful legacies of colonialism and the freedom of individual choice on the other. McClean will not wear the symbol on the grounds that it commemorates those soldiers who were stationed in his home city of Derry, the site of one of the most traumatic legacies of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, Bloody Sunday, when British troops killed fourteen civilians in 1972. This is a divisive stand that foregrounds sport’s capacity to embody cultural fracture points. Indeed, in this examination of McClean I interrogate how the footballer crystallizes a number of twenty-first century societal tensions relating to Irish identity: these include tensions regarding a sense of national belonging while living abroad as part of the Irish diaspora; the impact of social media on such diasporic self-expression; and the fraught relationship between Britain and Ireland at a time of heightened

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national anxiety–a relationship that has been under intense scrutiny since the June 2016 Brexit referendum and its political and social aftermath. McClean is a rich figure for the mode of media analysis employed herein due to the fact that through his celebrity persona and tendency to become embroiled in controversy linked to national affiliation, we can discern notable recent shifts with regard to Irish identity as it plays out both within Ireland (North and South) and across the Irish Sea in Great Britain. In this player’s specific case, the conflicted identity of many Irish nationalists growing up in Northern Ireland who then relocate to the mainland UK is evident. McClean’s celebrity status as a relatively high-profile footballer also enables, due in no small part to the public deliberation his actions provoke, an investigation into the impact of shifts in technological communications capability. Notably, this heightened public status enables a scholarly focus on the emergence and broad uptake of social media—and an analysis of the recalibrations occurring in the manifestation of regional identities within the UK.  This latter point is, of course, further exacerbated in the context of the Brexit vote, a seismic political shift that has revealed a number of divisions within the UK that parse out along regional, national and socio-economic lines. I argue that the different technological, societal and political points raised above have combined to unsettle the co-ordinates of Irish diasporic populations in the (mainland) UK and further undermine what is for many an already precarious sense of belonging; and that sport provides a valuable lens through which to examine evolving social processes.

James McClean: Career Overview Prior to signing for Sunderland FC in in the English Premier League in August 2011, McClean had played in both of the top-level leagues in Ireland. He initially played for Institute FC in the Irish Premier League (Northern Ireland) as well as the League of Ireland (primarily based in the Republic of Ireland) for Derry City FC. He failed to secure a first team place for Sunderland under Steve Bruce, the manager who had signed him, but he became a regular player for the side once fellow Derry-man Martin O’Neill took over the post. It was during this time that McClean first made his decision not to wear the remembrance poppy in November 2012. McClean went on to play under O’Neill when he lined up for the Republic of Ireland during the manager’s tenure from 2013–2018, having first represented his country in 2012, under then-manager Giovanni

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Trapattoni. Since departing Sunderland, McClean has played in a number of sides in both the English Premier League (West Bromwich Albion) and the English Championship League (initially Wigan FC; Stoke City FC), and at the time of writing he is currently under contract with Wigan FC again in League One. In examining McClean as an athlete but also as a media construction (in terms of his celebrity profile), it is hard to understate the importance of the city of Derry to the footballer’s identity. Indeed, it is as a ‘son of Derry’ that the player is most often understood in media profiles. The city is the second largest city in Northern Ireland and the one that has historically had a Catholic majority. As such the city has long been understood as a fulcrum of Northern Irish nationalist identity. The ongoing debate that revolves around the city’s name (officially Londonderry, but with Derry being the preferred term for the majority of its inhabitants) is itself a microcosm of the wider debates that divide Northern Irish political life. It is worth noting that Derry City FC resigned from the Irish league (in Northern Ireland) in 1972, citing discrimination on the part of the Irish Football Association (IFA) as a reason for its withdrawal, and then joined the League of Ireland in 1985, becoming the only team situated in Northern Ireland to play in this league. This is essential in understanding the footballing identity of McClean, who analogously played for both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, as well as the political significance of the game in the city. Indeed, as sports scholar David Hassan (2002) has convincingly shown, soccer plays a vital role for northern nationalists in “the development of national pride and independence and in engendering a positive counter-hegemonic role for that community” (80). The following details of McClean’s career and public profile can be understood as deriving in essential ways from, and constituting a continuance of, the political nature of Derry football. It is as a direct result of this civic background that the other prominent controversy of McClean’s career developed. In tandem with the poppy debate, which I treat in detail below, one other controversy that emerged during McClean’s rise to prominence relates to his international career and is also directly related to the player’s upbringing in Derry. In common with most other players from the North of Ireland, due to his place of birth and under the regulations of the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement, McClean has dual citizenship should he so wish and is entitled to play for either the Republic of Ireland or Northern Ireland. McClean played for the under-21 Northern Ireland side on a number of occasions, in what he

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freely admits was a self-serving move (Football Focus, 2017).3 When offered the chance to play for the Republic of Ireland the Derry-man had no qualms in changing his affiliation. He was also part of a notable trend which, much to the consternation of the IFA, the governing body of football in Northern Ireland, saw McClean become the sixth player in a three-­ year period to switch affiliation to the Republic of Ireland (Nestor 2014).4 Nationalist footballers, players whose communities would identify as Irish rather than British, from the north of Ireland who declare for the Republic of Ireland senior team have already attracted a significant degree of scholarly attention (McGee and Bairner 2010; Storey 2016). David Hassan et al. (2009), in an article focusing on McClean’s Ireland team-­ mate Darron Gibson, have posited a variety of reasons for which players from nationalist communities in Northern Ireland have chosen to declare for the Republic of Ireland rather than Northern Ireland: These include the nature of the communities in which players reside, family ties, political affiliations, personal and national identities (including social class), sporting pragmatism and, last but by no means least, the perception of the IFA held by some nationalists in Northern Ireland, which has rarely been favourable. (Hassan et al. 2009, 741)

Of particular note in a number of these players’ justifications for their switch in affiliation, is the sense that the home supporters at Windsor Park, the ground at which the Northern Ireland international football team plays, is heavily partisan to Ulster Loyalist ideology, most evident in the types of song the home crowds sing, as well as the playing of the British national anthem, ‘God Save the Queen’ (Storey 2016; McGee and Bairner 2010). McClean, for his part has spoken of the difficulties of this, and a further controversial decision on his part was to turn his back on the British flag as the UK national anthem was played during a West Bromwich Albion game against Charleston Battery in the USA. One further mediated development of this incident is the videos uploaded to YouTube celebrating the player’s protest.5 A useful figure with which to compare McClean is former Northern Ireland international and Celtic FC player, Neil Lennon, who similarly hails from a nationalist background. Lennon’s international playing career was plagued by the animosity in which some of the Northern Ireland fans held him, which resulted in the player receiving a number of death threats, particularly once he signed with Celtic FC. Unfortunately, such animosity

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has followed the former player into management; one low point of a 2018/2019 Scottish Premiership season marred by a number of instances of sectarian fan behaviour was an incident in which Lennon, at the time manager of Hibernian FC, had a pound coin thrown at his face by an opposing team’s fan. Such actions show that sectarianism is still part of the Northern Irishman’s day-to-day life in Scotland (see Reid 2007). While the context of the abuse received by Lennon and the animosity faced by McClean in some quarters have notable contextual differences in terms of both their current national location and the stages these athletes are at in their respective careers, one similarity that is striking is the unwillingness of either of these men to be cowed by the threats and hostility they face, a trait admired by fans and key to the diasporic non-assimilation both players display. Lennon’s post-match comment after the 2018 incident that he would like to “meet the individual who threw the coin at me some day, because [he is] not happy about it at all” (McCafferty 2018), shows a confluence of stereotypical masculine traits of aggression and a pointed non-assimilation with regard to openly hostile elements of a diasporic homeland that can be detected in many of McClean’s behaviours examined in the sections to follow.

Social Media and Unruly Northern Nationalism While McClean has delivered some celebrated footballing performances, notably for the Republic of Ireland, the player’s career on the pitch has often been overshadowed by his presence on social media platforms and his tendency to unwittingly, or indeed intentionally, ignite controversy. As John Price and colleagues have noted in their study of the use of Twitter by professional footballers, “The medium … provides an opportunity for players themselves to find their own voice and provide their views unfettered by media or club” (Price et al. 2013, 458). It is this unfettered access that, I argue, in tandem with the amplification provided by McClean’s celebrity status, allows for a modelling of Irish nationalist subjectivities which would previously have been under the radar of broadcast media. McClean’s postings might be better understood within the context of a wider media environment in which Irish emigrant populations increasingly look to digital media formats such as podcasts and Facebook groups to access content that enables them to feel connected to home while living abroad, or even while their sense of what constitutes ‘home’, is being reshaped to fit the contours of their new lives (Negra et al. 2018, 16–18;

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see also Dwyer 2020). Popular podcast An Irishman Abroad (2013–) in which comedian Jarlath Regan interviews celebrity Irish figures who have left Ireland, attests to the popular appeal of formats that foreground celebrity adaptation to the vicissitudes of diasporic living. The celebrities Regan interviews tend to emphasise strategies for achieving success while finding a balance between fitting in with their new home and not losing an essential sense of Irish identity. In contrast, McClean’s self-authored media presence, as well as actions such as turning his back on the British flag mentioned above, can be characterised by a recalcitrant refusal to adapt or temper views and actions that, while consistent with the norms of his home community in Derry, go against the grain of his diasporic home. For instance, in one tweet from February 2012, McClean calls out TV presenter Colin Murray for naming him as a ‘fellow Northern Irishman’ as he introduced a goal he had scored against Stoke City on MOTD 2, writing ‘Colin Murray get it right will you its #Irish’. The tweet was the subject of press attention both in Ireland and the UK and provided an early example of how McClean’s postings with regard to his nationalist Irish identity gained the young footballer significant cultural purchase (McKinley 2012). A little more controversial was a tweet from February 2013 where McClean revealed that he uses The Wolfe Tones’ folk song ‘Broad Black Brimmer’ to motivate himself for big games such as the one he was due to play against future club West Bromwich Albion the following day. This revelation was contentious on account of the fact that the chorus ends on the following lines: When Ireland gets her freedom, The one they’ll choose to lead ‘em, Will wear the broad black brimmer, Of the IRA.

Although the lyrics are contextualised historically, the title referring to a brimmed hat worn by IRA guerrilla fighters during the 1920s war of Irish Independence, the fact that the song makes reference to the IRA explicitly would be cause enough for someone with a high profile not to declare their admiration on social media. McClean, for his part, in a BBC interview, stressed the cultural normativity of listening to such songs: “Look, I was an Irish lad growing up. 95 per cent of the population, in Ireland, probably listened to The Wolfe Tones… and all of a sudden it’s in the papers that I’m pro-IRA” (Football Focus 2017). The appeal of music

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artists such as The Wolfe Tones has been identified as a central element of Irish diasporic first- and second-generation cultures, with a primary appeal being their “emotive accounts of the historical struggle for Irish freedom” (Ullah 1990, 179). Arguably, the popularity of such folk songs and newer forms that build on this tradition lie in the carnivalesque “rowdy world of subaltern excess and mayhem” that Irish studies scholar Joe Cleary (2007, 277) identifies in the music of second-generation Irish band The Pogues, a rowdiness clearly in evidence in the fan songs celebrating McClean’s various actions alluded to earlier. A social media posting from March 2020 perhaps indicates one instance on the part of the player where he exceeded the bounds of acceptability in a manner that was not so easy to justify. A photograph, uploaded to McClean’s Instagram account shows the player in front of his two children, wearing a balaclava (an item of clothing with strong associations to paramilitary activity during the Troubles) and is entitled, “Todays School lesson [sic]  – History” followed by a “laughing”-emoji (Fig.  4.2). The posting generated a predictable response from the press, drawing considerable condemnation and eliciting an apology from the player, as well as the deactivation of the Instagram account. As I have argued in the previous chapter when considering the hit sitcom Derry Girls (2018–), the Troubles has been recuperated in recent popular culture through the figure of the schoolgirl, in many ways the symbolic opposite of the masked gunman in a balaclava. McClean’s overt usage of this image, although framed as a joke, limns the boundaries of acceptability for a broad audience who might have been sympathetic to the player’s stance on issues such as the poppy protest for which he had a reasoned justification (as detailed below). Like some of the proclamations and social media postings from McGregor that I examined earlier in the chapter, this incident reveals how fraught with potential risk any references to contentious pasts can be while also suggesting that rhetorical unruliness (also a key element of Roy Keane’s punditry) is a central element of Irish masculine performativity. Almost a year later in February 2021, this social media posting came back into the spotlight in Ireland due to an appearance McClean’s wife, Erin, made on the popular daytime RTÉ Radio 1 show Today with Claire Byrne. During the interview, Erin went into specific detail on the types of threats being made to her family, both on social media and in person, for many years due to her husband’s poppy protest. She told of how a recent message contained a threat to set McClean alight in front of his children and blamed the British media in part for constantly reigniting the issue of

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Fig. 4.2  McClean’s controversial Instagram posting of March 2020 constitutes a further example of his, at times, provocative references to Irish history

her husband’s refusal to wear the remembrance poppy year on year. McClean himself later joined his wife on the line to acknowledge, when Byrne raised the issue, that his “history lesson” post was an ill-advised jibe, but should be understood in the context of nine years of persistent trolling: “Someday, right or wrong, you’re going to react.” The radio show generated a significant amount of public support for the McCleans,

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including from figures such as Taoiseach Micheál Martin and Northern Ireland First Minister Arlene Foster. These politicians’ responses, and indeed, the overall framing of the interview on the radio tended to play down or ignore the question of why anti-Irish racism isn’t addressed in a sufficient manner by English football’s anti-racism campaigns, a point made by McClean.6 One might also argue that some of McClean’s more controversial postings are a means of the diasporic subject to retain a home identity while being surrounded by the cultural dominance of the host nation. Instructive in this regard is a portion of an interview Darragh McGee and Alan Bairner (2010) conducted with nationalist players who declared for Northern Ireland. Eugene Ferry, a footballer who at the time played for both Derry City FC and Northern Ireland, made the following comment about how he talked to his friends in Derry regarding his interactions with Northern Ireland teammates: When I was home or talking to people around the community about Northern Ireland, I felt as though I had to call ‘them’ all ‘orange bastards’ and all. You feel like you sort of have to put that on even though it’s not really what I think. These boys don’t understand what it’s like to sit and chat with Protestant boys and wouldn’t understand if I explained so I just don’t … I just tell them what I think they want me to say. (Interview, 26 June 2009 in McGee and Bairner 2010, 452)

McGee and Bairner utilise Erving Goffman’s writings on the performativity of self to argue that the nationalist footballer may in fact ‘perform’ nationalism in an attempt to avoid ‘stigma’ or a tainted sense of Irish identity. While this is a claim made in terms of a Derry player, speaking in person to his hometown friends in a specific context, this can be extrapolated to analyse those tweets of McClean’s given above. Diasporic non-­ assimilation here is a performative mode of embodying Irishness that would seem excessive perhaps, to one comfortably ensconced in his or her own nation, but that serves as a psychic defence against a potentially overwhelming alien culture. A notable feature of McClean’s early biography is that an early transfer to Lincoln FC a few years prior to his move to Sunderland was called off due to the player’s homesickness (RTE.ie 2009), suggesting that such a psychic defence is necessary on the part of this sportsman.

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This tension with regard to home, a sense of belonging and diasporic uprootedness as well as the negotiation of one’s public and private selves is clearly in evidence in McClean’s social media postings. This aspect of the player’s celebrity identity is congruent with Anne Jerslev and Mette Mortensen’s observation that “Celebrities on social media reconfigure the border line between the public and the private … one of the crucial fields of tension in celebrity culture” (2018, 157). In addition to this blurring of the public and the private, recent developments in technology have led to the notion of home becoming similarly porous. As media scholar David Morley (2000) puts it, “traditional ideas of home, homeland and nation have been destabilized both by new patterns of physical mobility and migration and by new communication technologies which routinely transgress the symbolic boundaries around both the private household and the nation state” (3). I suggest that for diasporic celebrities the border between home and host nation is similarly reconfigured as they post within and beyond their new environs, in sometimes problematic or ideologically countervailing ways. However, as Morley (2010) further elaborates, referencing the trend for Indian call centre workers serving the UK market that is often held up as an example of modern communications signalling the “end of geography,” such mediated “dislocations and deterritorializations are still deeply enmeshed with the complexities and vicissitudes of geography and history” (3) and utopian claims to the existence of a deterritorialized geography are “much more legible if one reads it as a set of secondary (or ‘shadow’) geographies created through the history of imperialism” (5). That is, Morley resists simplistic utopian readings of modern communicative technologies conquering spatial constrictions, emphasizing how historical and geographical factors can still be discerned though such “new media” communications. It is clear that such a history of imperialism is intrinsic to McClean’s social media postings. Football itself has a highly ambivalent history in Ireland. Initially perceived as a “garrison game” associated with British rule, Hassan (2002) argues that football has since come to constitute “an opportunity to express [Northern nationalists’] support for the idea of Irish unification and engage in counter-hegemonic activity against the Northern Ireland State” (69). Football and diaspora have a longstanding interconnection that historian Conor Curran (2017, 2020) has valuably charted in his study of the well-established routes of footballing emigrants from Ireland to the UK and beyond from the late nineteenth century. As just one player in this long lineage, McClean’s diasporic non-assimilation

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can be read as one manifestation of a wider exilic ambivalence experienced by migrants who have departed their homeland in order to make a living playing football.

Poppies, Protest and Negotiating Media Exposure As argued earlier, the most notorious aspect of McClean’s public profile in the UK is linked with Remembrance Day. For each year he has played in the English Football League (2012–), McClean has refused to follow domestic club conventions and wear the Earl Haig poppy in the November games proximate to Remembrance Sunday. This action is in defiance of an increasingly conformist public pressure regarding the symbol that has seen a variety of public figures castigated for not wearing or somehow disrespecting the poppy. For instance, England cricketer Moeen Ali had been “caught” not wearing one on his lapel in November 2017 in an official team photo and was subject to vitriolic abuse on social media and in previous years public figures such as newsreader Charlene White of ITV News London were racially abused for refusing to wear the poppy (Dawson 2017). Notably, the above are people of BAME (Black, Asian or Minority Ethnicity) heritage and, as indicated, the criticism of these public figures was often racist in expression, suggesting the link between narrow conceptions of nation that associate Englishness or Britishness with whiteness and nativism–currents in popular discourse that were heightened in the run up to the Brexit vote. It is in this context that McClean’s high profile (and at this stage predictable) refusal to wear the symbol year on year has to be understood. With regard to the poppy itself, it is far from being the apolitical symbol that some (including the English Football league) have claimed. As scholars Daniel Fitzpatrick (2017) and John Kelly (2012) have astutely noted, the remembrance poppy is an ideologically charged symbol that articulates a particular civic-military positioning and construction of nationalism which resonates deeply within Britain at a time when ideas of nationhood are in flux, a resonance that is highly ambivalent to settled diasporic communities within the UK. The supposed apolitical symbolism of the poppy has been increasingly undermined in recent years due to a number of high-profile incidents. For instance, Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola’s decision to wear a yellow ribbon in memory of Catalan politicians imprisoned for their actions promoting the region’s independence forced Martin Glenn, the Football Association chief executive, to reject any suggestion there was an

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equivalence between the poppy and the Catalan symbol. As Martin Samuel (2018), writing in the Daily Mail, a publication that consistently admonishes McClean for his poppy stance, put it when reflecting on the Guardiola incident, “The FA presides over arguably the most cosmopolitan league in the world. Did it never occur to them there may be issues?” In a similar manner to McClean’s stance, in November 2018 Manchester United’s Serbian player Nemanja Matic refused to wear the poppy, offering as justification the fact that his hometown of Vrelo had been bombed in 1999 (Smith 2018). Some McClean fans utilised social media to highlight the quite contradictory treatment of the Serbian and the Irishman in the popular press. One poster, for instance contrasted two Daily Mirror headlines: one stating “James McClean refuses to wear Remembrance Day poppy AGAIN…” and the more sympathetic, “Nemanja Matic emotionally explains why he won’t wear a poppy on Manchester United shirt (@ clarefarell, Nov 5, 2018 “Maybe have a word with your editor”). The fact that the poster is listed as an NHS worker living in London, seemingly a member of the Irish diaspora, suggests that the treatment of the player highlights for some the fracture lines of diasporic belonging. For his part, McClean has come under intense pressure, from both media and fans, for his continued refusal to wear the poppy. The player admits fan antipathy stoked by his stance encouraged his departure from Sunderland; and when he went to Wigan, he wrote an open letter to the club chairman published on the club website outlining in detail his reasons for not wearing the poppy, explicitly outlining his experience growing up in Derry and how, in his words: for me to wear a poppy would be as much a gesture of disrespect for the innocent people who lost their lives in the Troubles – and Bloody Sunday especially – as I have in the past been accused of disrespecting the victims of WWI and WWII. (Hann 2016)

It seems that McClean’s persistence in refusing to bow under pressure has seen a wider acceptance of the player’s position in recent years. I would suggest that a tipping point in public sentiment with regard to the player is in evidence in a remarkably favourable profile of the player that was aired on BBC’s Football Focus in April 2017. There are a number of cultural threads that can be detected in the profile overall that speak to a shift in the perception of the footballer, in particular, and to the nationalist communities of the North of Ireland, in general, across the water.

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Notably, the piece dwelt at length on the death of McClean’s former Derry City teammate, Ryan McBride who died unexpectedly in March 2017 at the age of 27. The piece seems to be harnessing a specific male melancholia (Modleski 2009) in order to soften the image of the ‘hard man’ McClean. Similarly, and somewhat problematically the interviewer’s surprise at one point that the footballer is articulate and not angry (“so softly spoken”) invokes well-established tropes depicting the Irish as atavistic, unenlightened and prone to a violent tribalism (see Hill 1987 for the classic account of this trope), only in this instance to emphasise how McClean is not like that really, segueing, at this point in the feature, into a section dealing with charity work the player does for the Oxford Bulls, a team made up of youths who have Down syndrome. While media profiles such as that of Football Focus examined above, seemed to indicate something of a softening of reaction to the player, McClean’s move to Stoke City in the summer of 2018 meant that he had once again to clarify his stance on the remembrance poppy to a new set of fans. (In addition, the controversial March 2020 “history lesson” Instagram post mentioned above later generated a significant amount of negative press attention and will no doubt feature in future press coverage of his annual protest.) Stoke-on-Trent was notoriously claimed as the “Brexit capital of Britain” by former United Kingdom Independence Party leader Paul Nuttall, and is a city associated with post-industrial decline and apathy, commonly described as being “left behind”. While many in Stoke have contested such a characterisation (Domokos 2018), the city does seem to harbour some of the elements of “restorative nostalgia” that cultural theorist Svetlana Boym (2001, 41) identifies as constitutive of ideologies that seek to re-establish a perceived past glory. This animating fixation on a better past that must be regained is congruent both with the pronouncements of Brexit ideologues and some of the more fervent critics policing the wearing of the remembrance poppy. As such it was perhaps not surprising that the Irish player once again faced a hostile element of his home supporters, as well as a significant proportion of the visiting Middlesbrough fans, and again became embroiled in a public spat having described these fans as “cave men,” sharing the following quote from IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands: “They have nothing in their whole imperial arsenal that can break the spirit of one Irishman who doesn’t want to be broken” (Embury-Dennis 2018). McClean’s tendency to invoke colonial history in his postings is again evidence of the player’s unruly nationalism and his capacity to embody the fraught relationship between Britain and Ireland in his social media postings.

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Conclusion As I have argued in this chapter, both Derry footballer James McClean and Dublin fighter Conor McGregor highlight how sport constitutes a means through which societal tensions manifest, particularly notions foregrounded by transnationalism and regional identity. By analysing the two sportsmen, I have shown how McGregor’s and McClean’s celebrity identities constitute “negotiated terrain[s] of significance” (Marshall 1997, 47), through which nationality, region, ideology, race, and history are channelled. In particular, I have focused on how diasporic identity is intrinsic to this signification, with McClean’s performance of diasporic non-assimilation a constant feature of his celebrity image, one shaped as much by his own recalcitrance in the face of a conformist media landscape in the UK, as his own upbringing in Derry, a city whose fraught history is inextricably bound up with the sport of football in significant ways. In a contrasting manner, McGregor’s performative Irishness aligns with certain longstanding associations with Irish identity in the US, which are at times at odds with the reception of the sportsman in his native country. The fighter, both through his hyper-consumerist self-image and his physicality embodies contradictory aspects of neoliberal culture that increasingly seem to split the reception he receives at home and in the US. For both these sports men the dual aspect of their home/away existence speaks to the often-fractured experiences of diasporic subjects though writ large through the processes of celebrity amplification.

Notes 1. The fighter has featured on the cover of magazines such as this issue of Men’s Health (UK and Ireland edition) as well as being the first Irish athlete to appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated in the US. 2. A similar combination can be discerned in Irish gangster drama Love/Hate (2010–2014), the opening episode of which begins with a montage sound-­ tracked by Smalls’ track “Just a memory.” The (for the most part) small time gangsters, featured in the violent drama (hugely popular within Ireland and a rare successful drama export for RTÉ) display the kind of hustle that McGregor admires in figures such as Biggie Smalls, and which the music Smalls produced celebrates. 3. Football Focus (BBC1), aired April 29th, 2017. 4. The players who preceded him were Darron Gibson, Shane Duffy, Marc Wilson, Daniel Kearns and Paul George (Nestor 2014).

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5. “James McClean Hates the Queen  – Lyrics.” YouTube, 28 May 2017. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLUEJ0aNfCI (accessed 20 August 2020). 6. The broader concern that anti-Irish racism is often overlooked because of dominant paradigms of racial difference that tend to “deny the possibility of white groups being racialised minorities” (Mac an Ghaill 2000, 137) has been a concern of a small group of sociologists concerned with the Irish in Britain for many years. Though as Mary Hickman and Louise Ryan (2020) suggest, despite the insights that analyses of Irish migrant experience in Britain can provide in “unpacking the compressed category of whiteness” (96), there has been a failure on the part of (English) sociology to recognise this, due to a sense that the Irish weren’t “proper” migrants (99).

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CHAPTER 5

Irish Female Comedic Voices, Diasporic Melancholy, and Productive Irritation: Sharon Horgan, Aisling Bea and Maeve Higgins

In Catastrophe (2015–2019), the London-set comedy-drama co-written by and starring Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney (who play the transnational (Irish/American) couple of Sharon and Rob in the programme), there is a telling verbal altercation when, after an unsuccessful attempt at house-hunting, Sharon claims to be a simple person, despite the fact that the series up until this point has portrayed her as quite the opposite. Responding to her partner’s incredulous reaction, the following dialogue occurs: Sharon: I am. I’m Irish, we’re simple people. Rob: An Irish milkmaid is a simple person. You’re a cosmopolitan clothes fiend who consciously left Ireland to come here and shop. This snippet of dialogue crystallizes some of the central concepts underpinning this chapter. One is the sense that Irishness is an identity formation that comes laden with a set of cultural associations that can be mined for the most appropriate (or indeed self-serving) material as the situation demands (Negra 2006), an identity which often compels return to the nation, whether physically, rhetorically, or through consumption practices.

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The second lesson we can glean from the encounter is that Ireland is conventionally conjured as a place of limited opportunity. The dialogue is suggestive of elements of diasporic history and summons a distinction between historical exigency and contemporary aspiration. The notion of leaving Ireland for a better life is one of the most persistent elements in narratives of emigration from Ireland and one which scholars such as Breda Gray (2004) have noted often occludes a more complex set of circumstances predicating transnational movement that can be strongly gendered: “(T)he absence of opportunity in Ireland, the social discontent that many migrant women experienced and tensions within families were subsumed to a repetitive and acceptable narrative of individual achievement through a migration characterised in terms of privileged mobility rather than obligation, sacrifice or collective exile” (Gray 2004, 103; see also O’Carroll 1990). The ‘better life’ in this piece of dialogue is coded as one marked by postfeminist consumerist agency, but we can extrapolate from this to take in the opportunities Horgan as writer-performer has availed of in terms of career development, that most likely would not have been afforded her had she chosen to stay in Ireland (Barton and Murphy 2020). Notions of cosmopolitanism are intrinsic to Catastrophe, a series that, though set primarily in London, travels to Ireland and the US as the focal couple negotiate their familial commitments; the series also models a contemporary lifeworld that takes for granted the ability of its white, middle-­ class subjects to traverse the globe relatively unimpeded, though there is occasional acknowledgement of some of the pains that migration can encompass with regards to separation from loved ones. The privilege that undergirds such ease of movement, as in many of the case studies in the book, is attached in no small way to a subject positioning that is specifically classed and raced. The third point is that, unsurprisingly, the category of ‘female’ comes freighted with a set of cultural assumptions and delimitations that colour interpretation of the subject in all her endeavours, and this is further inflected through the prism of nationality in complex ways given longstanding associations of Irish femininity. Femininity is often marked by inhibition (of opportunity, of voice, of material access to wealth), but for the case studies of this chapter such restriction serves also as so much grist to the creative mill: It provides inspiration for creative work that contests, dwells upon and supersedes such limiting factors, particularly at a conjuncture that has generated considerable cultural deliberation on pervasive societal inequalities. This shift is perhaps primarily evident in television

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comedy, and particularly in the “dramedy” genre, a hybrid form that eschews the limited narrative progression favoured by the standard sitcom and which offers “humorous approaches to dark subject matter and/or tragicomic portrayals of characters” (Havas and Sulimma 2020, 76). Other forms of cultural expression such as stand-up comedy (Mizejewski and Sturtevant 2017) and life-writing are also prominent exemplars of this shift in female representation (Ferriss 2014). These three points I extract from the dialogue presented are applicable to the female artists considered in this chapter, who partially constitute a female comedic sensibility that has been gaining traction in Ireland and abroad throughout the twenty-­ first century. Such works often utilise a comedic tone that is laced with irritation—a minor emotion that indexes the vexed position of women in contemporary society—or which is concomitant with melancholic affect: elements I trace in the case studies to follow. Horgan is a writer-performer who has increasingly shifted toward a cultural entrepreneurial position through project development. Her career trajectory is both remarkable and exemplary of the flows of comedic talent and personnel in the twenty-first century, and her own success is demonstrably forging pathways that others can follow. The second artist under consideration is Aisling Bea, an actress and comedian notable for roles in The Fall (2013–2016) and Living with Yourself (2019–), in addition to being a rare female regular on popular comedy panel shows in the UK. She has collaborated with Horgan on several projects, but most significantly the melancholic Channel 4 dramedy This Way Up (2019–), written by Bea and developed by Horgan’s Merman Productions. The third creative artist under consideration is Maeve Higgins, a stand-up comedian, actress and writer, who had her own comedy show on RTÉ, Maeve Higgins’ Fancy Vittles (2009), prior to her relocation to the US (after an unsuccessful stint in the UK). Higgins has become a contributing op-ed writer for The New  York Times, as well as having regular articles in published in The Guardian and The Irish Times, often dwelling on issues of migrant experience. She has written a number of memoirs that take up this theme, including, Off You Go: Away from Home and Loving it. Sort of. (2015) and Maeve in America: Essays by a Girl from Somewhere Else (2018). All three of the women that are the focus of this chapter have personal biographies that map onto the established triangulation of movement (and influence) between Ireland, the US and the UK.1 As noted in the introductory chapter, such a triangulation among these Anglophone nations mirrors historical and contemporary diasporic routes as well as emergent channels of

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influence in the post-Brexit era, and through examining the stardom and careers of these three women, the chapter excavates pop cultural deliberation on migration, femininity, and labour in the twenty-first century. The three case studies that comprise this chapter are, I argue, imbricated in twenty-first century cultural expressions of Irishness that take for granted fluid transnational mobility. This mobility is indexed through corporeal movement (as they live, work and visit between the three countries) textual content (with, for instance, television shows, performances or writing set in Ireland, the UK and the US, or which dwell on Irishness and its relation to these three nations in direct or oblique ways), as well as their status as workers and entrepreneurs within an industry that has seen the reach of content significantly expanded between these three nations due to communications infrastructural developments including Web 2.0 sites such as YouTube and the rise of global streaming video on demand (SVOD) providers such as Netflix and Hulu. Some of these industrial factors were sketched out in Chap. 2 as I noted Moone Boy’s reach beyond the UK through its distribution in overseas markets on Hulu, as well as in Chap. 3 with my description of Derry Girls’ popularity beyond Ireland and the UK, both through its distribution beyond the UK and Ireland on Netflix and through spreadable content shared on social media. And while Chap. 4 examined masculinity and Irishness as it crosses national borders, the present chapter uses gender as a lens to limn some of the opportunities and tensions that arise in texts centred on Irish female diasporic subjects, as well as what their participation in the film, media and publishing industries affords in terms of providing insights into gendered conditions of Irish (and Irish emigrant) cultural production in the twenty-first century. The chapter proceeds by first providing a brief sketch of the economic and social conditions for women in Ireland in the twenty-first century, in order to contextualise the gendered social landscape in contemporary Ireland, including abiding inequalities within the cultural industries. Such an outline is necessary as these conditions constitute a ‘push’ factor that contributes to emigration. Additionally, even though the artists in question have left Ireland, the status of women within the Irish nation is a constant source of concern in their work, and a wellspring of ambivalent feelings, a manifestation of the “fractured movement” that this book is examining in several cultural texts, therefore an understanding of the status of women in Ireland further contextualises the material under analysis. Developing on from the case studies in previous chapters, the approach

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taken in sketching out the careers and some aspects of the work of the three artists considered comprises a cultural studies methodology that draws upon stardom and celebrity studies, and relevant disciplines such as sociology and literary studies, as well as recent scholarship on production cultures in film and media. For the most part I examine each of the artists in turn, but occasionally will consider some of the many commonalities and overlaps discernible in their lives and work.

Women, the Creative Industries and Irish Society Twenty-first century Ireland has been marked by persistent inequality, even in the so-called ‘boom times’ of the Celtic Tiger. The uneven recovery from the 2008 recession and the austerity policies that came in its wake have had an abiding impact on select sections of society, particularly those lower on the socio-economic scale (Coulter and Arqueros-Fernández 2019). Although some progress has been made regarding heavily gendered aspects of social justice such as legislation on abortion rights (in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland) as well as ongoing attempts to ‘close the gender pay gap,’ through legislative endeavour on both sides of the border, progress has been limited. Politics itself, of course, is another site where unequal representation for women is evident. The narrative of recovery that had been gaining traction in Irish public discourse prior to the interruption of the COVID-19 pandemic, in tandem with the socially progressive legislative victories of the latter half of the previous decade, erroneously contributed to an overly optimistic view of social conditions in Ireland as the country entered the 2020s, as promulgated by broadcast and print media. The reality for certain sections of the population was far from sanguine. Social economist Ursula Barry (2020) has delineated the years between the global financial crash and the pandemic in stark terms: Ireland has one of the highest rates of low pay among OECD countries (OECD 2019) and has the fourth highest proportion of low paid workers – the majority of whom are women – accounting for 60% of minimum wage workers. Women (29%) are much more likely than men (19%) to be in low paid work and many more are in casualised, informal employment where protections are negligible. (7)

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Often the inequalities detailed above are inextricably linked with the predominance of caring labour among women, an element severely exacerbated by the poor provision of childcare resources within the state. Caring labour goes beyond child-rearing, of course, and it has been shown that due to women being culturally positioned as the default carers in Irish society, “they are more likely to be poor both in younger and older age” (Barry and Feeley 2016, quoted in Barry 2020, 12). This element of Irish society betrays the residual impact of the Catholic Church’s hegemony over Irish life through its glorification and simultaneous attenuation of women’s caring labour, and presents formidable challenges for Irish feminism. The gendered inequalities evident in Irish society—still enshrined in the constitution with article 41.2’s reference to “women’s duties in the home”—are also a conspicuous feature of the nation’s creative industries sector. Cultural work, in general, has been found to be a wellspring of labour precarity, and even a model for the neoliberal forms of flexible labour that have increasingly undermined the gains made by decades of collective bargaining agreements across a wide range of industries and workplaces. In effect, the promise of “pleasure in work” and the significant cultural cachet associated with the industry makes subjects more liable to accept a lack of wage security. As Angela McRobbie (2009), addressing the culture industries more broadly, has phrased it: creativity has been instrumentalised as a regime of freedom, bringing with it the possibility of happiness at work and the idea of culturally improved or enriched cities and environments, and this becomes the means by which older bureaucratic safeguards and entitlements are swept away. (136)

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Irish government has keenly taken up such neoliberal sloganeering. This is particularly evident in Creative Ireland, a five-year programme established in 2017 that is described as an “all-of-­ government culture and wellbeing programme that inspires and transforms people, places and communities through creativity” (Creative Ireland 2020). While some elements of the programme are laudable, the ideological underpinnings of this celebration of creativity are suspect, given the sector’s reliance on the aforementioned qualities of flexibility and labour precarity. At the time of writing (the  Summer of  2021) the cultural industries in Ireland are only beginning to emerge from a forced period of dormancy, that cast the precarious nature of work in these

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domains into stark relief as thousands of workers across Ireland lost their livelihoods across a range of arts sectors including those in the audio-visual industry. Whether the combination of platitudinous celebrations of creativity and piecemeal funding that has marked the government’s support of the arts so far in the twenty-first century will undergo a sea change given the impact of the pandemic is yet to be seen. Government response to this sectoral crisis will no doubt be of grave consequence for cultural workers within Ireland throughout the rest of the 2020s and beyond. The precarious nature of creative work is particularly impactful on female workers in the industry, as they are already subject to significant inequalities compared to male colleagues. Media scholar Anne O’Brien (2020) has demonstrated how structural inequality is experienced by women in the media and film industries in Ireland through everyday routines in a highly masculinist work environment and culture. Segregation of female workers’ duties from those allocated to male colleagues is commonplace, with different rewards generated for these different tasks. This is a structural feature that contributes to a glass ceiling for women in the industry and greater competitive advantage for male workers (O’Brien 2020). Mirroring the wider societal inequalities detailed above as well as the labour patterns that underpin them, it has been found that the disproportionate amount of care work undertaken by women in the production industries has a demonstrable negative impact on the career outcomes of female workers. The case studies in this chapter (with all three acting in feature films, for instance) would generally be considered “above the line”—a term designating “executive creators” including actors, directors, and producers— rather than “below the line,” those involved in the “technical crafts”, such as gaffers, key grips and assistant sound technicians (Caldwell 2008, 377–378n22). However, both O’Brien’s (2020) work and the long running Calling the Shots study in the UK demonstrate that gender inequality is rife throughout the industry, with very little improvement evident (Cobb et  al. 2019). A further phenomenon highly relevant to the purposes of this chapter is the rate of emigration for workers within this industry, a feature that is also particularly gendered. Barton and Murphy (2020) conclude, for instance, in their report examining the careers of prominent creatives in film, theatre and television drama, that while one third of all those surveyed lived abroad, for women the rate was much higher, suggesting “a greater need to emigrate to maintain their careers” (83). Given that Barton and Murphy limited themselves to creative

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practitioners who had reached levels of international recognition, it is perhaps unsurprising that we are able to detect traces of migrant affect in a selection of works from female artists whose careers have had a distinctive transnational trajectory, and that these works can be profitably understood as constituting in crucial ways part of a distinctly feminist inflected meditation on the emotional and physical processes of contemporary Irish emigration. The specific economic inequalities outlined above are further exacerbated by a popular culture within Ireland that has persistently scapegoated women for the economic conditions outside their control. In this way, the Republic of Ireland is still marked by gendered discourses that prevailed in the Celtic Tiger era. The first two decades of the twenty-first century saw women both demonized in the ‘good times’ and disproportionately impacted in the years of austerity that followed the banking crash. The figuration of women as exemplars of Celtic Tiger excess emerged in a number of cultural arenas. Diane Negra (2015) suggests that cultural types of the D4 girl and the Drummy Mummy, both spatially associated with economic privilege—the monikers referencing Dublin 4, a predominantly wealthy area of south Dublin, and the nearby upmarket Dundrum shopping centre, the largest in Ireland, and a Celtic Tiger icon in its own right—crystallized gendered associations of consumerism that came to be ascribed to the Celtic Tiger era. They are also, of course, both figures centred on consumerism and resonant with the exchange from Catastrophe that opened this chapter. Negra argues that such figures constituted icons “of excess as much as admiration [and were emblematic of] the boom and a symptom of its short-term financialism” (44). Such depictions in popular media were synergistically amplified through their diffusion through popular television programmes and advertising as well as journalism.

Sharon Horgan: Auteur-Entrepreneurialism, Creative Networks and Mobile Irishness Sharon Horgan has emerged as a leading proponent of Irish comedy and is exemplary of the ability of such material to travel transnationally in the twenty-first century. It is fitting that Horgan is the figure with which this chapter begins, as her career and distinctive voice are perhaps the most influential in twenty-first century Irish comedy culture. Born in the UK to an Irish mother and New Zealander father, but raised in County Meath,

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the performer has a notable profile in Ireland due to her own successes and the fact that her brother Shane is a celebrated rugby player who won the Six Nations Championship with the national team in 2009. Horgan’s career trajectory from sitcom writer to influential showrunner and cofounder of a transatlantic production company allows for an examination of recent developments in the television industry as it recalibrates in the post-#MeToo era. Possessing a distinctive vision on the travails of intimacy and domesticity, the comedy actress and writer who was once referred to as “the funniest woman you’ve never heard of” (Vernon 2007), later had articles written referring to her “unstoppable rise as master of honest comedy” (Saner 2019) and intention to make a “global audience laugh” (Grey 2021). It must be acknowledged that despite her impressive career trajectory, her profile in the US is still somewhat limited in comparison with the level of renown a figure such as Phoebe Waller-Bridge currently enjoys. Nevertheless, in the context of Irish comedy practitioners, Horgan is a significant figure. The following sections trace Horgan’s career trajectory from a relatively unknown niche performer to an internationally celebrated auteur-entrepreneur, who has attained a significant level of status and power in the industry. The Guardian profile alluded to above that referred to Horgan as “the funniest woman you’ve never heard of” came out a year after her first success, Pulling (2006–2009), starring Horgan and co-written with Dennis Kelly. The allusion to Horgan as an under-the-radar talent speaks to the ‘cult’ status of the sitcom, which, while lauded critically and among her peers in the industry, failed to garner a significant viewership. The series was curtailed, with an expected third series limited to a two-part finale. A female-centred sitcom that set the template for the abrasive and self-­ centred characters that populate many of Horgan’s creations, Pulling worked as a calling card within the industry. The series was instrumental in securing the offers of work to come her way both in the UK and opportunities to develop sitcom pilots in the US (Wilson 2010). Horgan’s “unstoppable rise,” was the result of various projects across a number of broadcasters—not all of which came to fruition—that include Angelos (UK, Channel 5, 2007); Dead Boss (UK, BBC3, 2012); Women on the Verge (Ireland, W/Acorn, 2018); and Catastrophe, the crossover transatlantic hit that aired on Channel 4  in the UK and was distributed on Amazon Prime in other territories. Alongside these co-written sitcoms, Horgan acted in other UK comedy series such as Annually Retentive (2006–2007); Free Agents (2009); Psychobitches (2012–2014) and The

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Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret (2009–2016) and has had a number of recurring voiceover roles in US animated series (Adventure Time [2010–2018]; Disenchantment [2018–2021]; Bojack Horseman [2014–2020]). Horgan has also been making a move into cinema features, having a prominent role in US comedy Game Night (2018), fronting feel-good UK comedy-drama Military Wives (2019), playing another military wife, the mother of the lead in queer Irish teen romcom Dating Amber (2020), and being set to star alongside Vince Vaughan in The Last Drop (listed as being in pre-production at the time of writing), which would be her first starring role in a US feature film, as well as the COVID-19 lockdown drama Together (which I consider in the final chapter of this book). The latter cinema features, with the exception of The Last Drop and Game Night, see Horgan playing wives/mothers, a recognition that, despite being physically attractive with a relatively youthful appearance, the actor is now in her fifties. The purpose of providing such a detailed (though not exhaustive) list of works featuring Horgan is to sketch out the industrious nature of the performer, but also to suggest the amount of work needed to secure a prominent position in the industry, particularly for a woman given endemic structural inequalities. Horgan herself posits the fact that she didn’t gain recognition (with Pulling) until she was in her thirties as justification for her need to always have two or three projects lined up (Finn 2013), but is also forthright about her ambition, which includes cinematic success (Sweeney 2015). Years spent pitching pilots in the US eventually resulted in Divorce (2016–2019), the HBO comedy-drama Horgan created, and which starred and was executive produced by Sarah Jessica Parker, the American star returning to long-form television and the esteemed cable network for the first time since Sex and the City (1998–2004). As Horgan sardonically quipped in one interview, “it only took eight years and one of the most famous women in the world for me to pull it off” (Sweeney 2015). Divorce (and parenthood comedy series Motherland [2016–]), though drawing from personal experience in a manner that is recognised in much journalistic writing on Horgan (see, for instance, Paskin 2016), marked a partial retreat from front-of-camera duties in favour of creator and writer credits. Such a repositioning comes in tandem with Horgan’s role as co-founder (alongside Clelia Mountford) in 2014 of production company, Merman, which makes television series, commercials, and cinema features. Catastrophe, Divorce, Motherland and Women on the Verge are all Merman productions, but the company’s roster also includes a

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variety of comedy programming Horgan is not involved with in a writing capacity. Part of the inspiration for setting up Merman was as a means to address in some way an industry-wide lack of female talent both above and below the line (Grey 2021). The production company, which operates in both the UK and the US, with offices in London, New York, and Los Angeles, currently has a number of US projects in production. The most high-­ profile of these is upcoming horror-comedy Shining Vale, starring Courtney Cox, Mira Sorvino and Greg Kinnear for Starz, a series Horgan will executive produce and co-write. A press release for the Starz series states that the talent involved in the production, “exemplifies the network’s commitment to improve female representation on and off the screen” (Otterson 2021). This suggests that Horgan’s growing profile in the US and Merman’s tactical foregrounding of female talent mean the production company is well-placed to capitalise on the attempts of an industry under pressure post-#MeToo to visibly prove it is making amends for misogynistic work cultures and the systemic gender inequalities that ran unchecked for decades. In addition to Horgan and Merman’s commitment to providing a platform for female talent, an examination of the company’s productions suggests that Irishness is a key pillar in its identity, and one that can be strategically used to market the company and its output. In addition to the Dublin-set comedy Women on the Verge, which was produced for RTE/ UKTV and Acorn (a SVOD channel that specialises in providing British and Irish content to US audiences), Merman produced comedy shorts for Sky Arts, such as Katherine Ryan in Ireland and Jason Byrne in Ireland (both 2016), featuring two well-known comedians, the first of Irish heritage and the second a Dubliner. In addition, the company’s first feature film (produced alongside Irish company Element Pictures) Herself (2020) is a female-centred intimate drama played out against the backdrop of the Irish housing crisis.2 As with Herself, Horgan played an active role in the promotion of the most recent Merman production, the Irish sitcom Frank of Ireland (2021), which was created and co-written, along with Michael Moloney, by high-profile Irish actors Domhnall and Brian Gleeson, who also star. While Frank of Ireland, which follows the adventures of a thirtysomething “boomerang child” living with his mother in the Dublin suburb of Malahide is something of an outlier for Merman in terms of being male-centric, in other ways it aligns with the production company’s (and Horgan’s) ongoing thematic investment in Irishness. Indeed, my work in

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this chapter seeks to build upon Caroline Bainbridge’s (2020) suggestion that, “as a UK-born Irish artist working in the US as well as the UK, Horgan provides an interesting point of condensation for the historical and cultural links between Britain, Ireland and the US” (71). An analysis of Horgan’s career and professional connections suggests that in addition to the centrality of Irishness evident in her comedy-dramas, it is also a disproportionately large feature of the network of professionals in the film and television industries to which she is attached. A recent study of industry professionals by O’Hagan, Murphy and Barton (2020) attests to the importance of personal networks in developing a career in the creative industries in Ireland. The development of Frank of Ireland constitutes quite an overt demonstration of the role personal networks play in career-building within the sector given the centrality of one family, who in two generations have featured in several high-profile Irish and international features, to the production. The Gleeson siblings—children of iconic Irish actor Brendan Gleeson (who appears in the series) and stars in their own right (with Domhnall having a significantly higher profile)—are part of a group of Irish industry figures who are often professionally inter-connected; and Horgan is an active player in this scene. Her second outing as director, for instance, was for an episode (which I treat in further detail in a later section of the chapter) she wrote for the anthology series Modern Love (2019–), a set of stand-alone romantic narratives based on the long-running New York Times column of the same name. Although the programme is a US production, there is a strong Irish element in evidence, with Modern Love’s showrunner being the Irish director John Carney (Once [2007]; Begin Again [2013]). Additionally, with Aisling Bea listed as one of the writers on the upcoming Shining Vale series Merman will produce and the celebrated Irish television director Dearbhla Walsh (Penny Dreadful, Fargo) directing the pilot, we might conjecture that Horgan is using her own growing influence to develop opportunities for her talented compatriots. This bears similarity to the diasporic networking for employment opportunities that has been a mainstay of Irish emigration for generations, and which in the entertainment industries can be detected as far back as the silent cinema era in the star discourse of Irish-American star Colleen Moore (Negra 2001).3 It should also be noted that two of Horgan’s writing partners Dennis Kelly (Pulling) and Delaney (Catastrophe) are of Irish descent. Anne O’Brien (2020), drawing on a range of scholarship on the topic from both the UK and Ireland, states that while networking is essential for both male and

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female television workers, “additional gendered challenges exist for women around self-promotion, accruing social or reputational capital, and engaging in a work culture that is biased and discriminates against them.” (70). As detailed above, the importance of networks is plainly obvious in securing work in the film and television industry and given the abiding conditions of inequality that impact female workers in the industry, the strategies employed by Horgan and Merman to promote female talent are both highly practical and laudable. A feature in the Wall Street Journal entitled “How Sharon Horgan Aims to Make a Global Audience Laugh with ‘Frank of Ireland’” (Grey 2021) highlights the connections between Horgan as performer and businesswoman, underlining how Irishness is a key part of this synergistic fusion. In terms of the latter, the article begins, “The sound of Irish laughter is music to Sharon Horgan’s ears”; followed by a quote from the performer: “Making your home country laugh or happy is actually quite addictive.” While in no way discounting the pleasures a migrant can have in gaining recognition in their departed home country, the foregrounding of Horgan’s Irishness at the outset of the article aligns with the relatively privileged positioning Ireland holds in US popular discourse given its modest global influence. The journalistic move to rhetorically emphasise Horgan’s Irishness is also evident in a New Yorker profile, where the artist’s reading material provides a cultural shorthand linking Irishness, diaspora and the US: “On the couch’s arm, she had placed her phone and a copy of “Brooklyn,” the novel by her compatriot Colm Tóibín” (Paskin 2016). As scholars such as Negra (2006) and Natasha Casey (2006) have deftly shown, Irishness was marketed through a diffuse range of consumer goods in the 2000s and was “firmly embossed on the US cultural psyche” (Casey 2006, 84). Although this trend has abated somewhat, the appetite for Irish or Irish-inflected cultural fare such as Tóibín’s 2009 novel and its cinematic adaptation (2015), and hit drama Normal People (2020), as well as the success of a sporting figure such as Conor McGregor, as detailed in Chap. 4, suggests that Irishness still commands a significant degree of cultural purchase in the US as the twenty-first century progresses. In its treatment of Horgan, the Wall Street Journal article neatly conflates her auteur-entrepreneurialism with her Irishness, a focus that seems particularly well-suited to rendering the performer legible to its readership. In some ways the mobile entrepreneurialism we see ascribed to Horgan in this profile connects with Celtic Tiger era developments, where, as Aoife Monks (2017) has argued in relation to 1990s cultural juggernaut

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Riverdance, “the emigrant emerged as a powerful cultural hero” as “emigration and diasporic mobility became qualities to live by” (153). Monks sees in Riverdance a textual representation of migrant energies allied with its inceptive moment in an era of neoliberal capitalism; she reads the “entrepreneurial virtuosity” of its star Michael Flatley as connecting with a nostalgic yearning for masculine forms of labour in an era wherein “feminised” post-Fordist service work eclipsed manufacturing as primary engine of the economy. That era’s Irishness was typically male-centred, reducing women to beautiful, romantic passive figures or new age Celtic songstresses who lacked threatening agency, while exceptions such as Sinead O’Connor were decried for their unruliness (Butler Cullingford 2001, 249–250). Horgan, however, comes to prominence in a post-Celtic Tiger era where the exuberance of the Riverdance years has begun to ring hollow. The fractious public sphere of the 2010s is an apt site for Horgan’s brand of auteur entrepreneurialism, one that finds transatlantic connections in the common ground of a gendered critique of the status quo, and which allows for the mining of neoliberal affective terrain for individual success.

Horgan’s Migrant Narrative Voice and the Comedic Transnational Legibility of Irritation Horgan and, in particular, her comedy-drama Catastrophe have begun to attract scholarly attention, particularly due to the transatlantic nature of the programme, that has been read as indexing both emerging transnational production features in the era of SVOD dominance, transnational discourses of television quality and their consolidation of middle-class taste structures in dominant anglophone media, and a transatlantic convergence of female-centred genre programming that mixes comedic and dramatic modes (Bainbridge 2020; Nygaard and Lagerwey 2020; Smith 2020). For Taylor Nygaard and Jorie Lagerwey (2020), Catastrophe is exemplary of a transatlantic television cycle they have named Horrible White People (HWP) programming. They suggest that, along with female-centred comedy-dramas such as Girls (2012–2017), You’re the Worst (2014–2019) and Fleabag (2016–2019), Catastrophe’s encapsulation of middle-class taste cultures, depiction of privileged white characters and overt engagement with political issues such as gender inequality have led to critical praise and a centralisation of whiteness that “sustains its

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representational dominance and … provides representational models or justifications for emphasizing relatively affluent White liberals’ affective despair” (10). Bainbridge (2020) examines Catastrophe and in particular the transatlantic elements of the programme as exemplars of what she terms the “woemantic” comedy. She interprets the series as a critique of the postfeminist condition of contemporary womanhood, which “walks a line between postfeminist experience and feminist interruptions of it by using everyday (and partially autobiographical) life experience to challenge assumptions about what it means to be a heterosexual woman in the contemporary contexts of middle-class America and Britain” (83). In the same edited collection as Bainbridge’s chapter, Frances Smith (2020) reads Catastrophe through the gentrifying processes at play in London Fields, in the London borough of Hackney, the area where the central couple of the sitcom lives. Smith suggests that in the sitcom, “romance is increasingly viewed as a pragmatic, rather than idealised, solution to precarity in contemporary culture [and that] this is made manifest through both characters’  – and especially Rob’s  – troubled relationship to their urban environs” (106). My own analysis of Catastrophe complements these readings, but also suggests that a greater attendance to the affective dimensions of migration overtly present in this dramedy complicates the at times monolithic conception of whiteness that underpins some of these readings. While migration, of course, isn’t the sole focus of Catastrophe or Horgan’s other comedy dramas, its presence can be detected throughout her body of work. The fact that Horgan tends to operate in a quasi-­ autobiographical mode, ensures that, particularly in work in which she acts as well as writes, her Irishness and the associations with which this identity is freighted are present in the text.4 While Rob and Sharon’s “global family” (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2014) of Irish and US citizens and their UK-born children might seem far from popular understandings of the minority cultures that abound in pluralistic London, there are tensions related to the migrant status of both sides of the family that I argue function as an affective corollary to the gendered tensions that are more prominently staged. The opening episode of the second season of Catastrophe dwells on some of the issues that arise from migrancy in everyday family life. Notably, these tensions manifest in relation to issues of physical and cultural proximity on Sharon’s part to her Irish family and culture and are intertwined with the care-work that comes with family life. The episode centres on the

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stresses attendant on having both US and Irish sides of the family together along with friends, in order to celebrate the christening of Rob and Sharon’s daughter. Sharon’s decision to name her child Muireann, (pronounced “mwir-inn” as the New Yorker profile Horgan helpfully clarifies [Paskin 2016]) reveals a cultural fracture point due to the inability of Rob, as well as all the couple’s friends and relatives apart from Sharon’s Irish family, to correctly pronounce the Irish name. Rob’s mum, Mia (Carrie Fisher), ratcheting up the levels of irritation Sharon is experiencing, cheerfully tells her that in America the name is pronounced “Myron”. The importance of names in the context of diasporic Irishness has been underlined by media scholar Martin McLoone (2011), who asserts the importance of naming to Irish studies, due to its methodological import as a means of naming and claiming subsequent generations who have left the home nation. There is also a distinctly gendered dimension, of course, as women would usually lose their surname upon marriage, highlighting the importance of the Irish first name as a means of retaining nominal connection with Ireland. For Sharon, then, giving her children Irish first names (as Horgan has with her own daughters) is suggestive of an overt longing for continued ties with the emigrant’s home nation and the repeated mispronunciation of a name, as is the case with other diasporic subjects, serves to underline one’s outsider status. The second point of migrancy-related tension evident in the episode centres on the fact that Sharon’s father has begun to display symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, forgetting his daughter’s name and repeatedly leaving the door open when reminded not to (inadvertently causing the family dog’s death). This is just one of the stress points that emerges in the episode and when Sharon’s brother Fergal, keen to talk about their father’s health, asks, “Is he losing it?” she responds: Fergal, maybe. I don’t. I can’t. My tits are leaking. Three people in this house wear nappies; I’m one of them. I have to keep babies alive, so I’m gonna be able to think about other people in about six months or so.

The situation, and Sharon’s irritated response, although not directly concerned with migrancy, are richly evocative of the abiding secondary feelings connected with diasporic experience that colour one’s everyday interactions. The migrant is at a remove from the home and in many cases ageing relatives facing health problems, having limited capacity to intervene. The caring role that women have traditionally been ascribed in Irish

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culture comes attendant with further feelings of compunction in such a situation, that we might suggest wouldn’t be as keenly felt by male migrants (such as Fergal). It is also worth dwelling on Sharon’s response to highlight the centrality of irritation to Horgan’s body of work. Bainbridge (2020) astutely recognises that Horgan’s comedy “constitutes an outlet for the unconscious anger that runs under the surface of everyday female experience in the UK and US contexts, where the appetite for such humour is insistent” (70). I’d contend, however, that irritation rather than anger is the foremost signature affect on display in her comedy dramas. Sharon in Catastrophe, Julia (Anna Maxwell Martin) in Motherland, and Frances (Sarah Jessica Parker) in Divorce, don’t so much rage against the world as chafe against it continually.5 Writing on the minor affect of irritation, in a passage that resonates specifically with Sharon’s comments to Fergal detailed above, cultural theorist Sianne Ngai posits: the split between the bodily sensation that is “soreness” and the emotional quality that is “mild anger” foregrounds irritation’s liminality or instability as an emotional response. Whether “irritation” is defined as an emotional or physical experience, synonyms for it tend to apply equally to psychic life and life at the level of the body—and particularly to its surfaces or skin. (Ngai 2005, 184)

The liminality Ngai sees as integral to the minor affect of irritation is also one that characterises the types of global families portrayed in Catastrophe and familiar to migrants the world over. In their book Distant Love (2014), renowned sociologists Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-­Gernsheim, for instance, argue that “the different kinds of world family share one common feature: they act as an irritant” (Beck and Beck-­Gernsheim 2014, 9). This liminal positioning is resonant with not only with migrant positionality, but also with the insecure position of women in Horgan’s industry. One of the main insights generated in O’Brien’s work on the film and television industries in Ireland was the impact on subjectivity experienced by female workers that for many resulted in “a gendered sense of self that was liminal” (2019, 104), due to their professional capacities as an ‘insider’ in the business and a constant experience of being questioned and undermined. Dramatizing similar affective terrain, another example of irritation, this time segueing into anger, comes from Horgan’s episode of Modern Love

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(mentioned above), which condenses the familial and the industrial. “Rallying to Keep the Game Alive,” which Horgan adapted from a non-­ fiction account by writer Ann Leary describing ongoing marital struggles with actor husband Denis Leary (who has strongly affiliated as Irish American throughout his career), was one of the most lauded of the first season, with some critics appreciating the acerbic tone Horgan brought to a series that tended toward the saccharine (see, for instance, Nicholson 2019). In a scene not originally present in Leary’s (2013) New York Times essay, Ann (Tina Fey) and Denis (John Slattery) are out to dinner with their two children, a preteen girl and adolescent boy, after a school play. A woman comes by on the pretext of congratulating their son on his role in the play before revealing herself to be a big fan of Denis’ current show, pulling up a chair and provoking Ann into berating her for her intrusion upon a family dinner (and Denis for letting it happen). Ann’s irritation progresses to anger and she verbally oversteps the mark: Ann: You’re his exact fan base, by the way. Normally he’s embarrassed that all his fans are single women over fifty, but nobody’s stopped him in a while, so he’ll take what he can get.

The intrusive fan’s stunned and belated comeback (“I’m married…I’m forty-seven”), delivered after Ann has left the restaurant with the children, provides the final comedic flourish of the scene. Viewers familiar with Catastrophe would perhaps recognise the sharpness of the dialogue, a common feature of the British comedy series, particularly in the fights between Sharon and Rob. The piercing critique that manages a double insult to both Denis (indicating both narcissism and a waning career) and his fan also suggests an oblique critique of a television industry renowned for facilitating the narcissism of its male stars through, among other things, romantic pairings with younger co-stars and abiding conditions of gender pay inequality. Ann’s primary vexation in her marriage is that Denis keeps her separated from “the fun stuff,” the glamourous elements of his career. She feels pained by this exclusion and her symbolic inscription within the domestic realm and its attendant duties of care. As she puts it, “I think you like to keep me away, because if you saw me there, with those people, you’d realise that’s where I belong,” a capacious sentiment that seems to resonate intertextually beyond the couple and activate a sadness that encompasses both familial and professional feelings of twenty-first century inequality in its middle-class cohort.

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As indicated earlier, of course, “Rallying to Keep the Game Alive” provides evidence of an Irish creative network, given the fact Horgan’s compatriot is the showrunner of Modern Love. However, as can also be seen with the other case studies in this chapter and which I detail further below, there are also talent networks that activate along professional genre lines, with comedic connections coming together. “Rallying to Keep the Game Alive,” for instance, is notable for enabling Horgan to work with Tina Fey. A fellow comedy actress and showrunner, Fey is a celebrated industry figure whose career trajectory has echoes of Horgan’s own in its gradual pivot from acting/writing to producing. In the character of Ann, we see an intertextual conflation of, among other things, Horgan and Fey, a professional connection that invites us to consider the connections evident in the two comedy practitioners’ work and the growing space for female auteur-entrepreneurs in the realm of women-centred comedic television. A feature in the UK Times devoted to the topic of transatlantic comedic connections uses Horgan, along with UK performer Peter Serafinowicz, and US actor David Cross as exemplary of the professional networking possibilities of Web 2.0 technologies and social media platforms such as YouTube and Twitter for screen comedy practitioners (Wilson 2010). Written five years before Catastrophe was released, the article describes Horgan’s meeting of future Catastrophe co-writer Delaney on Twitter, when the American got in touch to tell Horgan of his admiration for Pulling. Horgan details, “He liked Pulling. I liked everything about him. It becomes a much smaller world because of that. And that’s how these unions seem to be happening” (Wilson 2010). Positing the existence of a transatlantic community of comedy practitioner-aficionados that has been facilitated through the ease of sharing material on sites such as YouTube, the article is somewhat naïve in not fully acknowledging the longstanding transatlantic ties that emerged at the outset of television broadcasting and the long history of feted transatlantic remakes ranging from BBC’s Till Death Do Us Part (1965–1975) and its Norman Lear-produced remake All in the Family (1971–1979), to The Office (UK: 2001–2003; US: 2005–2013) (Hilmes et al. 2019). However, as Horgan’s account suggests, there is a discursive appeal to the idea of a “smaller world” notwithstanding the practical benefits in terms of career moves and professional connection. Horgan leveraged the feel-good story of her and Delaney’s social media connection by revisiting it in early US talk show appearances, the anecdote itself providing an affective bridge to US audiences, further cemented through the

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complementing of Horgan’s Irishness alongside Delaney’s Boston-Irish identity. Such accounts also exemplify an ease of movement, both digitally and physically that the (pre-pandemic) twenty-first century seemed to offer to successful media industries professionals providing content for commercially viable taste cultures.

“Be Our Yes”: Diasporic Political Activism and the Comedic Navigation of Bad Feelings If the popularity of Brooklyn (2015), John Crowley’s adaptation of Toibin’s novel provided a positive, though melancholy-tinged, account of diasporic movement that resonated with international audiences, campaigners for social justice sought to harness the same emotive energies among an Irish migrant population as part of the Together for Yes campaign. The campaign sought a ‘yes’ vote in the May 2018 “regulation of pregnancy” referendum hoping to draw upon the many stories of pain and displacement that Irish legislation and social prohibition had generated through the years and leverage them for positive social change. The success of the referendum was seen by many to signal a new progressiveness within the nation that superseded some of the darker elements of the Irish past connected with the restrictive role the Catholic church played in controlling people’s lives and its strong links with the state. The referendum, of course, was linked with mobility and migration in overt ways. One of the most notoriously repressed narratives of life in Ireland in the twentieth century was the stream of women crossing the Irish sea to have abortions or forced to physically relocate to avoid the shame of having a child born out of wedlock. Indeed, in commentary leading up to the referendum, the familiar positioning of the British as the enemy of the Irish on account of the two nations’ shared colonial past and the lingering trauma of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, was reconfigured with growing vocal acknowledgement of the role the British played in making many Irish women’s lives bearable (Enright 2018). This repositioning of the UK as ally is evident in the short video analysed in this section, which includes both first- and second-generation Irish comedy practitioners who mostly live and work in the UK asking people in Ireland to get out and vote. The video also provides a transition from my focus on Horgan to Aisling Bea, the second case study of this chapter. Additionally, the video constitutes an attempt at using comedy to navigate the difficult

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Fig. 5.1  Sharon Horgan and Aisling Bea comedically referencing the repressive patriarchal regime in The Handmaid’s Tale in their “Be Our Yes” campaign video for Together for Yes, part of the campaign to legalise abortion in Ireland

emotions that the referendum stirred up in order to secure a yes vote, a strategy evident across the three case studies considered in this chapter. The opening of the video establishes the parameters of engagement for the piece, communicating both its comedic and feminist credentials. Bea and Horgan appear in front of camera wearing a cowl and cloak referencing The Handmaid’s Tale (2017–) (see Fig. 5.1). The allusion to patriarchal societal structures inherent in the dystopian imagery of the feted adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s novel is expressed here through reference to the striking costume design of the Hulu television adaptation. The video immediately shows Horgan having second thoughts about the outfit, and communicating them to Bea: “I mean, I know what you’re going for, but I just think it’s a bit much…”. It immediately cuts to a shot of the two women sans cowl and cloak, with the “repeal the eighth” slogan visible on their tops, a reference to the amendment that constitutionally enshrined the equal right to life of the pregnant woman and the unborn child. By placing the two women together and demonstrating a faux disagreement on how militant the video should be, we effectively have an acknowledgement of the range of positions people held on the topic, a

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move which would help in securing an empathic engagement with broad sections of its target audience. The brief introduction to the video notably introduces what critical theorist Sara Ahmed has termed the figure of the “feminist killjoy” (Ahmed 2010) before effecting its disavowal. Ahmed suggests that one way in which feminists might be perceived as killing joy, is by “not finding the objects that promise happiness to be quite so promising,” (65) a description that seems an apt characterisation of much of Horgan’s oeuvre. Yet all three of the case studies in this chapter showcase the necessity of acknowledging painful or difficult aspects of life and navigating such negative affective terrain with humour and optimistic resilience. The same strategies are evident in the comedy video, which brings a light-heartedness to the campaign while partially acknowledging the deep patriarchal nature of Ireland’s anti-abortion laws. Bea and Horgan are the dominant presence in the campaign short, appearing in 9 sections and both opening and closing it. The rest of the video features a number of comedians and comedy writers stressing the importance of voting and making various jokes that often centre on either Irish femininity or their inability to make it home to vote themselves. Chris O’Dowd’s contribution, for instance, has him exclaiming that Ireland “has all the best women,” to the faux chagrin of his English wife Dawn O’Porter who is seated alongside him. One salient feature of the “Be Our Yes” campaign video is the inclusion of second-generation Irish comedy figures such as English comedian Roisin Conaty, whose sitcom Gameface (2017–2019) has notable similarities with both Horgan’s work and This Way Up; Canadian stand up and fellow sitcom creator Kathleen Ryan (The Duchess); and, somewhat jarringly, offence comedian Jimmy Carr. The video eschews generational definitions, describing the performers listed in the more capacious term, “half-Irish.” The video ends with the onscreen caption, “For the many thousands of Irish abroad who can no longer vote in our wonderful country: BE OUR YES.” The statement both registers the ongoing tensions of diasporic disenfranchisement and adds a patriotic note through the reference to “our wonderful country” in a manner that captures the fractured nature of diasporic citizenship. The other set of “bad feelings” that the video must navigate, alongside those connected with the repressive church and state ideology that the vote was seeking to erode, are those attached to the figure of the melancholy migrant (Ahmed 2010). At one point Bea states, “We are the Judases who left Ireland and can no longer vote…we no longer have a voice in our

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beloved country.” The statement’s conflation of betrayal (of one’s nation) and thwarted civic agency suggests a melancholic diasporic subjectivity that directs negative feelings inward. In glossing Sigmund Freud’s treatment of the topic in his famous essay “On Mourning and Melancholia,” Ahmed notes that the difference between the two states is that while mourning depicts a rational process of grieving and the “letting go” of one’s attachment: “the melancholic may appear as a figure insofar as we recognize the melancholic as the one who ‘holds onto’ an object that has been lost, who does not let go, or get over loss by getting over it” (2010, 139). As I detail below, Bea’s sitcom This Way Up utilises the figure of the melancholy migrant in its portrayal of Bea’s central character, but this figure also informs character traits of Sharon in Catastrophe, such as the naming of her daughter detailed earlier. Both “Be Our Yes” and This Way Up invoke the figure of the melancholy migrant, but the campaign video manages to register the figure and hold it at bay as part of its pragmatic political operationality. Overall, the 2010s’ campaigns for social justice and equality in Ireland were often highly ambivalent for migrants. The #HomeToVote campaign, for instance, saw migrants using social media to visually attest to their journeys to take part in the 2014 marriage referendum (in a cohort that overwhelmingly voted in favour of allowing same sex marriages). Eleanor O’Leary and Negra (2016), writing on the figure of the returned migrant in digital screen culture of this era, note the marriage referendum “provided a sense of unity which was dependent on the idea of a modern, inclusive Irish identity” at the same time as emigration rates were still rising (138). In many ways the marriage equality referendum anticipated the affective and strategic features of the later referendum. In contrasting the feelings of celebration with a recognition of the high level of (mostly youth) migration at this time, O’Leary and Negra foreground the ambivalence of these socially progressive moments in recent Irish history. While the ‘Be Our Yes’ video comes coated with a comedic veneer that potentially renders some of the sentiments expressed ambivalent, it seems a genuine and heartfelt message from most of the comedians included, partially tinged with melancholia. Such melancholia is, of course, not only felt by Irishwomen who have emigrated, but also by many other citizens who left Ireland for a variety of reasons. Suggesting a queer common cause for the women who left Ireland for life in a less restrictive environment, television presenter and novelist Graham Norton conveys a similar sense of diasporic angst when stating his admiration for those who stayed

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and campaigned for sexual equality. In press interviews for his novel Home Stretch, he sketches a familiar narrative of migration and regret: we’re a nation of leavers. That’s what we do. The minute we don’t have a job, off we go. The world loves us and that’s what we do, we go somewhere else. So the people who stayed and fought and changed minds and changed laws: I’m in awe of them. (Clark 2020)

Norton’s assertion finds a corollary in journalist Una Mullally’s (2019) consideration of the exclusionary treatment of those who campaigned on behalf of a more progressive Ireland in the nation’s changing urban composition. Decrying the housing policies causing the urban expulsion of many younger people from city spaces (often seeing them relocate to more accommodating European cities such as Berlin) to make way for more financially secure corporate workers attracted by Ireland’s newly minted liberal image, Mullally notes that those who strived to broker a more progressive republic will in many cases not be able to benefit (see also McIntyre 2021, 72–73). In particular, she suggests the creative communities of Ireland’s major cities are in effect being punished through their decision to stay and fight for a new republic. The mediatised accounts of those who have decided to leave Ireland on account of such housing policies once again signals the melancholia often attached to Irish migration as well as the failure of the home nation to provide means of achieving the good life for (some) citizens, elements that further contribute to the push and pull factors of migration and its attendant emotional vicissitudes.

This Way Up: Melancholic Migrancy and Affective Vulnerability This sense of melancholia is a keynote of This Way Up. Debuting on Channel 4 in the UK in 2019 and distributed by Hulu in North America, Aisling Bea’s comedy drama, which she both stars in and writes has some commonality with Horgan’s work, but, as alluded to earlier, evinces a strong melancholic quality that differs in tone from her compatriot’s comedy features. Bea’s dramedy and much of her writing aligns her with number of female comedians, such as Tig Notaro (Mizejewski and Sturtevant 2017, 7–8) and Sarah Silverman (McIntyre 2017) who foreground vulnerability and melancholia in their comedy. Bea, originally from County Kildare, relocated to the UK to study at the London Academy of Music

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and Dramatic Art after her undergraduate degree and maintained an acting career alongside her more prominent position, within the UK and Ireland at least, as a stand-up comedian. Bea demonstrates a notably multi-mediated career, an increasingly common feature in a fragmented contemporary mediascape—similar in some ways to that of Maeve Higgins, the final case study of this chapter— alternating between stand up, podcasting and comedic as well as dramatic acting. As with all the case studies in this chapter, Irishness is a central feature of much of Bea’s output. She co-wrote and presented with fellow Irish actress Yasmine Akram a BBC podcast Irish Micks and Legends (2012–2015), that saw the two performers providing comedic updates of traditional Irish mythic tales. Even in Living with Yourself, the US-set Netflix speculative fiction series in which she stars alongside Paul Rudd’s cloned central character(s), the actress retains her own accent. (In a manifestation of the strong feelings accent usage can mobilise, Bea had to navigate significant backlash on social media from Irish posters when the trailer for Home Sweet Home Alone [2021) revealed the actress was performing in an English accent [Seddon 2021].) Such a varied presence through media and performance is a key feature of the female Irish talent assayed in this chapter and I further examine the implications of the “hustle” that can be detected in these artists’ careers below. However, due to its overt focus on diasporic subjectivities, and its positioning of Bea as an emerging comedy auteur my primary focus for this chapter is on This Way Up, for which the writer and actress won the BAFTA Breakthrough Talent award. This Way Up opens with Áine (Bea) being picked up by her sister (and main source of emotional support) Shona (Horgan) from a private psychiatric hospital, where she underwent therapy in the wake of a nervous breakdown. We later find out this precipitated a suicide attempt. One critic draws comparisons between This Way Up and Daisy Haggard’s Back to Life (2019–), a BBC3 dramedy centred on a former prisoner’s rehabilitation into society (Gilbert 2019). The two shows concentrate on reintegration into society, and follow the tentative steps made by their vulnerable female central characters, utilising this narrative conceit to map their encounters and construct sensitive portraits of emotionally precarious young women. While Áine’s enduring melancholy might not solely be the result of her position as a migrant within cosmopolitan London, her vocal acknowledgement of this liminal position6—particularly in the opening episode with its continued reference to the uncertainty felt by the Irish in the immediate aftermath of the Brexit vote—attests to its contributing

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role, and further functions as analogy for the character’s continued failure to integrate into the social rhythms of her peers. Sophie Gilbert (2019), in an insightful review of This Way Up in The Atlantic suggests “Instead of uniformly glossy Emmys bait, there could be more TV shows that try to answer vital questions, such as: What do you do when just being alive seems a touch too much to bear?” The excess of empathy that Gilbert sees as contributing to Áine’s difficulties provides a useful means of diagnosing—particularly when contextualised with media and social histories of this diasporic grouping—some of the anxieties that effectively constitute the affective background noise for Irish emigrants in the UK. Of course, socio-economic and gendered factors are also germane to ennui, and it is a credit to the production that complexities of gender, labour and belonging are subtly woven through the narrative. For media scholars Amy Dobson and Akane Kanai (2019), many female-centred texts in the dramedy genre index precarity given its rise to prominence in post-2008 recessionary culture. For these scholars, the theories of “can do” girlhood that I examined in chapter three have been superseded by an affective/economic culture in which normative investments in upward career mobility are often ambivalently presented or openly queried in some pop-cultural texts. They suggest that “the portrayal of young women’s mental health in recent female-centred TV shows is perhaps a space where the tension between a neoliberal affective orientation and the reflective questioning of such is most apparent” (783). This Way Up presents us with can-do femininity alongside Áine’s dissonant and fragmented selfhood. The former is exemplified by Shona, a successful financial executive who throughout the first season is setting up a networking project for women in business—a venture with clear parallels with Horgan’s own strategies of female empowerment in the film and television industry. In contrast, Áine’s emotional dependency is portrayed as excessive due to her inability to maintain a significant social circle outside of her sibling. In an early scene in the first episode, we see a evidence of the internal struggles faced by the young woman. She puts a brave face on her loneliness by joking around with her sister, but once Shona leaves for a social engagement, Áine leans over in the bathroom retching—a physical manifestation of her loneliness and anxiety. Empirical studies have found loneliness considerably higher among individuals with a “migration background” (Buecker et  al. 2020, 151). The modification of self that Áine enacts in her interactions with Shona corresponds in some ways with what Kanai has identified in young women’s digital presentation of self on

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social media networks like Tumblr. Kanai (2017) discerns in such postings a space in which: “One’s errors, small failures and transgressions are made funny for consumption by others, shoring up the importance of a common postfeminist regulatory standard, but in a therapeutic fashion, signalling that such regulation is shared and not really ‘a big deal’” (Kanai 2017, 74). This Way Up’s narrative foregrounds both the constructed presentation of self and the affective pain that can reside underneath such posturing, the dramedy presenting such emotional travails as more substantial and potentially life-threatening. This Way Out suggests the sense of alienation Áine feels is compacted by her hyper-awareness of her own position as a white Irish woman, not in possession of the exterior signifiers of migrancy that she sees in her students (an ethnically heterogenous group learning English as a Second Language) despite having similar feelings of liminality (see Walter 2001, for a consideration of this contradiction). In the dramedy, London is defined by the transnational flow of people and capital. These flows are communicated through a variety of means: Shona is introduced preparing to attend a workplace event, the mise-en-scene once she arrives placing her among the glass and steel skyscrapers of London’s financial district, signalling the city’s position as a hub of global finance. This provides a visual contrast to the hardscrabble urban and racially diverse settings in which Áine is so often situated. This Way Up’s construction of London is evocative of Avtar Brah’s (1996) influential account of “diaspora space” as a space of encounter for people of different origins and genealogies. This is textually evoked in the non-diegetic music used in the series, for instance, which encompasses a variety of genres and languages. The opening episode punctuates the transitions between many scenes with the Spanish-language reggaeton hit “Mi Gente” by Columbian J Balvin and French performer Willy William—an energetic dance track which provides a contrapuntal burst of energy to the opening episode’s delicate outlining of Áine’s fragile state and a sonic signifier of the pluralistic environs of the city. Áine also accompanies her sister to visit Shona’s Indian-English fiancé Vish’s (Aasif Mandvi) family home in an episode (S01E06) that subverts standard tropes of romantically centred cultural clash. Sinead Moynihan (2013), in an analysis of diasporic writing and media of the 1990s and early 2000s, suggests that “(re)imagining Irish diasporic experience in the United States in various ways – particularly as it relates to Irish interactions with African Americans – became absolutely central to

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representations of multicultural Ireland during the Celtic Tiger years” (3). In texts such as This Way Up, and as I later detail, some of Higgins’ multimediated work, we see an attempt to contextualise an ever more self-conscious white Irishness within a wider set of ethnic identities. This representational shift often balances an acknowledgement of some of the specificities of Irish experience with recognition of the diversity of ethnic experiences of migrancy in different host countries.7

Migrancy and the Spectral Metaphor of the Forgotten Irish One way in which This Way Up considers migrancy, is through paralleling Áine’s melancholy with the circumstances of a homeless older Irish migrant, Patrick/Pat (Oengus MacNamara). This suggested connection between different members of a diasporic community, of seemingly very different social and generational positioning is not uncommon in diasporic communities (Gray 2004). Pat, who lives in Áine’s neighbourhood, is coded as a member of the “forgotten Irish,” part of a generational wave of migrancy stemming from the 1950s that saw hundreds of thousands of migrants entering the UK due to a lack of work in Ireland in these years, especially in poverty-stricken rural areas. Despite Irish independence, the UK and Ireland were effectively functioning as one labour pool in this era, with Irish migrants necessary participants in the completion of huge infrastructural developments in post-war Britain. The series also blocks an oversimplistic and sentimentalised portrayal of these migrants by having Pat express racist views on non-Irish immigrants in London, much to Áine’s frustration. The term “forgotten Irish” has a distinct meaning in designating mostly male labourers who have fallen through social safety nets in later years and who have lost connection with their homeland. The figure has also been a mainstay of Irish migrant narratives in film and literature. Timothy O’Grady and Steven Pyke’s photographic novel I Could Read the Sky (1997), as well as Nichola Bruce’s film adaptation of the same name (1999) were notable artistic encapsulations, for instance, of the traumas associated with this migrant generation. The forgotten Irish came to public attention in Ireland in the early 2000s due to a flurry of documentaries and newspaper features, including an RTÉ Prime Time (2003) special “Ireland’s Forgotten Generation,” which revealed the squalid conditions

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in which many of these Irish citizens were living in the UK. An Irish Times editorial written in response to the documentary made the point that Irish migrants from this cohort sent home considerable sums of money in remittances (£3.5 billion in the 1950s and 1960s), sums that match the amount of later funds allocated for Irish development from the European Union for subsequent generations, at a time when Ireland was a country with extreme levels of poverty. The editorial suggests that despite this, there was a stigma attached to those migrants highlighting the pervasive understanding by some politicians that they should have remained in penury instead of leaving the state (“The Irish Abroad” 2003). Notably, this narrative re-emerged in relation to the post-2008 wave of youth migrations, with veteran broadcaster Pat Kenny decrying those who had left Ireland unlike those who stayed and have “done our bit” (Heaney 2018)—a view that doesn’t tally with the huge relief on the state’s finances that such migration effected during the most financially straightened years of the recession given the attendant suppression of unemployment figures and social welfare payments. This generational cohort still make the news in Ireland on occasion when accounts emerge of elderly Irish with no next of kin dying in the UK, such as that of Joseph Tuohy originally of Toomevara in County Tipperary. The story of Tuohy’s death at the age of 83 in 2019, and the efforts made to track down relatives or friends struck a chord within Ireland and hundreds who didn’t know the man attended a funeral mass in Dublin, where he was described as “forgotten in life and remembered in death” (O’Connell 2019). Social psychologist Marc Scully (2015) has argued that far from being forgotten, this migrant cohort has persisted in cultural understandings of the Irish in the UK for many years.8 For Scully, “a transnational memory of their experiences has gradually taken hold in both Ireland and England, to the extent to which they act as a postmemory that mediates discourses on current Irish emigration” (135). The presence of Pat in This Way Up, constitutes the intrusion of this postmemory into the narrativization of later waves of Irish migration, attesting to the cultural persistence of its traumatic associations even for later Irish migrants in possession of greater levels of cultural and financial capital. Shona and Áine—in common with all the Irish-in-England characters that populate Horgan’s oeuvre—are of a generational cohort far removed from the waves of Irish migrants to the UK from the 1950s, who often worked in manual labouring jobs (men) and caring labour (women). The challenges faced by this generation on arrival in Britain are well

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documented and are crystalized in the folk memories of the infamous “no dogs, no blacks, no Irish” signs that reportedly were placed in windows advertising accommodation (Lonergan 2018).9 A season 2 storyline in This Way Up that sees Áine attend a fundraising event for the Windrush Generation—the cohort of Caribbean immigrants who moved to Britain between 1948 and 1970, many of whom, it was revealed in 2018, had been victimised by illegal deportation by the British Home Office—only to meet Pat at the same event, serves to reinforce the parallels the series draws between Irish migration to the UK and migration from Britain’s other former colonies. Even though overt discrimination against the Irish was at its height some time ago, it seems naïve to imagine that the conditions of migrancy in previous eras have no affective resonance in the present. Sociologist Mary Hickman (2021) shows, for instance, how “qualitative analysis reveals that many of the contemporary everyday experiences reported by members of minority ethnic groups in Britain—e.g., Irish, African-Caribbean, Pakistani—are threaded with the vestiges of complex colonial/domestic encounters of the past and the present, as are their interpretations of their experiences” (156). Often, such everyday experiences are signalled in Irish migration narratives through the figure of ‘forgotten Irish’ male labourers such as Pat, now destitute and severed from his home community. Notably, the forgotten Irish are predominantly figured in masculine terms, and this occludes the many harrowing experiences of female migrants from this cohort (which I consider in my analysis of Philomena in the following chapter). In some ways, the presence of Pat in the narrative accords with media scholar Esther Peeren’s (2014) account of metaphorical spectrality. Peeren reads such spectrality in figures such as undocumented migrants, servants and domestic workers as depicted in popular screen culture and literature. The liminal character of the down-and-out forgotten Irish labourer emerges as a resonant signifier of both the deprivations encountered by many Irish migrants in the past in mainland Britain’s cities and the precariousness of lives eked out by subjects de-anchored from their homeland, a form of existence that has the metaphorical qualities of spectrality that Peeren discerns in what she terms ‘living ghosts’. Considering briefly my third case study of this chapter in relation to this topic, Maeve Higgins’ 2015 memoir Off You Go similarly invokes the figure of the forgotten Irish manual worker in its depiction of her feelings of isolation during a brief time living in London. Recounting a call to her sister when her loneliness in the English capital was at a peak, she worries

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that she’ll share the same fate as many of these men who “were so lonely and isolated in the city that they turned to drink, then they lost their jobs and their teeth fell out. They were too broke and too mortified to come home to Ireland” (2015, 13). While Higgins’ description of the forlorn male labourer is for comedic effect—her sister repeats back her very specific and unlikely fears in a matter-of-fact voice—the figure’s ability to haunt the contemporary Irish imagination attests to its crystallization of the potential emotional, physical and financial perils often associated with migrancy. For Peeren, spectrality “insists on blurring multiple boundaries,” including those of visibility and invisibility, past and present, and presence and absence (2014, 10). Such boundaries are fundamental to the psycho-geographic terrain of migrancy, and the presence of the ‘forgotten Irish’ in cultural texts by Bea and Higgins that are seemingly at a remove from this group, both in terms of generation and gender, attests to the potency and persistence of this cultural trope.

Maeve Higgins: Comedic Origins Cobh-born comedian, actress and writer Maeve Higgins has a lot in common with both Sharon Horgan and Aisling Bea. The three comedy practitioners are attentive to the complexities of female experience in the twenty-first century in their work, and all three have gone beyond Ireland in pursuit of their creative careers. Even more so than her two compatriots, Higgins’ work displays a considerable thematic investment in migration, the topic being central to her published memoir-essays, journalistic writing and a podcast series she fronted. As mentioned earlier in the chapter, Higgins has been transitioning from the stand-up comedy from which she started out in her career. One of Higgins’ first career breaks in Ireland came as she entered a comedy competition on popular radio DJ Ray D’Arcy’s show on Today FM. Although she wasn’t the outright winner, she impressed the producers of the show enough to gain a regular slot (“What would Maeve do?”) that gave her a level of national prominence that supplemented her regular stand-up gigs in the country and beyond. These beginnings in radio are indicative of a career strand Higgins has maintained, as she is now a mainstay in the US on popular NPR show “Wait, Wait… Don’t Tell Me!”, a topical news comedy quiz, as well as regular co-host on Star Talk, an award-winning science podcast featuring renowned astronomer Neil DeGrasse Tyson, as well as the writer and presenter of her own podcasts which I detail below. In the 2000s, Higgins

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also featured on Naked Camera (2007–2007), an RTÉ hidden camera prank show that featured Higgins alongside Irish comedians PJ Gallagher and Patrick McDonnell. Higgins’ pieces in the show often centred around her portrayal of a desperate singleton, as featured in skits that included a woman wanting to book a honeymoon with the groom included, and an overzealous traffic warden who offers to waive the penalty fee if the men found parking illegally will go on a date with her. Higgins is highly dismissive of the show in her writings. Fancy Vittles (2009), a six-part half hour comedy series for RTÉ, offered an opportunity for Higgins to have her own comedic vision come through in her television work. In this distinctive series, Higgins prepares a meal alongside her sister Lilly (who has since published a number of cookbooks and appears regularly on Irish daytime television), delivering stand up material to camera, which is also interspersed with sketches, all based on weekly themes (such as friendship, childhood, men, etc.). An early hint at the ambivalent consideration of female experience the programme effected comes with Higgins’ description of a ‘girls’ night in’ provided at the opening of the first episode: “what we do is we all gather in one person’s house and then we eat and drink and gossip; and then we all go home and cut ourselves.” Writing on Higgins’ stand up, drama scholar Susanne Colleary (2015) suggests that the comic’s “subjectivity [as well as] her social, cultural, political inscription as woman, masked in the camouflage of self-­ deprecation and self-critical commentary, works to subvert the male-dominated comic form” (165). Certainly, Fancy Vittles’ was distinctive in its approach, channelling the gendered disappointment that was a feature of contemporary and later dramedy forms (such as Pulling and This Way Up) and presenting it in a manner that fused stand up with sketch show and lifestyle television conventions in a distinctly feminine register.

Writing Migration Like the two other primary case studies in this chapter and aligning with the career paths of many female Irish workers in creative cultural industries (Barton and Murphy 2020), Higgins ultimately left Ireland to further her career. She moved first to London (unhappily), and then on to New York, as documented in her 2015 memoir Off You Go: Away from Home and Loving it. Sort of. The hesitancy evident in the title of the memoir signals the draw of home that is also evident in the work of Horgan and Bea.

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Higgins’ shift from stand up to memoir writing follows a well-trodden path of female comedians in the 2000s. Suzanne Ferris (2014) has argued, drawing on examples written by comedic figures such as Tina Fey, Sarah Silverman and Chelsea Handler, that such memoirs, what she terms “chick non-fic,” have built upon the popularity of comedic chick-lit novels such as Helen Fielding’s successful Bridget Jones novels. Certainly, the female comedic memoir was a well-established genre in the US when Higgins’ breakthrough book in that territory, Maeve in America: Essays by a Girl from Somewhere Else (2018) was published. The essays develop some of the topics the comedian had been writing about in a series of op-ed pieces in the New York Times and addressing in her podcast Maeve in America: Immigration IRL. Notably, the podcast, op-eds and the memoir consider various dimensions of emigration in the contemporary US—a timely topic given the overlap with Donald Trump’s rise to the office of president in the years following Higgins’ move to the US in 2014. On arriving in the US, Higgins initially set up a Brooklyn monthly performance night featuring stand up, readings and interviews called “I’m New Here—Can You Show Me Around” along with her friend, the journalist and humourist Jon Ronson. The monthly night aligns with Higgins’ thematic investment in the liminality of migrancy that continued in her podcast Maeve in America: Immigration IRL. Running from October 2016 to March the following year, the podcast positions Higgins as a faux naïf learning about the intricacies of immigration in the US, primarily through interviews. Although Higgins brings some comedic elements to the podcast, the subject matter limits opportunities for levity, taking in as it does quite harrowing accounts of separation, racism and displacement. In Higgins’ memoir of the same name, one of the essays, “Wildflowers,” details the pressures to make the podcast more attractive to an audience by employing a more upbeat approach and more celebrity interviewees, an account that gives some insight into the failure of the podcast to get renewed and its second season curtailment. Higgins relates this by recounting her failure to get the story of Liana and her son Vlad, Romanian immigrants who came to the US shortly before the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Centre on a visitors’ visa put into an episode of the podcast. An offer of work from a lobbying firm Liana had was rescinded in the immediate aftermath of the attacks and the former lawyer found herself navigating a hardscrabble life as an undocumented cleaner, while her son eventually was able to secure DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival) status. Narrating the trip to California where she would meet Liana, and where

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she also visited Friendship Park near San Diego, a bi-national space on the border between the US and Mexico where separated families come and meet, Higgins writes: Whatever cute idea I had about a show celebrating this great melting pot of a country, with feel-good stories of fusion food and cosmopolitan couples with biracial children, seemed hollow to me now. Without dealing with the very real issues of militarized borders and racialised immigration policies, whatever I had to say would be as empty and windy as that beach in San Diego. (193)

The despairing tone of the account highlights the difficulties of the writer’s transition from a comedic mode to one which can navigate a topic so freighted with human misery. While as previously noted, Bea is upbeat in her belief in comedy’s ability to make fraught subject matter palatable, Higgins seems less convinced, and her writing is often characterised by self-doubt and self-deprecation. The fact that in the writing of the essay and its publication Higgins is fulfilling a promise to bring a certain degree of public attention to Liana’s story and raise awareness of those caught in similar circumstances dispels some of the pessimism that is central to this account. Nevertheless, as hinted in recounting an opening gag from Fancy Vittles, negotiating pessimism is a persistent feature of Higgins’ work whether that be through accounts of failed intimacy and the disappointments of romantic love or disappointments derived from civic or even geopolitical matters—as in her feminist climate justice podcast Mothers of Invention (2018–), which she co-hosts alongside former president of Ireland, Mary Robinson and series producer Thimali Kodikara. Recent feminist scholarship has grappled with the navigations of such disappointment inherent in the disjuncture between fantasies of the good life and the failures of contemporary lifeworlds to live up to such expectations, as well as the oppressive patriarchal structures that undergird this material and affective terrain. Terms such as “cruel optimism” (Berlant 2011) and “heteropessimism” (Seresin 2019) are offered as ways of describing ongoing attachments to objects or fantasies that inhibit our ability to flourish: “we can remain secretly attached to the continuity of the very things we (sincerely) decry as toxic, boring, broken” (Seresin 2019). In different ways the work of the female artists considered in this chapter are responsive to such contradictions and constitute both an

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acknowledgement of abiding inequalities and disappointments, as well as a cultural working through that utilises comedy as a means of “staying with the trouble,” to invoke Donna Haraway’s (2016) rich phrase.

Juxtapositional Ethnicity and US Migration Higgins’ Irishness and its privileged position in the US with regard to immigrant status provides a shaping context for her considerations of migrancy. The writer and performer also acknowledges the privilege of her own status as an “Alien of Extraordinary Ability”—the title of another of the essays in Maeve in America—and this privilege forms a telling juxtaposition when Higgins encounters others immigrants who have had a much more gruelling experience. Partly, we might conjecture, it is the author’s preferentially considered ethnic identity that makes her pieces in the New York Times so resonant. She is semiotically positioned as at once representative of an ethnic identity that comes laden with a history of its own emigrant tribulations and which now holds significant sway in contemporary US politics—a point that Higgins emphasizes when critiquing the anti-immigrant policies endorsed by Irish-American figures such as former House Speaker Paul Ryan, for instance (2018, 78)—while at the same time allying with those who have had a more difficult, often racially aggravated, experience of contemporary immigration to the US. For a progressive publication such as the New York Times which is sympathetic to the fate of undocumented migrants, the appeal of Higgins’ mixture of comedic takes on contemporary immigration issues and her connection to a privileged hyphenated identity in the US fits its ideological positioning. If we consider Conor McGregor’s contemporaneous embodiment of a racially charged Irish identity as analysed in Chap. 4, we can see how Higgins’ positioning demonstrates how very different attitudes to racial positioning can co-exist under the sign of Irishness in popular culture. Although operating at different levels of public exposure, with Higgins never approaching the public visibility McGregor obtained, the fighter’s presence and popularity in Ireland have waned, while Higgins, although primarily based in the US, retains a significant public profile in her home nation, regularly featuring in highly positive media profiles (as opposed to the excoriating write ups the former MMA fighter often receives) and appearing on popular television talk shows such as The Late Late Show. Higgins’ overt concern with migration and her popular considerations of the intersectional factors that shape the treatment of different migrant

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subjects is one manifestation of a reflexive acknowledgement of Irish whiteness in the context of migration that emerges in 2010s/2020s popular culture, discernible also, as noted, in This Way Up. Eleanor O’Leary (2019), tracing migration-themed Irish podcasts including Higgins’ as well as that of Blindboy Boatclub—one half of Limerick comedy-duo The Rubberbandits, a popular podcaster and now, writer—suggests that “the desire to create a usable future informs the mediation of Irish migrant identity in an era of global mobility, political uncertainty and growing hostility by creating affective ties with other migrants while acknowledging (at least in the case of Higgins and Blindboy) that whiteness plays a role in Irish migratory experience” (O’Leary 2019).

Extra Ordinary: Localism and Transnationalism in Genre Filmmaking This complex interplay between regional, national and the transnational that I track across this book is clearly in evidence in Mike Ahern and Enda Loughman’s 2019 comedy horror film Extra Ordinary in which Higgins stars. Contemporary Irish films in the horror genre demonstrate a particularly complex relation with the specificities of place. Ivan Kavanagh’s The Canal (2014), for instance, deliberately de-specifies elements its Dublin setting, such as the language labelling on police unforms and the topography of the eponymous canal, in order to evoke a dreamlike ‘anyplace,’ while a film such as Isolation (2005) destabilises the cultural conventions of the Irish rural landscape as site of recuperation in its grotesque depictions of livestock and fractured framing of the countryside (Barton 2019). Emma Radley (2013) suggests that Irish horror constitutes a site of dialectic tension between the global, as semiotically coded into the horror genre, and a national that is still symbolically tied to post-colonialism in the cultural space of indigenous Irish cinema. As I have demonstrated in earlier chapters considering comedies such as Moone Boy and Derry Girls, the transnational is often paradoxically facilitated by a focus on the rural and regionally specific. In Extra Ordinary, we don’t have the regional specificity of those sitcoms’ usage of Boyle and Derry respectively, though, the countryside locale being somewhat more generic in its depiction of small-­ town rural Ireland. The film demonstrates an awareness of its positioning in a global and national market through pop cultural allusions at a national and global

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level. For instance, Extra Ordinary is at once indebted to, and rhetorically dismissive (in a comedic manner) of globally renowned Hollywood horror fare such as The Exorcist (1973) and Ghostbusters (1984)—“Oh, I haven’t read it,” smiles Rose when Martin (Barry Ward) mentions the latter film in connection with their plan to extract ectoplasm from ghosts to break a spell. As I detail below, the film also makes several allusions that would be widely recognisable to an Irish audience. The film’s dialectic relation to global screen culture is also evoked through casting. While the film is low-­ budget, the casting of Will Forte (a former Saturday Night Live [1975–] cast member from 2002–2010 and lead in the sitcom The Last Man on Earth [2015–2018]), as well as Higgins’ friend, the actress Claudia O’Doherty, who was a regular cast member on the popular Judd Apatow dramedy Love (2016–2018), provides some recognisable acting talent likely to spark recognition within the taste cultures to which the film was seeking to appeal. While Higgins’ recent profile is centred on migration and mobility out of Ireland, she persistently references her family and home life in Ireland and her hometown of Cobh in her work. Indeed, her hometown’s historic role as a site of embarkation for Irish emigrants to North America is a frequent allusion in her essays. Like many of the case studies in this book, part of Higgins’ appeal is situated in a continual reaffirmation of her community and familial origins in Ireland, specifically in her case to a large-ish family in County Cork, while simultaneously signifying the viability of Irishness as a globally legible identity. Higgins reflects on her family background throughout much of her writing and, as detailed, her sister Lilly was central to Fancy Vittles the series she made for RTÉ. Such features help undergird the veneer of homeliness that is central to Higgins’ performative self, one that counterbalances the questioning, and at times subversive currents that animate her writing and comedy in a manner that harkens back to female comedians of earlier eras, such as US vaudeville and television performer Gracie Allen. Higgins’ character Rose Dooley in Extra Ordinary aligns in several ways with the performer’s wider body of work. The film was reportedly made with Higgins in mind for the role, and she contributed to the script during its long gestation. Rose’s quiet habits, family orientation (expressed in the film through her close relationship with her sister) and melancholy singledom find parallels in Higgins’ own writing and stand up. Rose’s pragmatic demeanour also aligns in some ways with the title character in Irish publishing success story Emer McLysaght and Sarah Breen’s Aisling

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books that emerged in 2017, suggesting a public appetite for the rural common-sense of these characters that offers a significant contrast to the post-feminist exemplars of glamorous and consumerist Irish womanhood that rose to prominence in the Celtic Tiger era. Rose’s budding (and decidedly deglamourized) romance with Martin subverts the post-­feminist norms of the romcom genre with its celebration of the ‘ordinary’ embedded in the context of the film’s supernatural narrative. The film overtly references some seemingly outdated yet persistent aspects of Irish popular culture, drawing, for instance, on the comedic potential of Irish popular music of the late eighties and early nineties. Although not explicitly stated, the film’s main villain Christian Winter (Forte) references the career and image of Chris De Burgh, singer of the divisive yet hugely popular song ‘The Lady in Red’ and a ubiquitous figure in Irish popular culture given both De Burgh’s career, a scandal in his private life centring on a much-publicised affair with his child’s babysitter, and the fact that his daughter, Rosanna Davison, a former Miss Ireland, is currently a popular social media influencer. Forte’s hyperbolic performance and the distinctive hairpiece he wears in the film poke fun at the singer. Another musical reference in the film is to the 1987 folk song and popular album ‘A Woman’s Heart,’ a huge hit within Ireland that set a record for album sales in the country, as well as inspiring sell-out tours featuring several female folk artists. In Extra Ordinary, Rose’s dead cat is called Mary Black, one of the singers on the album, a reference unlikely to have significant cultural recognition outside of Ireland. Similarly, at one point in the film, the two leads share an intimate moment, when Rose comes across Martin singing A Woman’s Heart to his spellbound daughter. Rose gently joins Martin on the final phrase of the chorus, “the heart is low, the heart is so low, as only a woman’s heart can be.” Constituting a somewhat sentimental meditation on the emotional travails of Irish womanhood, the song is mined for gentle comedy throughout the film— with Rose, for instance, sincerely complimenting Martin on his rendition, describing the quintessentially feminised song as “lovely … especially sung in a male voice.” Nevertheless, despite its ironic deployment, the song complements the emotional centre of the film, Rose’s wish to move past her father’s death and find companionship and love. Despite the signalled “pastness” of A Woman’s Heart in Extra Ordinary, the abiding influence of the album—and its transnational reach—can be detected in longstanding US musical franchise Celtic Woman. The stage

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show features a selection of women singing Irish-themed folk in the vein of the Woman’s Heart album, and has been a regular touring act throughout the US since its inception in 2005, selling millions of albums. A May 2021 parody of the franchise on Saturday Night Live, satirises the appeal of Ireland to a (older, rural) female demographic and characterises the song as “The Lion King for Karens.” This reference to the “Karen” a cultural figure associated with opinionated and easily aggrieved white women, suggests Irishness’s abiding function as a crystallization of a white ethnicity in US popular discourse. The continued cultural persistence of Celtic Woman, signalled in its choice as a suitable topic for parody in a high-­ profile national comedy—and indeed the fact that SNL has repeatedly turned to Ireland in its sketches in recent years—attests to Ireland’s continued viability as a cultural signifier in the US, a signifier with particular ethnic associations that artists such as the ones considered in this chapter, and Higgins in particular, have to work around and reshape.

Stand-Up, Cultural Scenes and Gender Equality One final point in relation to Higgins brings us back to the consideration of the position of women in the creative industries in Ireland. In June 2020, the Irish stand-up comedy scene was shaken by revelations of misogyny and sexual aggression in relation to prominent male figures on the circuit. Higgins wrote an article in thejournal.ie in response to the many stories that were shared on social media at the time, often hashtagged #Ibelieveher and #believesurvivors, a trend that began in the US in relation to similar accounts of male aggression in the comedy scenes there. Higgins begins her article by listing the following notable achievements in her career: starring in Extra Ordinary; having her book Maeve in America published with Penguin US, as well as it being optioned for a television series by actress Minnie Driver’s production company; being a contributing co-editor at the New York Times; co-hosting a weekly comedy show in Brooklyn; and co-hosting Mothers of Invention. Higgins follows this curriculum vitae with the statement: Why am I telling you this? Well, stupidly, it is vital to put my credentials upfront because as a woman they provide both a shield for me and a bank of evidence for you that I am a person worth listening to. (Higgins 2020)

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The list of achievements is notable for the fact that Higgins has admitted to extreme anxiety regarding similar expressions of self-promotion, a fact she considers an Irish trait and uses to foreground the cultural differences between Ireland and her adopted home in the US, where such self-­ confidence isn’t culturally anathema. The idea that such a rollcall of achievements is necessary to have a voice is a sentiment that is supported by considering the remarkable work ethic and professional careers of Bea and Horgan also, with all three taking on multi-hyphenate roles that involve writing, performance, and production in various forms of high and lower profile media, film and stage work. It is notable that male Irish cultural figures tend not to need such a voracious work rate across multiple platforms, or indeed a corresponding amount of self-authored material to maintain their cultural prominence. As Bea put it in an interview, referencing her collaborator: “[a]s Sharon Horgan always says, waiting around for great female parts doesn’t work. So you have to write them. This idea of the giant parental system looking after us just isn’t happening. So in the interim, we’ve got to step up” (Wiseman 2019). That in Higgins’ view such a level of personal production is necessary to be listened to, is suggestive of the asymmetrical conditions of both gendered production and reception that abide within creative industries and wider culture in Ireland and beyond. Higgins’ article continues in a heteropessimistic vein, “I don’t expect that many men will listen or ‘get it’ and that’s fine; this piece is not for men … this is for women and non-­ binary people who are part of or trying to be part of, the live Irish comedy scene.” The writer and stand-up offers four pieces of advice to those in this grouping: “Vet all venues, hosts, and comedy nights before you gig there”; “Do not date or sleep with male comedians”; “Circumvent traditional routes to a comedy career”; “Understand and accept your value and that of other women and non-binary people.” The article presents current conditions within the stand-up scene—and we might extrapolate, drawing on the research of scholarship considered earlier in the chapter (O’Brien 2019, 2020), in the creative industries more broadly—in stark terms. Higgins’ distant intervention, writing as a comedian living in the US, is further indication of the sense of responsibility for events at home and the guilt at being away that as I earlier note is central to the Be Our Yes campaign video Horgan and Bea made.

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Conclusion: Female Comedic Voices, Affective Ambivalence and Migrant Subjectivity Following the methodological approach taken in two of the other chapters in this book, in this chapter I have considered the celebrity figure as a form of embodied social knowledge that helps us to understand wider social and cultural dynamics. The female comedic voices foregrounded in this chapter index the complex emotional calculus that migrancy and professional ambition necessitate, as well as the intergenerational baggage that the figure of the migrant has accrued in recent Irish history. The three women demonstrate, as do others in this book, the centrality of the UK and the US in mediations of Irish migrant voices, and the differing inflections that such national contexts offer in Irish representation (Barton 2011). The range of emotional expression, both negative and positive, evident in the work of Horgan, Bea and Higgins must also be understood as coloured in significant ways by the production cultures in which they have been embedded and the centrality of the comedic to their productions. The work of these three women calls to mind Berlant and Ngai’s (2017) insight that comedy, while noted as having an ability to relieve anxiety “just as likely produces [it]: risking transgression, flirting with displeasure, or just confusing things in a way that both intensifies and impedes the pleasure” (233). Through an analysis of the career trajectories and work of Horgan, Bea and Higgins, shifts in Irish attitudes toward gender, migration and definitions of Irish success are evident. There is a fundamental ambivalence to the three case studies analysed above with regards to their positioning in the creative industries. All three both incorporate politically-tinged critiques of the status quo with regard to issues such as gender equality in the film and media industries, and the unfair treatment of migrants; and through their visibility and success they, like other figures analysed in this book, constitute exemplars of an ideal Irish citizenship that articulates notions of a celebrated entrepreneurial selfhood that transcends the boundaries of the (home) nation state, yet is emotionally anchored within its bounds.

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Notes 1. There are, of course, other female comedians with a prominent position in twenty-first century Irish screen culture, such as Deirdre O’Kane, Amy Huberman and Allison Spittle. Though, while the comedic figures I consider in this chapter have all left Ireland to further their careers, these others have primarily remained working in Ireland. 2. Herself (2020) and Rosie (2018) are both female-centred feature film depictions of the Irish housing crisis. See McIntyre (2021) for “property television” reflections of the crisis on Irish broadcasters and the role of transnational forms of financialisation in sustaining the ongoing crisis. 3. Such networks present challenges in terms of accurate identification. Recent work by John O’Hagan, Denis Murphy and Ruth Barton (2020) usefully delineates the importance of networks in young professionals’ careers in the Irish “creative ecology.” The study noted the importance of third level education (particularly for directors) and other elements strongly suggestive of a middle/upper middle class cohort’s dominance and the difficulty of working class subjects to thrive in such industries. 4. Horgan has included subtle references to her own (culturally prominent) family in her work that have been recognised by Irish fans. In one episode of Pulling, Horgan’s brother Shane, a famous International rugby player, can be seen scoring a try against England on the television, while Donna (Horgan) is at the pub. An episode of Catastrophe also sees Sharon wearing a t-shirt in bed with the logo of popular Irish sports podcast and production company “Second Captains,” for which  another of her brothers is co-­ founder and producer. Such references act as culturally specific referents that would be more legible to an Irish audience and foster a “for us by us” intimate public that corresponds to some of the features noted in the Derry Girls paratexts analysed in Chap. 3. 5. The form of irritation-led female comedy I discern in Horgan’s work is not without recent precedent in Ireland. Deirdre O’Kane, in particular, operates in this comedic-affective territory, evident, for instance, in her character in the comedy film Intermission (2003) and Irish comedy series Paths to Freedom (2000) and Fergus’s Wedding (2002) (see Bracken and Radley 2007). 6. Such narratives of female migrancy and their attendant psychological readjustments the precipitate is well-trodden ground in literature featuring female migrants in Britain. For instance, Ellen McWilliams (2013) foregrounds Irish female migrant liminality in a range of literature, including William Trevor’s celebrated 1994 novel Felicia’s Journey (137) and Tony Murray (2014) details the “psychological displacement of migration” (59) that is a feature of Edna O’Brien’s female protagonists in her 1960s’ novels.

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7. Within the broad church of Irish Studies scholarship there has been considerable debate concerning the degree to which Irish experience finds productive homologies with post-colonial subjects and the role of whiteness in ameliorating posited claims to persecution or mistreatment on the part of the white Irish. Roughly speaking, on the one hand, one set of scholars are wary that claims to colonial persecution underplay the white privilege Irish subjects have benefitted from in some contexts. Others posit that failing to acknowledge the significant persecution and inequality that Irish subjects have been subject to limits any profitable comparative accounts of postcolonial legacy and its abiding effects. Sinead Moynihan (2013, 14–23) provides a useful summary of debates on the topic and cautions against assuming an overly binaristic position on this matter. 8. Undergirding this cultural construction has been a palimpsest of media representations on broadcast television and cinema in the latter twentieth century until the present. UK drama has tended to foreground depictions of alcohol-dependent emotionally stunted man-children. These are evident in, for instance, the Irish ne’er-do-wells that populate Alan Bleasedale’s dramas such as Boys from the Blackstuff (1982), depictions on mainstream soap operas like Eastenders and Brookside (Free 2001, 2011), and contemporary dramas such as Shane Meadows’ The Virtues (2019). 9. The existence of the “no Irish, no blacks, no dogs” signs has been the topic of debate of late, with some historians casting doubt on their existence due to a paucity of photographic evidence. Tony Murray of the Irish Studies Centre of London Metropolitan University has contested these claims and points to evidence of discrimination against the Irish in Britain as provided in the Discrimination and the Irish Community in Britain report published by the Commission for Racial Equality in 1997 (Lonergan 2018). Despite questions of historical veracity, the phrase has acquired a resonance in popular understandings of discriminatory experiences of Irish migrants in the 1950s, hence my description of it as a folk memory.

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Mizejewski, Linda, and Victoria Sturtevant. 2017. “Introduction.” In Hysterical!: Women in American Comedy, eds. Linda Mizejewski and Victoria Sturtevant, 1–34. Austin: U of Texas P. Monks, Aoife. 2017. “Virtuosity: Dance, Entrepreneurialism and Nostalgia in Irish Stage Performance.” In Performance, Feminism and Affect in Neoliberal Times, eds. Elin Diamond, Denise Varnew and Candice Amich, 147–159. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Moynihan, Sinéad. 2013. “Other People’s Diasporas”: Negotiating Race in Contemporary Irish and Irish American Culture. Syracuse: Syracuse UP. Mullally, Una. 2019. “Ireland Is No Country If You’re Young, Creative or Homeless” The Guardian, October 2. www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/02/dublin-­booming-­ rich-city-housing-crisis-rent-inequality (accessed 28 April 2021). Murray, Tony. 2014. London Irish Fictions: Narrative, Diaspora and Identity. Liverpool: Liverpool UP. Nicholson, Rebecca. 2019. “Modern Love Review  – Vapid, Nauseating … and That’s before Ed Sheeran Shows Up.” The Guardian, 18 Oct., www.theguardian.com/tv-­a nd-­r adio/2019/oct/18/modern-­l ove-­a mazon-­e d-­s heeran (accessed 01 May 2021). Negra, Diane. 2001. Off-White Hollywood: American Culture and Ethnic Female Stardom. New York: Routledge. Negra, Diane. 2006. “The Irish in Us: Irishness, Performativity and Popular Culture.” In The Irish in Us: Irishness, Performativity and Popular Culture, ed. Diane Negra, 1–19. Durham: Duke UP. Negra, Diane. 2015. “Adjusting Men and Abiding Mammies: Gendering the Recession in Ireland.” Gender, Sexuality & Feminism 1(2): 42–58., doi:https:// doi.org/10.3998/gsf.12220332.0001.204. Ngai, Sianne. 2005. Ugly Feelings. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard UP. Nygaard, Taylor, and Jorie Lagerwey. 2020. Horrible White People: Gender, Genre, and Television’s Precarious Whiteness. New York: New York UP. O’Brien, Anne. 2019. Women, Inequality and Media Work. London: Routledge. O’Brien, Anne. 2020. “Film, Television and Gendered Work in Ireland.” In Producing Knowledge, Reproducing Gender: Power, Production and Practice in Contemporary Ireland, eds. Pauline Cullen and Mary P.  Corcoran, 67–83. Dublin: University College Dublin P. O’Carroll, Ide B. 1990. Models for Movers: Irish Women’s Emigration to America. Cork: Cork UP. O’Connell, Jennifer. 2019. “Funeral of Emigrant Who Died Alone: Joseph Tuohy ‘Ashamed of His Existence’.” The Irish Times. 27 Sept. https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/abroad/funeral-of-emigrant-who-died-alonejoseph-tuohy-ashamed-of-his-existence-1.4032478 (accessed 28 April 2021).

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O’Hagan, John, Denis Murphy, and Ruth Barton. 2020. “Do State Funding, Geographic Location, and Networks Matter?” Cultural Trends 29(2): 77–95. O’Leary, Eleanor, and Diane Negra. 2016. “Emigration, Return Migration and Surprise Homecomings in Post-Celtic Tiger Ireland.” Irish Studies Review 24(2): 127–141. O’Leary, Eleanor. 2019. “Mediating Privilege: Irish Immigrant Comedy Podcasts and Digital Content.” Research paper delivered at EUPop 2019 conference, 17 July, University of Limerick. Otterson, Joe. 2021. “Courteney Cox, Greg Kinnear, Mira Sorvino Horror Comedy ‘Shining Vale’ Ordered to Series at Starz.” Variety, 16 Apr., variety. com/2021/tv/news/courteney-­cox-­greg-­kinnear-­mira-­sorvino-­shining-­vale-­ starz-­1234953123/#! (accessed 2 May 2021). Paskin, Willa. 2016. “The Brutal Romantic Behind ‘Catastrophe.’” The New  Yorker, 25 Apr. 2016, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/04/25/ sharon-­horgan-­the-­brutal-­romantic-­behind-­catastrophe. Peeren, Esther. 2014. The Spectral Metaphor: Living Ghosts and the Agency of Invisibility. Houndsmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Radley, Emma. 2013. “Violent Transpositions: The Disturbing ‘Appearance’ of the Irish Horror Film.” In Viewpoints: Theoretical Perspectives on Irish Visual Texts, eds. Claire Bracken and Emma Radley, 109–123. Cork: Cork UP. Saner, Emine. 2019. “Sharon Horgan’s Unstoppable Rise as Master of Honest Comedy.” The Guardian, 4 Oct., www.theguardian.com/tv-­and-­radio/2019/ oct/04/sharon-­h organ-­m otherland-­u nstoppable-­r ise-­a s-­t he-­m aster-­o f-­ honest-­comedy (accessed 28 April 2021). Scully, Marc. 2015. “‘Emigrants in the Traditional Sense’?—Irishness in England, Contemporary Migration and Collective Memory of the 1950s.” Irish Journal of Sociology 23(2): 133–148. Seddon, Dan. 2021. “Aisling Bea Gives Brilliant Response to Home Alone Accent Backlash.” Digital Spy, 13 Oct., www.digitalspy.com/movies/a37945861/ aisling-­bea-­home-­alone-­accent-­backlash-­response/ (accessed 10 Dec. 2021). Seresin, Indiana. 2019. “On Heteropessimism.” The New Inquiry, 9 Oct., thenewinquiry.com/on-­heteropessimism/ (accessed 28 June 2021). Smith, Frances. 2020. “Catastrophe: Transatlantic Love in East London.” In Love across the Atlantic US-UK Romance in Popular Culture, eds. Jane Barbara Brickman, Deborah Jermyn and Theodore Louis Trost, 106–120. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP. Sweeney, Tanya. 2015. “Funny Girl: How Catastrophe Turned into a US Triumph for Sharon Horgan.” Independent, 21 Apr., www.independent.ie/entertainment/funny-­g irl-­h ow-­c atastrophe-­t urned-­i nto-­a -­u s-­t riumph-­f or-­s haron-­ horgan-­31159964.html (accessed 1 May 2021). “The Irish Abroad”. 2003. Irish Times, Dec 24,. https://ucd.idm.oclc.org/ login?url=https://www-­proquest-­com.ucd.idm.oclc.org/newspapers/irish-­

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CHAPTER 6

Mammies and Sons: Mobilising Maternal and Filial Affect in Mrs Brown’s Boys, 50 Ways to Kill Your Mammy, and Philomena

In the 2010s the Irish mammy emerged as an unlikely yet potent cultural icon, a central figure in pop cultural hits spanning several genres across television, film and digital culture, as well as popular literature and numerous newspaper features. Mrs Brown’s Boys (2011—), Brendan O’Carroll’s hugely popular yet polarising sitcom was topping the ratings at Christmas on BBC1 during this decade—traditionally the time of highest television viewership—causing considerable consternation among tastemakers as to why this Irish and rather old-fashioned sitcom was capturing such huge audiences in the prime televisual spot year on year. 50 Ways to Kill Your Mammy (2014–2016), a Sky One (UK) reality adventure show featuring Irish television and radio personality Baz Ashmawy and his septuagenarian mother Nancy engaging in extreme activities, although in no way matching Mrs Brown’s Boys as a cultural phenomenon, was nevertheless a surprise hit, running for three seasons and winning an international Emmy in 2015 for Best Non-Scripted Entertainment. Ashmawy and Nancy have since become staples of Irish popular culture and currently feature in an advertising campaign for Bank of Ireland, a transgenerational and multi-ethnic pairing that encapsulate a changing Ireland. In cinema, Dame Judi Dench starred in Philomena (2013), playing an Irish mother who had her first child taken from her in a convent mother-and-baby home. Dench’s comedic mining of the figure of the Irish mammy helped make the potentially harrowing account of Philomena Lee’s real-life search for her son © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. P. McIntyre, Contemporary Irish Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94255-7_6

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alongside journalist Martin Sixsmith an awards season fixture in 2014, after it won several awards at the preceding year’s Venice International Film Festival where the film had its world premiere. The three texts outlined above share attributes that I track across this chapter. Foremost of these features perhaps is the centrality of mobility to these incarnations of the Irish mammy, an element that reinvigorates the cultural type and aligns it with key aspects of neoliberal culture. Mobility, in its various forms, is seen as central to neoliberal capitalism, whether through the promise of neoliberal meritocracy and its supposed centrality to “social mobility” (Littler 2018) or to the flows of labour and capital that intensified as neoliberal policies of market deregulation and the easing of trade barriers spread around the world. Mobility is far from a wholly positive thing given the many negative forms of human displacement that have been exacerbated due to neoliberal economic policies and imperatives. Nevertheless, under the auspices of neoliberalism, idealised forms of selfhood are presented as “‘self-scripting,’ mobile, flexible and individualized” (Tyler 2013, 166). This idealised selfhood is at odds with the traditional image of the Irish mammy, circumscribed as she is within her symbolic domain of the kitchen and bound by a set routine that operates within domestic rhythms marked by regular meals, cleaning schedules and other forms of caring labour. The Irish mammy’s strong association with domesticity, as well as church and local communal settings mark her as a figure that precedes the idealisation of dual wage families necessitated by state and corporate disinvestment from social welfare and stagnating wages, which, as Marxist scholar Nancy Fraser (2016) details, has resulted in a “desperate scramble to transfer carework to others” (114). Yet the transformation in how the mammy is portrayed in these texts demonstrate a recalibration of the figure in a manner that aligns it with the ideological underpinnings of contemporary Ireland and, in its focus on mothers who have gone beyond child-rearing years, avoids the negative feelings generated by the current “crisis of care”. A common trope of diasporic representation in literature portrays Irish women, and the mother in particular, as a “fixed compass point,” to which the (male) migrant would eventually return (McWilliams, 29). Media scholar Debbie Ging (2017) characterises the Irish mammy as “a conservative, over-nurturing and sexless figure who considers men to be helpless, childlike and in constant need of care, yet fully accepts their patriarchal domination of her” (177). Áine McCarthy (2004) further discerns, in her examination of the figure in Irish literature of the twentieth century, three

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variations: the “Good Mammy,” who is devoted to God and family; the “Moaning Mammy,” drained by the needs of her enormous brood of children and likely alcoholic husband; and the “Smother Mother,” a dominant maternal figure insisting on her children’s strict adherence to her principles (97). The divergence from previous representations that I track in this chapter is primarily due to a hyper-mobility that operates both figuratively and literally, which underwrites the ideological and cultural resonance of the 2010s’ Irish mammy. This anachronistic cultural type, through being rendered fluid and versatile, essentially models new forms of selfhood predicated on adaptation and flexibility in a humorous and culturally legible manner; this variation has proven commercially viable in key anglophone markets around the world, yet, despite surface transformation, maintains its somewhat reactionary gender script. Following sociologist Imogen Tyler, I trace the “figure” of the Irish mammy as a means of indexing wider social currents within Irish life. For Tyler, such cultural figures “become fetishistically overdetermined and publicly imagined and represented (that is, figured) in excessive, distorted and/or caricatured ways” (10). While Tyler has focused on how abjected cultural figures reinforced neoliberalised and antagonistic class dynamics in austerity-era Britain, tracking the role of the Irish mother allows for a survey of the ideological functioning of this cultural mainstay, particularly as Irish life undergoes significant changes from the 1990s on in the realm of demographic constitution, progressive changes in legislation impacting upon women’s lives, and an intensification of labour practices that has increasingly rendered porous the border between home and work. In the texts under analysis these ideals of mobility, adaptation and flexibility are often incorporated within the narrative, as in Ashmawy and Nancy’s travels, which see them visit places as far afield as Las Vegas, Morocco, and The Philippines. The older Irish mother is depicted as being startled and exhilarated by her encounters, but also having an impact herself on the various people she meets on these journeys. Similarly, Philomena, which, in taking adaptational liberties with its source text The Lost Child of Philomena Lee (2009) by Martin Sixsmith, has the older Irish women travelling alongside the journalist from England to Ireland and on to the US capital in their attempts to locate her son. In Mrs Brown’s Boys and its various touring incarnations, we can track movement through the circulation of the text itself, popular as it is in the UK, Ireland and settler colonial states such as Australia and Canada. Additionally, the success of spin-offs such as All Round to Mrs Brown’s (2017–), a chat show hosted by the

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titular character and featuring other regulars from the original series, relies on the figure of the Irish mammy encountering diverse subjects (public figures of different levels of stardom and ethnic/national backgrounds) that one wouldn’t expect an Irish mother to meet in the course of her ordinary routines. All three of the texts rely on the Irish mammy encountering and accepting a world that is signalled as outside of her comfort zone, yet which in turn is responsive to the ideals of homely conviviality and good will signified by the matriarchal figure. Additionally, in each of the three texts listed above, the Irish mammy is recruited in order to facilitate the cultural/material recuperation of a male figure. This happens in complex ways. For O’Carroll, his foul-mouthed matriarch Agnes Brown is the character that has maintained a livelihood both for the comic actor (and whose remarkable success enabled him to come back from bankruptcy), but also many of his family, as the expansive troupe constitutes a family business, featuring as it does O’Carroll’s wife, son, daughter, sister, son-in-law and daughter-in-law, as well as his grandson. What might be viewed as a nakedly nepotistic enterprise is arguably allayed through the larger-than-life figure of Mrs. Brown herself, as well as O’Carroll’s metatextual habit of breaking character and drawing the (live) audience’s attention to the artifice, an approach that insulates the show in some ways from the persistent minor scandals (relating to tax avoidance schemes on the part of some of the actors, as well as former cast members’ grievances over salary levels) that have dogged the production. In 50 Ways to Kill Your Mammy, the Irish mother is arguably a gateway figure for her son’s public profile. Ashmawy is one of an emergent group of Irish public figures with emigrant backgrounds. The hit television show and its overt association with his own (white Irish) mother, render him culturally legible within an Irish broadcasting milieu in the first decade of the twenty-­ first century that, while starting to show some accommodation to minority ethnicities, was still tentative in its engagement with Irish identities falling outside of historic conceptions of Irishness as exclusively associated with white Catholic subjectivity. Finally, in Philomena the Irish mammy enables in complex ways as a meditation on migrancy through the figures of Philomena Lee, who had left Ireland to work as a nurse in the NHS; her lost son, who grew up in the US; and Martin Sixsmith who, in the film, develops a filial bond with the older lady. The latter element plays out intertextually, given the entanglement of Steve Coogan, who plays Sixsmith, as a second-generation Irish diasporic subject, who also co-wrote and produced the film. Part of

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the chapter will include a consideration of Coogan’s deployment of Irishness in his work and the latitude in such representational strategies, in Philomena and other works, that his Irish heritage affords him. Prior to my examination of the three case studies detailed above, I provide a genealogy of the figure of the Irish mammy, tracing its manifestation in various arenas, from stage, through the figure of the Dublin Dame to the memes and TikTok videos that grace the digital screens of the contemporary era.

The Irish Mammy: From Stage to (Digital) Screen The Irish mammy is an iconic figure that has a longstanding cultural genealogy. Irishness and the maternal are interlinked in complex ways. The Sean-Bhean Bhocht (“poor old woman”), for instance, is a maternal representation of Ireland that was current in the eighteenth century, and which became the name of a popular folk song considered at one point to be the “Marseillaise of Ireland.” As Gerardine Meaney (1991) summarises, “The images of suffering Mother Ireland and the self-sacrificing Irish mother are difficult to separate” (3). This maternal figuration of the national that is suffused with melancholy exerts a strong influence on contemporary depictions of motherhood in Irish popular culture. The suffering associated with that maternal figure, can be detected in attenuated form in the mammy. In an early Irish silent film, Irish Destiny (1926) one of the first full length films produced by an Irish production company, the mother of the film’s hero literally goes blind out of worry for her son over the course of the film. Feminine agency is considerably curtailed in the film, with the mother only ever visible within the home. Notably, and perhaps demonstrative of the marketability of depictions of Irish mothers in the UK, the film had to be recut and renamed An Irish Mother, in order to allay concerns as to the ideological purposes of a film that celebrated revolution in an Irish colony at a time when cracks in the British Empire were beginning to show—the film was banned in its original form in Britain. A later film, Odd Man Out (1947), allowed for a more agentic maternal role in a revolutionary context, with Kitty Kirwan’s Grannie more akin to a Sean-Bhean Bhocht figure, coolly hiding a gun from the police during a raid on the house where Johnny McQueen (James Mason), an IRA-like group’s leader, has been living. The appetite for Irish mothers in the UK was also evident in the long-­ running character of Old Mother Riley, played by Yorkshire-born comedian Arthur Lucan. Old Mother Riley, one of several successful drag

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incarnations of the Irish mother, originated as a music hall act and was a popular draw on both stage and screen from the 1930s to the 1950s in such films as Old Mother Riley in Paris (1938), Old Mother Riley’s Detective (1943), and in the last of the series, Old Mother Riley Meets the Vampire (1952). Lucan had developed the character with his partner Kitty McShane, an Irish actress he met when she was just sixteen, who played Kitty, Riley’s daughter in all but the last of the films. In its music hall origins, the centrality of drag performance, and the familial connection within the production troupe, as well as its popularity within Britain, Old Mother Riley is a notable precedent for Mrs Brown’s Boys and the latter sitcom’s various spin off properties. Barton (2004) suggests that the older act, even with the lack of authenticity evident in Lucan’s performance of the Irish matriarch, “negotiated a space for Irishness in popular British culture,” (60) that appealed both within and outside of the substantial Irish immigrant communities spread throughout mainland Britain in cities such as Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow. One further antecedent of Mrs. Brown, and a figure with more regional specificity, (as I detail further below) is Biddy Mulligan, creation of the Dublin stage performer Jimmy O’Dea (1899–1965) and what theatre scholar Ian R. Walsh (2014) has termed a “Dublin Dame”. Mulligan is, like O’Carroll’s creation, a street vendor, and, in contrast to the suffering figure of Mother Ireland, both are “active participants in the sphere of commerce and dwell in the public place of the street” (66), a notable feature given a tendency in some depictions of the Irish mammy to stress her domestic containment. Diane Negra (2015) has detailed the re-emergence of the mammy as a cultural force in the wake of the 2008 financial crash and subsequent years of recession. For Negra, the abiding Irish mammy, rooted within the home was part of a “stock dyad” of the post-2008 recessionary years. Such maternal figures constituted a fixed compass point for the Irish male whose enforced recalibration in the straitened circumstances of those years was conveyed through tropings of male mobility, evident in the striding and strident male of the Dublin Airport advertisements for the newly opened Terminal 2, a man who lists Irish cultural accomplishments as he moves through the recently opened section of the airport, or the rural Irish young father emigrating to Germany in the Kerrygold ad, whose mother laments that Ireland is exporting “all its best stuff” (52). At the end of the article, Negra posts an addendum, updated in the “recovery” phase after the worst years of the recession that notes examples of the rejuvenated figure of the Irish mammy including 50 Ways to Kill Your Mammy and Mrs

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Brown’s Boys. The present chapter takes up this thought and charts the proliferation of the rejuvenated figure across film, television, and digital culture. Sociologist Tom Inglis (2006) summons the figure of the Irish mammy in an article tracing the shifts in the Irish habitus—a term popularised by Pierre Bourdieu that signifies the taken-for-granted rules and everyday practices that regulate people’s functioning in society—that occurred in Ireland in the Celtic Tiger era, a shift he characterises as a move “from self-denial to self-indulgence.” Inglis, in developing his argument, relates an anecdote about a social engagement with Ann, an Irish woman described as “a woman in her sixties… a devout Catholic, well schooled in the practice of piety, humility, self-denial and making do” (38), a description that while not overtly signalling a maternal element, nonetheless seems an apt description of an Irish mammy. The incident happened in the 1990s, when sandwich chains and global coffee franchises began to proliferate, signalling a new era of consumer choice and internationalism in Irish life. Seeking to have “a sandwich,” Ann becomes flustered by the array of choice available, confused by the server’s repeated enquiries regarding choice of filling, topping, bread type. Ultimately, she presents an impediment to the smooth flow of customer service in the café. For Inglis “[Ann] came from a culture in which to say precisely what one wanted was rude. But in the logic of fast-moving contemporary Irish society, people not knowing and not being able to announce what they want clogs up the system” (39). The mammy in this anecdote, and, I would argue, most presentations on screen, including the memes I consider below, constitutes an anachronistic figure that is caught between the habitus of a pre-Celtic Tiger era, often signalled through overt reference to previous time periods such as the 1950s, and a contemporary moment that for many is characterised by a social climate of insecurity, such as for those struggling to achieve home-ownership. In this context the certainties and even constrictive conditions of the past that the Irish mammy indexes are not without appeal (Silva 2013, 145). In terms of dramatic representation, perhaps the most culturally persistent exemplar of the Irish mammy is (another) Mrs. Brown, the matriarch played by Brenda Fricker in hit Irish film My Left Foot (1989). The film is a narrative of struggle against both poverty and the cerebral palsy of son Christy Brown (Daniel Day-Lewis), who, in the biographical film overcomes his debilitating condition to become a fêted artist and writer, due in no small part to the self-sacrificing devotion of his mother. Both Fricker

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(Best Supporting Actress) and Day-Lewis (Best Actor) won Academy Awards for their portrayals of the mother and son, and the success of the film constituted a high-point for Irish cinema’s “second-wave,” both in terms of the critical acclaim received, as well as its commercial success— the film generated considerable profits from a relatively meagre budget. The film also provides a notable example of the cultural persistence of the mammy as several images of Mrs. Brown from the film—generally of Fricker’s Irish mammy within her kitchen looking stern, or resiliently tearful—have been extracted from the original context and persist in the realm of digital culture as circulating memes (in addition to being commonly sourced for the many newspaper features that intermittently reflect upon the significance of the Irish mammy). That Mrs. Brown is a housewife during the early to mid-twentieth century is significant here. In the new Irish state that emerged after independence, women’s idealised placement within the home was enshrined in the constitution. In article 14.2 it states that “by her life within the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved” and, further, “The State shall … endeavor to ensure that mothers should not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to neglect of their duties in the home” (Article 41.2, Constitution of Ireland, 1937). As sociologist Margret Fine-Davis (2021) wryly notes of post-­ independence Ireland, “[B]ecause married women were expected to make their lives in the home, it probably did not seem unreasonable to create a social order which actually provided obstacles to their participation in employment” (2). Such obstacles included discrimination in terms of pay rates; severely limited childcare facilities; punitive tax laws designed to actively discourage women entering the workforce; and the notorious “marriage bar,” in existence until 1973, which meant that women working in the public service, teaching and some other jobs, had to leave their positions upon wedlock (Fine-Davis 2021, 2–3). That Mrs. Brown, the seemingly go-to stock image for the Irish mammy in popular culture, summons these associations is relevant in considering the cultural work that this figure does. The strict attention paid to the tidy home and the wellbeing of her children is perhaps understandable, given that the domestic realm was the only productive outlet for many women due to the severe constrictions that limited their participation within the public sphere. That the figure persists culturally at a time when female participation in the workforce has increased dramatically—indicative in the proportion of married women in the labour force which stood at 5.2% in 1961, rising to

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54% as of 2009 (Fine-Davis 2021, 4–5)—the ambivalence with which the mammy is held in Ireland, a mix of affection and mild despair at the temporally out-of-step features she displays, obliquely indexes contemporary attitudes to working life given the figure’s associative connections to an era in which, for many, participation in the labour force outside of the home was simply not an option. Communications scholar Limor Shifman (2014) has defined memes as “a group of digital items that: (a) share common characteristics of content, form, and/or stance; (b) are created with awareness of each other; and (c) are circulated, imitated, and transformed via the internet by multiple users” (341). One such example of the Fricker mammy meme is titled “When you tell Mammy you’re doing the 12 pubs.” Referencing the popular festive pub crawl the Twelve Pubs of Christmas, the meme overlays the image of Mrs. Brown with the text, “Does it have to be twelve pubs? Could you not just do three or four?” (Fig.  6.1) Another has a

Fig. 6.1  The Fricker Irish mammy memes utilise Brenda Fricker’s role as Mrs. Brown in My Left Foot, and in particular her stern expression, connoting both the domesticity associated with previous eras and the unglamorous ‘common sense’ of the figure

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similar image of Fricker in her role as Mrs. Brown with the phrase, “Take my umbrella, BUT DON’T LOSE IT!” These memes align with Ging’s conceptualisation of the Irish mammy as cosseting and imbued with common-­sense, but also suggest the adaptability of this stock figure.1 Shifman (2014) suggests photograph-based memes such as these “are designed to elicit further versions” and constitute a “prospective” sign in their anticipation of future adaptation (354). The Fricker Irish mammy memes constitute a rumination on present-day Irishness communicated through contemporary technologies as a form of participatory culture (Jenkins 1992). That such a cultural working through entails repurposing an image ambivalently freighted with both nostalgia as well as allusion to misogynistic and restrictive elements of recent Irish history is testament to the complexity and plasticity of this figure, as well as its centrality to contemporary Irish identity, even if it is purposed as a figure to disavow or gently mock, or with which to highlight the continuum of Irish experience spanning the twentieth into twenty-first centuries. Further digital manifestations of the Irish mammy coincided with the convergence of the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns of 2020/2021 and the increasing popularity of video sharing social media site TikTok beyond its initial teen demographic. These developments saw the popular emergence of several comedic videos (again) re-invigorating the figure of the Irish mammy, this time in an audio-visual idiom overtly drawing from social media influencer culture. The most prominent of these was the “@mammybanter” account on TikTok, a staging ground for the online persona of Serena Terry, a Derry mother and former COO of a software development company. Terry began making videos as the onset of lockdown restrictions and the shift to home working looms large in her micro-narratives of beset motherhood and homeworking technological travails. Terry’s TikTok videos index a shift in the representation of Irish motherhood that draws upon the figure of the “mother behaving badly,” as popularly presented in Sharon Horgan’s Catastrophe (2015–2019), among other texts, as much as it does the more traditional Irish mammy, whose most recent screen iteration is perhaps that of Ma Mary (Tara Lynne O’Neill) in Derry Girls (2018–), a stay-at-home mother characterised by her sharp tongue and regional dialect phrasing. The presence of both influences is evident in the merchandise line offered by Terry on her website featuring, alongside the “mammybanter” branding, phrases such as “bring me the wine,” (excessive wine consumption being a common trope in various mother behaving badly media franchises [Littler 2020, 505–506]) and “Jesus, Mary and

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Joseph and the Wee Donkey”—a Northern Irish idiomatic phrase commonly uttered in frustration that has recently become popular through its usage by Fermanagh-born actor Adrian Dunbar on UK police series Line of Duty (2012–), which Terry references in some of her skits. For cultural sociologist Jo Littler (2020), “The mother behaving badly is a figure dramatizing how too much work, both inside and outside the home, is overloaded onto women. It usually articulates the existence of patriarchal dynamics, registering them as a problem” (515). This then, is quite a different figure from that of the Irish mammy who is characteristically a diligent homemaker and perpetual worrier as to whether her children, usually son(s), are warm enough, or suitably fed, though the registering of patriarchal dynamics is a shared feature of both albeit in very different ways. Terry, and others such as twenty-something County Offaly-­ born actress Aisling Kearns, who also posts videos on TikTok as “@aislingsjustalaugh” that often showcase a more combative Irish mother-daughter relationship (a common filial corollary to the excessive devotion of the Irish mammy to her son[s]), register the partial fraying of notions of maternal stability in the domestic realm. Such a deterioration in the perceived constancy of Irish maternal affect is perhaps inevitable in the face of contemporary labour conditions that have seen women continue to suffer inferior conditions to men in terms of their majority share of low-paid work and the amount of unpaid caring labour that is still expected, often in addition to paid work (Barry 2020, 7). Such conditions have been exacerbated considerably during the various lockdowns that accompanied the Covid-19 pandemic, with a study by business lobby group Ibec noting the pandemic’s profound impact on many working women through “the sharpening of pre-existing inequalities” it effected (Beesley 2021). All of which might help explain the more acerbic take on the Irish mammy that has emerged from female performers during the COVID-19 crisis, a marked contrast from the consoling fantasy of the cosseting maternal presence embodied in Fricker’s Mrs. Brown.

Mrs Brown’s Boys: Regionalism, Transnationalism and Populist Appeal in the “Dublin Dame” While the memes and TikTok videos detailed above circulate among a primarily Irish audience, the title character of Brendan O’Carroll’s Mrs Brown’s Boys, has struck a chord with audiences both inside and outside of

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Ireland, notably in the UK where, as detailed earlier, the sitcom has achieved quite spectacular ratings since its debut on BBC1 in 2011. Agnes Brown (initially Agnes Browne) emerged as a series of radio sketches O’Carroll performed on RTÉ 2FM in 1992. These were further developed into a trilogy of novels published in the 1990s, which resulted in Angelica Huston’s 1999 adaptation, Agnes Browne, an altogether more glamorous interpretation than the Agnes Brown as played by O’Carroll in the later series. In part, the show’s resonance on the east side of the Irish Sea is no doubt due to the shared cultural genealogy which O’Carroll’s matriarch extends, as I detail below. Of course the overdetermined maternal figure is not one solely associated with Ireland. McCarthy (2004, 98) notes that similar stereotypes are discernible in cultural constructions of Jewish and Indian motherhood, for instance. This might further explain the broader transnational appeal of Mrs Brown’s Boys evident in significant syndication in multiple territories, several international remakes of the series (including a French-Canadian version, and another in Romania) and a forthcoming appearance in a popular US movie franchise. In addition to tracing the national and international resonance of the character, I also contextualise this popularity in terms of social shifts within the UK, notably the populism that resulted in the Brexit referendum and the UK’s withdrawal from the EU, a move in no small part fuelled by the perception that working class voters outside of metropolitan centres had been ‘left behind’ in the country’s embrace of globalization. The anachronistic characteristics of O’Carroll’s humour, which knowingly harkens back to the “blue” humour popular in working men’s clubs of the 1970s and 1980s and which was a staple of television comedy of that era, seemingly provides an apt analogy for the ‘left behind’ populations that voted to leave the EU, given the persistent discursive conflation between the sitcom’s popularity and the geopolitical rupture of Brexit. In his analysis of Agnes Brown and her predecessor, O’Dea’s Biddy Mulligan, Walsh terms the pair “Dublin Dames,” justifying his choice of nomenclature on account of it stressing, “the importance of the Irish city (Dublin) and of the British pantomime and music hall tradition” (2014, 63). Walsh details the connections between Biddy Mulligan and Agnes Brown through the obvious fact of them both being male performers in drag, a performative mode that revels in the caricature of the impersonation, and which has its roots in the folk and carnival performances featuring men as unruly women that featured in religious festivals going back centuries. In addition, Agnes Brown’s characteristically risqué material

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differentiates her from her earlier Irish forebear and aligns her with British exemplars of the dame such as Max Beerbohm and Frankie Howerd. To these we might add Les Dawson’s sketches alongside Roy Barraclough, of working-class Lancashire housewives Cissie and Ada in the 1970s and 1980s on British television, which were replete with the sorts of double-­ entendre that constitute a key comedic strategy in Mrs Brown’s Boys. Alongside these British influences, Irish comedians such as Brendan Grace (1951–2019), with whom O’Carroll worked early in his career, whose stories of working-class Dublin life share much of the nostalgic tenor and specific regional appeal of Agnes Brown contribute to the diverse range of influences discernible in this popular character. To say that Mrs Brown’s Boys has proven divisive would be an understatement. Many British sitcoms, particularly those with ‘broad appeal’ such as commonly feature on BBC1 (for instance, Keeping Up Appearances [1990–1995]; My Family [2000–2011]) fail to please tastemakers but through sufficiently high ratings manage to stay on the air with little notable furore. Yet Mrs Brown’s Boys’ remarkable ratings capture and the high-­ profile accolades it has received have made the programme a lightning rod for scathing criticism. One prominent critic, for instance, dubbed the sitcom, “the worst comedy ever made” (Dent 2013) and another declaimed, “the popularity of this shameless excrescence … which was voted by Radio Times readers the best sitcom of the 21st century, should have given a huge clue to the Brexit vote” (Ferguson 2017). In fact, the discursive conflation of the sitcom with the Brexit vote result (of June 2016) that resulted in the UK’s leaving of the European Union has been persistent due to Mrs Brown’s Boys’ putative exemplification of the inherent wrongheadedness of the masses, and a popularity that skews away from metropolitan to more regionalised populations. Upon the show winning Best Comedy ahead of a strong field that included critically acclaimed sitcoms Derry Girls (2018–), Fleabag (2016–2019), and After Life (2019–) at the 2020 National Television Awards (again through an audience vote), many newspaper accounts propagated similar Brexit comparisons, often using the Twitter postings of disappointed fans of the other nominees to present these views. One incisive newspaper feature discerns in the “loathing and devotion” Mrs Brown’s Boys provokes, “binary responses that seem to reflect geographic, demographic and class fissures [within the UK]” (Carroll 2020)—an assessment to which we might add the generational differences this comedy foregrounds, appealing as it does to an older audience that is often neglected.

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There is notable irony here, given that an avowedly Irish sitcom, though made in Scotland for the BBC, seems to index populist feeling within the UK. This is due to a certain extent, no doubt, to the shared cultural genealogy I outlined above, but also, I would suggest, to a symbolic function the sitcom performs in terms of middle-class boundary formation. O’Carroll’s recognition, pre-Brexit, that his work appeals to a “forgotten audience” once served by comedians such as Les Dawson or broad comedies like Are You Being Served? (1972–1985) (Logan 2013), attests to the apparent misjudgement—or lack of concern—of industry executives regarding the preferences of a large swathe of their audiences, favouring as they did an accommodation of middle class taste-cultures over those of the working-class and privileging youth over older audiences. The fact that many negative reviews of Mrs Brown’s Boys utilise the term “cringe” or “cringe-worthy,” (for instance, Moir 2014; independent.ie 2011) perhaps gives a clue as to the class biases at play in the reception of the series. “Cringe” has become a prevalent term in contemporary culture and scholarship, and indeed a substantial amount of television comedy programming has emerged—The Office (2001–2003) is commonly regarded as the sitcom that cemented its cultural centrality in the 2000s— that seeks to actively generate the affect, which one scholar has described as “that distinctive flavor or range of shrinking and flinching and shivering” that is proximate to, but does not quite constitute, embarrassment (Salvato 2013, 687). Often when audience cringe is deliberately provoked within a text, it signals a form of distinction. As one article tracing the prevalence of the affect in contemporary female-centred ‘dramedies’ such as Fleabag and Girls (2012–2017) puts it, “cringeworthy moments … help establish links to ‘quality’ television’s aesthetic traditions, most conspicuously to its fascination with ‘complex’ central characters” (Havas and Sulimma 2020, 80); and indeed, those moments often cultivate grounds for empathy with those characters. Other cringe-heavy texts, such as Nighty Night (2004–2005) or Curb Your Enthusiasm (2000–) deploy the affect as a component of boundary-pushing comedic strategies and in doing so secure ‘cult’ prestige (Hunt 2013, 173). However, when the ‘cringiness’ of the comedy isn’t intentional, as is suggested in some of the negative responses to Mrs Brown’s Boys—that is, some viewers are laughing (or cringing) at rather than with the comedy—the affect functions in an opposite manner, signalling a lack of complexity and prestige. For one scholar, cringe “project(s) white middle-class neuroses as universal values” (Arning 2021, 293), and in the case of the distinctions between how this

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affect is generated that I detail above, we could also extend this insight to say that cringe plays a major role in policing the boundaries of middle-class taste cultures. This component of comedy also highlights the multiple aesthetic differences between Mrs Brown’s Boys and such critically acclaimed comedies. While the above-listed culturally favoured sitcoms and dramedies eschew well-established sitcom features such as a laughter track, studio sets and a standard three-camera sitcom shooting technique, as well as a circular narrative that restores equilibrium by the end of each episode, O’Carroll’s comedy adheres to and self-consciously foregrounds these elements. The cameras and audience are revealed throughout the episodes, with O’Carroll often breaking character to point out misread lines or other elements of the production. In the opening episode, for instance, O’Carroll/Agnes Brown, with hands held high, gesturing toward him/herself, exclaims, “it’s a man in a fucking dress,” when a somewhat self-pitying line from the character elicits an “aw” from the audience. As Walsh (2014) acknowledges, although the gesture draws attention to the worn conventions of the sitcom form, this is less a postmodern acknowledgement of the inherent artifice involved, and more of an overt harkening back to pantomime and its working-class roots (73). It is here that we might arguably pinpoint why the Irishness of the text is so resonant. As a body of scholarship has argued, the working class constitute an Other for the purposes of middle-class subject formation, and often the carnivalesque tropes of unruliness and vulgarity (abundantly in evidence in Mrs Brown’s Boys) are central to this endeavour (e.g., Stallybrass and White 1986; Skeggs 2004). The disgust that such scholars detected in response to working class life and culture seems in the present era to be subtly recoded in many cases as cultural cringe, a less confrontational value judgement, perhaps. In this context depictions of an Irish working class, would seem doubly Othered given the centrality the discursive construction of the Irish as a backward and primitive people has played in the construction of modern English identity (an identity formation dynamic that is reciprocal, of course, with a perceived English reticence and formality often discursively contrasted with the warmth and conviviality that have come to connote Irishness) (Kiberd 1996, 1). Within Ireland, where Mrs Brown’s Boys became a high ratings earner on national broadcaster RTÉ, the polarised reception of the series mirrors that of the UK and indeed many of the overseas markets where the show is popular. Within Ireland many of the show’s critics rue the retrograde

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image of Ireland O’Carroll’s creation was disseminating throughout the world, with one piece in the Irish Independent, for instance, stating that it “makes you vaguely embarrassed to be Irish” (independent.ie 2011). In Australia, Mrs Brown’s Boys has met with the same reception pattern of critical derision and popular appeal (Northover 2012; Deegan 2015). Yet, the popularity of the sitcom in Ireland and the UK, as well as in ‘settler colonial’ states such as Australia, New Zealand and Canada suggests that the appeal to an underserved audience, and indeed the gap between bourgeois tastemakers’ preferences and substantial sections of television audiences is a transnational phenomenon. The critical derision and popular appeal that has been a feature of Mrs Brown’s Boys’ reception since it emerged on BBC1 has notable parallels with the work of US writer and director Tyler Perry, with whom O’Carroll is collaborating on an upcoming movie. Perry’s creation Medea (who first appeared in Diary of a Mad Black Woman [2005] and has featured regularly ever since in Perry’s prodigious output) is, like Agnes Brown a man (Perry) in drag, playing a foul-mouthed matriarch, whose narratives often conclude in sentimentality and broad-strokes moral messaging. Perry and O’Carroll have similar career trajectories, both having been bankrupted by a failed project relatively early in their careers, and having overcome such obstacles on their way to a commercial success predicated on catering to underserved audiences, initially through theatre productions, demonstrating remarkable entrepreneurial acumen in the process. In Perry’s case, the popularity of his films with African American Christian women predominantly from the southern US states, has enabled the creation of the writer-­ director’s own studios in Atlanta, Georgia, from which he makes most of his screen output. Further, the critical opprobrium that has greeted Agnes Brown is also a feature of Medea’s reception. Film scholar Donald Bogle has suggested that Madea in many ways comes close to the African-­ American mammy—a figure with some distinct differences from the Irish mammy2—stating that “If a white director put out this product, the black audience would be appalled” (Rose 2018). One high-profile critique was voiced by influential African-American director Spike Lee, who despaired of Perry’s retrograde representations, describing his work as “‘coonery’ and buffoonery” which for him harkened back to (notorious stereotyped radio and later television comedy) Amos n Andy (1928–1960 radio, 1951–1953 television) (John 2013, 351). Some have discerned in the reception to Perry’s work fracture lines within Black America. For Catherine A. John (2013), “there is a black north versus black south split

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in terms of Perry’s fan base, as well as a ‘low down folk’/middle class divide” (352). Thus, we can see the potency of these grotesque representations of matriarchal figures on both sides of the Atlantic in demarcating contemporary bourgeois cultures and their others. With the release of Madea’s Family Reunion, scheduled for 2022, there is a notable possibility for a transatlantic and synergistic amalgam of the two maternal figures. The film would be the third film featuring O’Carroll’s creation, following Agnes Browne (in which Angelica Huston played the matriarch), and Mrs Brown’s Boys D’Movie (2014), a spin-off from the BBC series. While O’Carroll previously had an opportunity to develop Mrs Brown’s Boys for HBO in the US, he declined due to the excessive time commitment he’d have to make, potentially spending two years away from home to make the series (RTE.ie 2012). The collaboration with Perry seems to be an opportunity to expand the reach of his franchise into the US, without the considerable time and effort of producing a series for the US market. At the time of writing little is known of the collaboration, which has been in development for a substantial amount of time. That said, the name of the film suggests that Perry’s Madea will be the main focus, with O’Carroll’s input likely in the form of an extended cameo appearance—something that could no doubt be developed further should the crossover prove a success with audiences. The news that O’Carroll and Perry were working together on a project first emerged in 2016 and generated predictable critical response, with Irish Times critic Donald Clarke (2016) joking that it was “a marriage made in … heaven?” The film is identified as a “Netflix Original,” and its release through the streaming video on demand (SVOD) giant makes sense in terms of the transatlantic reach it will thus have, allowing the strategic alignment of the considerable fanbases of both Madea and Agnes Brown. The joint enterprise may constitute a significant extension of the Irish mammy’s reach in popular culture, and like others examined in this book, O’Carroll, despite not garnering the critical approval that greeted Irish comedies such as Sharon Horgan’s Catastrophe (2015–2019) or Chris O’Dowd’s Moone Boy (2012–2015), demonstrates through popular appeal the transnational reach of Irish performativity, as well as the complex classed and generational inflections that can manifest in representations of the Irish mammy.

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50 Ways to Kill Your Mammy: Filial Bonding, Transnational Maternal Affect and Generational Transition in Popular Culture The television adventures of Baz Ashmawy and his mother Nancy Ashmawy (from here on Baz and Nancy) present perhaps a more wholesome take on the Irish mammy than the more recent social media incarnations listed above or O’Carroll’s creation. Arguably at the height of their cultural renown when they first appeared on screen together in 50 Ways to Kill Your Mammy, a Sky One reality adventure programme that ran for three seasons from 2014–2016, the pair have since reunited onscreen for Baz and Nancy’s Holy Show (2017) on RTÉ, in which Baz tries to ‘blag’ his mother an audience with the pope, as well as a (2020–) advertising campaign for Bank of Ireland. A consideration of the pair allows for an analysis of the dyadic function of mother-son filial relationships in Irish screen culture, a relationship paradigm that is prevalent in representations of the Irish mammy and which, as Negra (2015) notes, often presents an abiding maternal figure, whose symbolic ballast works in tandem with the adjustments men were making in the post-crash conjuncture. That dynamic is in abundant evidence in a consideration of Baz and Nancy, with 50 Ways constituting a considerable escalation in terms of visibility for Baz, the gimmick of including his mother in his daredevil roamings (previously in evidence on laddish RTÉ travel show How Low Can You Go? [2005–2008]) providing enough distinction from the considerable competition in onscreen male adventurers to secure a transnational deal that saw the former radio and travel show presenter broadcast into homes beyond Ireland in the UK, the US and other anglophone regions. A substantial body of scholarship has emerged in the last three decades on reality television as a site of cultural production. With its combination of aesthetics drawn from diverse sources such as documentary and soap opera, the heterogeneous format has gained a foothold throughout global television and has been examined in terms of the insights it can reveal about social phenomena such as the cultural operations of neoliberalism and the rise of surveillance culture (see Ouellette 2017, for an overview). Irish exemplars of reality television are often nationally inflected, including Celebrity Bainisteoir (2009–2013), a show in which public figures take on the role of Gaelic football manager (bainisteoir) and Failte Towers (2008), where celebrities compete in running a hotel, the title a pun combining the Irish word for welcome and the famous BBC sitcom, Fawlty Towers

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(1975–1979). The hybridised titles linking Irish culture, signalled through usage of the Irish language, to more internationally renowned programmes or formats attests to the tension between local/national and international legibility that I track throughout this book. Further, the fact that Ashmawy featured in both these productions, the former as contestant (Celebrity Bainisteoir) and presenter (Failte Towers) demonstrates his positioning in the Irish mediascape prior to his short-term rise to international visibility courtesy of 50 Ways. On one level 50 Ways could be understood as a barely repressed aggressive response to the coddling presence of the Irish mother. Like the circulating memes featuring Brenda Fricker’s Mrs. Brown analysed above, that gently mock perceived anachronistic coddling associated with the mammy, 50 Ways stages a public remonstration of the figure’s overprotective habits. The premise of the programme is that Baz engineers increasingly dangerous activities for his septuagenarian mother to undertake. The series, of course, goes out of its way to stress that Baz doesn’t really want to kill Nancy, usually through a sentimental monologue to camera in which Baz variously muses on the ageing process and articulates the pride he has in his mother and how these trips are allowing them to strengthen their mother-son bond, delivered in the final minutes of screen time as a coda to the excitement of the trip—a moral messaging that aligns the reality programme with Mrs Brown’s Boys. The success of the programme, which won an International Emmy for Best Non-Scripted Entertainment in 2015, was due in large part to Nancy’s surprisingly unflappable demeanour. The series worked through a set of contrasts: loud and demonstrative Baz and his modest and reticent mother; the stay-at-home figure of the Irish mammy (usually filmed within her home in the before sections prior to travel engaged in domestic labour such as baking soda bread as Baz speaks to camera) and the mobility through various forms of transport that we see her taking in the series as part of the adventures her son has lined up; and, as I detail further below, the Irish Catholic whiteness of Nancy and her mixed-race son. Ashmawy is one of a growing number of Irish public figures of non-­ white ethnicity. Born to an Egyptian father who left the family when the presenter was eight years old, the presenter has become a fixture in the Irish mediascape. His mixed-race ethnicity was highlighted in his two-part RTÉ documentary Baz: The Lost Muslim (2015), coming after the success of 50 Ways, in which the Dubliner investigates his Muslim heritage, meeting with members of Islamic communities within Ireland and travelling to

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meet his stepsister in Egypt. As sociologist Rebecca Chiyoko King-O’Riain (2021) has noted, “The very presence of mixed-race bodies in Ireland and their willingness to identify as mixed, can have the potential to radically shift racialised notions of Irishness away from being equivalent to whiteness to possibly incorporate non-whiteness into the mix” (835). The mediated transition from a primarily white Irishness to a more capacious understanding of identity within the nation is thus brokered by such representations as 50 Ways and other elements of Ashmawy’s career. This is, of course, a shift in national consciousness that comes through an accretion of cultural manifestations, and that incorporates not only 50 Ways but such developments as Leo Varadkar’s political career; the flourishing Irish hip hop scene that has seen artists such as Denise Chaila emerge in recent years; the prominence of non-white and mixed-race Irish (or Irish-­ hyphenate) actors like Yasmine Akram and Ruth Negga; and as King-­ O’Riain details, the first African/Irish Rose of Tralee, Kirsten Mate Maher. In 50 Ways, the alignment of Baz’s mixed-race identity with Nancy, a white Irish religious mother—a dynamic with cultural precedent in troubled rock star and Thin Lizzy frontman Phil Lynott’s devotion to his mother, Philomena3—stages a symbolic generational transition in terms of popular cultural understandings of Irishness. One of the central features of the Irish mammy in the 2010s iterations I track here is their interaction and acceptance of other cultures in ways that can at times seem culturally insensitive, but that ultimately communicate warmth and generosity. Examples include the episode of All Round to Mrs Brown’s where Agnes meets Kaitlyn Jenner—perhaps predictably asking the transgender former athlete, “do you have a pussy?,” the noun usage recycling a double entendre associated with Are You Being Served?‘s Mrs. Slocombe [Mollie Sugden]—or the scene in Philomena where, interacting with the Mexican chef at a Washington hotel, the eponymous Irish mammy warmly informs the man that Mexico seems lovely, “apart from all the kidnappings.” Nancy’s interactions are somewhat more delicate. An episode of 50 Ways set in the Philippines (S02E01) is demonstrative of the negotiation of foreign cultures that the series stages. When brought to a high-security jail during the trip, Nancy, rather than being concerned for her own safety as her son repeatedly warns both her and the viewers, communicates seemingly genuine concern for the inmates, and is shown talking to many of them. In one filmed conversation, when Nancy is told by some inmates that they have been jailed due to drug-related crimes, she replies, “well, God looks after everyone. We’re all the same under God.”

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The reassurance she offers underlines the devout Catholicism and stoicism that are features of the Irish mammy in many representations; it also foregrounds the transnationalism inherent to Catholicism, the dominant religion in both Ireland and the Philippines. Another segment of the episode sees Nancy visiting a former colleague Arlene’s family in Manila. A retired nurse, Nancy would have had many Filipino colleagues as workers from this nation have propped up the Irish health service system for many years. Upon Baz’s announcement that they will be visiting The Philippines, Nancy immediately states that she’d like to make this gesture and the programme follows Baz and Nancy to a suburb of Manila, where she delivers a package sent home by her friend, Arlene, and brings a cake. The hospitality shown by her colleague’s family is documented as we see Baz and Nancy having a meal in their home. Overall, the segment constitutes a respite in the extreme activities the show foregrounds. This section of the programme suggests that the qualities of hospitality and generosity aligned with the Irish mammy survive international relocation, and in the process attests to the growing transnational constitution of the Irish workforce, the Filipino workers in Ireland in sectors such as healthcare fulfilling a role that many diasporic Irish did in the past in large numbers in the UK and further afield. Nancy and Baz’s trips abroad, throughout Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas are notable for the diverse forms of transport that the pair utilise. From dogsleds and snowmobiles in Scandinavia, to various forms of boat and aircraft across different continents, 50 Ways demonstrates a visual investment in depicting the Irish mother in a wide range of non-standard transportation. The depictions correspond with a wider metaphorical reliance on mobility evident in several other examples of Irish lifestyle programming that dealt with Irish subjects abroad, particularly those trying to make cultural sense of the widespread emigration that emerged in the wake of the post-2008 economic crash. The RTÉ series Better Off Abroad (2015–2016), for instance, which, as the title suggests, tracked the better lives some, but not all, Irish migrants achieved when they left their home nation, featured the emigrants depicted, as well as host George Lee, aboard a similarly diverse range of vehicles, demonstrating a “reliance on visual movement and rhetorical superlative to suggest the exhilarations of global capitalism” (Negra et al. 2019, 856). Similarly, though not overtly about migration, 50 Ways recruits the iconicism of the Irish mammy as a means of celebrating mobility beyond the confines of the nation, doing so

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at a time when emigration was an economic necessity for swathes of young people who had little opportunity for employment at home. 50 Ways was a relatively short-lived programme, with three seasons made, the last of which 50 Ways to Kill Your Mammies in 2016 recruited other Irish mothers to take part in the extreme activities. As mentioned, a further one-off programme Baz and Nancy’s Holy Show (2017) was made for RTÉ, but the pair have reappeared on Irish screens from 2020 as Baz, and to a lesser extent Nancy, front a campaign for Ireland’s longest-­ running commercial bank, Bank of Ireland. The campaign reaffirms the centrality of his mother to Baz’s celebrity. While the presenter has consistently featured on Irish television—notably in RTÉ’s home improvement series DIY-SOS: The Big Build Ireland (2020–)—in the intervening years since 50 Ways, he is still most associated with that series and with his mother. This is evident in Nancy’s ongoing association with Baz, in the three main television ads for the campaign so far, his mother is physically present in two and cameos through a text message in one. The campaign aligns in key ways with a cycle of Irish reality television identified by Eleanor O’Leary (2020), evident in programmes such as Pulling with My Parents (2020–) and Agony OAPs (2020–) that in her account “propose a kind of skill-share in which the digital skills of the young are exchanged for the wisdom (accumulated through lived experience) and material advantages of the older generation” (95). However, the suggestion that Bank of Ireland is committed to helping older customers that is communicated through the ads seems disingenuous given significant branch closures (88 announced in 2021 alone) in recent years and the increasing withdrawal of in-person service in branches in favour of marshalling people toward on-site teller machines and online banking.4 The traditional ease and assurance of in-person assistance is more comforting to many in older generations, and the withdrawal of such services has been recognised as a form of ‘financial ageism’ widespread in the Irish banking sector (Reddan 2016). A later instalment of the campaign has Nancy, having mastered internet banking through the assistance of her son, showing off the “runners”—Baz winces at the old-fashioned term his mother uses—she has bought for herself as the two relax in her garden. The campaign reanimates key features of 50 Ways—which it references continually, often through framed photographs of the mother and son engaged in their international adventures that are visually dwelt upon within the mother’s house—such as the aim of modernising the Irish mammy, which involves pushing her outside of her ‘comfort zone,’ an

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endeavour that aligns the figure with the tropes of flexibility and mobility that constitute the ideological underpinnings of contemporary global capitalism.

Philomena, the Hidden Diaspora, Appealable Trauma Narrative and Second-Generation Migrant Performativity Mother-son dynamics are also central to Philomena, Stephen Frears’ 2013 adaptation of journalist Martin Sixsmith’s non-fiction book, The Lost Child of Philomena Lee (2009). The film relates the story of a mother’s search for her child (Anthony Lee, later renamed Michael Hess), who was taken from her in a Mother and Baby Home in Ireland in the 1950s. Sixsmith’s account of Philomena Lee’s harrowing encounter with the practice of Irish children of unwed mothers being, in effect, sold to American adoptive parents by Catholic church-run Mother and Baby homes was adapted into a screenplay by comic actor Steve Coogan and his collaborator Jeff Pope. Whereas Sixsmith’s book largely elides his personal relationship with Lee, the adaptation situates the relationship between the pair as the emotional centre of the story, a decision that, as I detail below, develops as a surrogate mother-son relationship, and is bound up in its execution with Coogan’s second-generation Irish heritage. In her study of the politics of memory in Irish culture, Emilie Pine (2011) suggests that “(W)hile representations of the past have always been an integral element of Irish culture, they are now one of its most compelling subjects. And the tone that characterises this subject is trauma” (Pine 2011, 3). The conveyance of trauma is a delicate matter in works aiming to generate popular appeal. On the face of it, the widespread separation of mothers from their children and the lucrative business of relocating infants abroad5 is not something that would necessarily appeal to large audiences. While a film such as The Magdalene Sisters (2003), Peter Mullan’s depiction of the cruel treatment of women in the Magdalene Laundries, was critically acclaimed and did well at the box office, generating more than $20 million—helped by a re-release in the US after the film had achieved cultural momentum—films deemed too bleak on account of subject matter and narrative approach often struggle to gain widespread distribution.6 As Martin McLoone (2008) suggests, The Magdalene Sisters can be understood as part of a cycle of films, including The Butcher Boy (1997) and Song

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for a Raggy Boy (2003), that emerged alongside and in the wake of persistent and growing accounts of the Catholic church’s culpability regarding institutional child abuse in Ireland and worldwide. For McLoone, The Magdalen Sisters, and in particular the scene depicting the humiliation of a priest that he sees as a consistent trope within these films, constitutes “a settling of old scores” on behalf of an Irish public that had embraced secularism and rejected the rigid dogma and patriarchal practices of the past. The film’s success despite its grim subject matter relates perhaps to its moment of inception, a time in which popular feeling, through repeated provocation, had turned against the grim authoritarianism that was coming to be associated with Catholicism. Philomena refuses the accusatory positioning of The Magdalene Sisters at its close. The pivotal scene sees Lee (Judi Dench) state “I forgive you” to Sister Hildegard, the nun at Roscrea, in County Tipperary, who oversaw the cruel treatment of the young women in her charge after the aging woman restated her belief in the innate sinfulness of Philomena’s actions and the sexual behaviour of the other girls who were in her care. This narrative resolution—poignant as it comes after the revelation that Michael Hess had died and that the convent’s deliberate obfuscation had prevented his meeting Philomena when he was still alive—aligned the film with changing dynamics within the Catholic church at this time, as the relatively progressive Pope Francis had succeeded his arch conservative predecessor Benedict XVI the year of the film’s release. The message of forgiveness with which the film concluded rendered it somewhat impervious to criticism from right-wing Catholics in the US, attacks which diminished further once the filmmakers and Lee had been granted an audience with Pope Francis (Coogan 2015, 38). In addition to the film’s foregrounding of forgiveness, another key manoeuvre in rendering the film both legible to a broad audience and allaying the potentially discouraging traumatic content of the narrative, was to craft Philomena as an endearingly dotty Irish mammy. The character, as scripted by Pope and Coogan and played by Dench, is kind-hearted and eccentric, prone, for instance, to detailing the melodramatic plotlines of the paperback historical romances she reads to a visibly indifferent Sixsmith. As an interview with Lee shortly after the release of Philomena makes clear, she was aware of the trade-off between accessibility and the difficult subject matter of her story: “‘I was a bit of a dumb cluck in the film,’ the real Philomena says, chuckling. ‘Some of those things I didn’t say. But it had to bring a bit of laughter into it. Because it’s so sad, you

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know” (Midgette 2014). Pine (2011) notes that in performing acts of remembrance “the version that is presented is necessarily selective and shaped for consumption, [presenting] the past in ways that are accessible and salient to an audience” (3–4). In putting across an accessible and internationally legible version of this story, Philomena leans into the pre-existing figure of the Irish mammy, in this instance one that is rendered acceptable, in part, through Coogan’s own links to Ireland given his Irish parentage and his comedic sensibilities. As the actor and screenwriter puts it in his autobiography: Liberal-leaning intellectuals might worry about castigating the simple world view of an old Irish lady. It wasn’t a concern for me. I grew up knowing lots of old Irish ladies and I can say with some authority that they do say lots of daft things. I knew I could mine comedy from playing with Philomena’s character and then dignifying the grace and serenity of that same woman. (Coogan 2015, 19)

This aspect of the performer’s past constitutes just one of the ways in which Coogan’s status as second-generation Irish diaspora has inflected his body of work. Coogan’s autobiography from which the above quotation was taken ruminates in some detail on his status as English, but from an Irish family. Writing on migrant autobiography by the Irish in Britain, literature scholar Liam Hart suggests that “autobiography, by virtue of its protean adaptability, can offer those with multiple or partial identities a vital narrative means through which to compose, proclaim and perform their multi-faceted sense of belonging” (Harte 2006, 235). For Coogan, we can add to his autobiography a rich body of work that has incorporated Irishness in diverse ways, notably through the performer’s expertise in vocal mimicry.7 The actor has played several Irish characters and demonstrates a remarkable fidelity to regional Irish accents in voicing them. These characters include Francie “Touchy” Feeley in Moone Boy (2012–2015) and, in an episode of This Time with Alan Partridge (2019–), Martin Brennan, a Sligo farmer and lookalike of the titular tv presenter (also Coogan). The latter character sang Dominic Behan’s republican folk song “Get Out You Black and Tans” on national television in the UK, prompting the song to re-enter the music charts at a time of political sensitivity when the Irish government was controversially considering a ceremony in Dublin Castle that would have seen the Black and Tans, a notorious grouping of former British soldiers with a reputation for

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brutality, commemorated alongside other members of the RIC. Reflecting on his decision to include the combative song in the section, Coogan stated, “The decisions I make on comedy aren’t made on a whim. That whole history between the British and the Irish runs through me” (Clarke 2020). In Philomena we see how this sensibility is central to the generation of screen content that reflects upon the legacies of diaspora. One further way in which Coogan’s diasporic subjectivity inflects the text of Philomena, is through the amendments to the character of real-life journalist Martin Sixsmith. Coogan has detailed how he and Pope deliberately changed aspects of the character in the film to align with Coogan’s own positioning. Such amendments include making Sixsmith a lapsed Catholic, as well as developing the character into a “surrogate son”—at one point in the film Sixsmith pretends to be her son in order to gain access to her room when he is concerned about Philomena’s wellbeing, and then has to refer to her as “mother” in front of the hotel staff. The ersatz filial relationship suggests some of the ways in which Coogan’s input into the adaptation constitutes a rumination on the generational differences between Irish Catholic parents and their secularised children (Chumo II and Coogan 2015). He writes, “I do think that Catholics like Philomena represent my parents: they live their lives without preaching or piety” (Coogan 2015, 37). Additionally, the conflation of Sixsmith and Coogan is further secured by the co-writer including lines within the film that Lee had said to him during his research. Notably, when the two were watching some home videos of Michael Hess, Coogan relates that at one point Lee clasped his hand tightly and said, “I did love him you know,” a line that finds its way into a scene in the film when Philomena and Martin first meet. In it, Philomena relates the shame she felt regarding her “sin.” She declares, “after the sex was over, I thought anything that feels so lovely must be wrong,” to which Sixsmith replies, exasperated, “fucking Catholics.” The scene demonstrates the latitude Coogan felt confident taking due to his own connection with Irish Catholicism, the criticism at once more resonant and understanding coming from the conflated Coogan/Sixsmith character, than it would from an Englishman with no connections to that world. Aligning the rejuvenated Irish mammy as seen in 50 Ways with Philomena is the emphasis on mobility central to both the series and the film. While we see Baz and Nancy jet around the world, we have the similar mother/surrogate son duo of Philomena and Sixsmith travelling first

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to Ireland, to Roscrea, and then on to Washington and back to Ireland again in their attempts to trace Philomena’s son. We never see Philomena framed within the domestic confines of her own home, she is resolutely mobile and distanced from the domesticity of Fricker’s Mrs. Brown in film’s story world. Marketing for the film heavily stresses its central thematic of movement, with some posters for the movie depicting Philomena and Sixsmith in an airport, while the poster for most anglophone regions sees the two sat together against a featureless bright yellow background, with a doodle that recreates the journey (convent steeple to skyscraper, with a shamrock thrown in for emphasis) in an airplane’s vapour trail above the pair (see Fig. 6.2). The shamrock that features in the poster for Philomena finds a corollary in a Celtic Harp, another symbol of Ireland, within the film. In Philomena, the necessity of the migrant’s return is of paramount importance. As

Fig. 6.2  Posters for the cinematic release of Philomena conflate the Irish mammy with mobility through a white doodle on a plain yellow background that summarises the journey taken in the movie

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Philomena learns of Michael Hess’s death, and life, she becomes anxious that he had some connection to Ireland. That the dislocated migrant, a member of what historian James Smith (2016) calls the “hidden Irish diaspora,” demonstrates an affiliation with the home nation corresponds to the narrative centrality of the returned emigrant in Irish popular culture (Moynihan 2019). When Sixsmith calls Philomena’s attention to an Irish harp on Hess’s lapel representative of the politician’s membership of an Irish-American lobby group, the film secures an element of narrative closure, further underlined by the fact of Hess’s literal return to his home nation to be buried at Roscrea. As demonstrated above, the mother in Irish culture often bears a metaphorical relation to the nation, and this is re-emphasized in Philomena. If women often function as the ‘fixed compass point’ for the male migrant in Irish narratives, as detailed previously, the actions of the church in thwarting the son’s homing instincts through deliberately withholding vital information, in this popular narrative, bespeak a faith that has shifted increasingly out of kilter with the nation and whose historical cruelties have arguably now become its defining feature. Since the release of Philomena, the ongoing scandal of the Mother and Baby homes has grown in urgency, particularly due to the discovery of an unmarked mass grave at the site of the Bon Secours Mother and Baby home, which operated in Tuam, County Galway, between 1925 and 1961. The discovery, largely on account of local historian Catherine Corless’s persistent research, that up to 800 infants were buried in the grave, came to public attention in May 2014, six months after Philomena’s release, when an article was published in the Irish Independent. News accounts have noted that the Bons Secours story and the success of Philomena, led to a dramatic upsurge in people seeking their adoption details (BBC News 2014), testament to the twin powers of popular cultural narrative and thorough historical documentation. Scholars have warned of the dangers, though, of any misrepresentation on the part of popular accounts of real events (Pine 2011; Smith 2007). With Philomena, though licence was taken with events in the recent past—notably in the connections between Philomena and Sixsmith that I’ve detailed above—the account of her experience as Roscrea and the subsequent life of Michael Hess remained faithful to events as they occurred. As Auxiliadora Pérez Vides (2016) states in her analysis of the film, “Philomena adds to [existing] evidence, shedding some light on the scale of ostracism and abandonment that the survivors are still going through” (23).

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At the time of writing, Lee is taking one of two test cases against Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation, which was set up in 2015 and reported its findings in January 2021. Many survivors of these institutions were disappointed with some of the commission’s conclusions, in particular its finding that there was a lack of evidence of forced adoption and abuse, despite an abundance of testimony to this effect. Lee’s centrality in bringing the matter of Mother and Baby Homes to public account, through The Philomena Project—a campaign set up to lobby the Irish government and various church institutions to make public adoption papers relating to up to 60,000 cases within the state—as well as in her latest actions in challenging the findings of the commission attests to the real Lee being a more agentic figure than is suggested in the film. That said, the agency afforded through the popularity of Sixsmith’s book and the subsequent adaptation also attest to the role that popular accounts can play in moving the dial on public opinion.

Conclusion As I have argued in this chapter, the Irish mammy is a complex signifier that indexes diverse notions of Irish conviviality, reactionary gender formations, and family values. A figure that tends to manifest in nostalgic iterations, such as that of Mrs. Brown in My Left Foot, even as it proliferates through contemporary digital media forms, this nostalgia itself idealises a maternal figure uncorrupted by the excessive consumerism that was attributed to Irish women during the Celtic Tiger era. The capacious figure is also imbued with a transnational legibility that enables the narrative treatment of potentially harrowing subjects in a manner that renders them palatable, as evident in Philomena, or creates a space for the bawdy comedy that appeals to specific demographic formations across the anglophone world, and which is suggestive of homologous subject positions in other countries, as the forthcoming pairing of Tyler Perry’s Medea and O’Carroll’s Agnes Brown anticipates. The examples I have detailed in this chapter also reveal the common trope of Irish mammies effecting the recuperation of a son-figure, often through a mother-son dyad, a dynamic that was culturally prolific in the post-crash era of the 2010s, and one that again speaks in some ways to the reactionary gender scripts to which the Irish mammy is often attached.

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Notes 1. The Fricker Irish mammy has also featured in several memes posted by Irish Simpsons Fans group, a prolific generator of Irish-themed digital screen content takings as its source material the long-running US animated series, on Facebook. In these instances, the head of Mrs. Brown from My Left Foot is transposed onto scenes from the series. 2. While both the Irish mammy and its US counterpart are persistent cultural types—and there is a long history of these figures’ portrayal in cross-­dressing performance on stage and screen—significant differences between the two are apparent. The Black Mammy is a nostalgic and historic sentimentalisation of domestic workers’ ersatz maternal role within a white household whereas the Irish mammy, although aligned through the centrality of domestic association, generally denotes a family matriarch and has currency from twentieth century to the present. A closer comparison between an Irish figure and the Black Mammy is enabled by turning to the Irish Bridget. As April Schultz (2013) has noted in a study comparing these two caricatures, the buffoonish Irish Bridget, perpetuated through caricatures in popular magazines as well as a number of early film shorts, emerged as a result of specific waves of Irish migration to the US. Schultz notes that the Black Mammy’s glorification peaked between 1890 and 1920: “[T]his apotheosis accompanied the tremendous growth in the number of black domestic servants in the North. In contrast, the notion of the uncivilized, buffoonish Irish Bridget coincided with the earlier dominance of Irish immigrants in these positions” (Schultz 2013, 177). Discerning differences between the two figures, film scholar Peter Flynn (2011) notes that “the mammy character played a very different role in the American imagination than Bridget. Bridget represented all that was repressed in order to construct a perfect vision of Victorian womanhood. The ever-jocular mammy (despite her similar big-boned and rotund appearance) was a more affable, less threatening figure that echoed rather than subverted the maternal authority of her employer” (19). 3. Sinead Moynihan (2013) has detailed how mixed-race Lynott has become “liberal shorthand for the possibilities offered by multicultural Ireland” (178; see also Asava [2013, 37–38]). Though, as Moynihan also notes, the singer has also been problematically constructed in Irish popular culture as a version of the ‘tragic mulatto,’ alongside Irish footballer Paul McGrath, due to Lynott’s problems with drug addiction and untimely death, and McGrath’s battles with alcoholism. Lynott’s mother Philomena was a popular figure in Ireland, due to her efforts in protecting her son’s legacy and charitable endeavors. Her autobiography My Boy (2009, 2nd ed. 2011), was a bestseller in Ireland. In addition to emphasizing the mother-son bond I trace throughout this chapter, its descriptions of the challenges of being an

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unwed mother in the 1950s, as well as the revelation in the second edition of the book that she gave up two later children for adoption, align her in some respects with the life of Philomena Lee. 4. The Baz and Nancy ads can be profitably analysed alongside a Bank of Ireland ad for mortgage products that concurrently ran alongside it, first playing on Irish television and online spaces in June 2021. The ad in question caused some public commotion when an analysis by Emmett Scanlon (2021), presented in The Irish Times and, also, through several Twitter postings, provoked debate as to whether it contributed to a growing discourse that sought to demonise older people who were living in large houses at a time when younger generations were struggling to get onto the property ladder. The ad features a mother who moves out of her terraced house, signalled as filled with her memories of her dead husband, into a newbuild with her son and his family. Both this ad and the campaign featuring Baz and Nancy suggest the need for older people to adapt to the ways of younger generations (ways that benefit the bank, whether through the adoption of cost-saving electronic banking services, or the drawdown of new mortgage products facilitated through inter-generational financial transfer). 5. In addition to its role in the conveyance of this “hidden diaspora,” as historian James Smith has termed it, we might also consider the role of the Catholic church in its dispersal of citizens throughout the world who had taken up holy orders. As Smith writes, “The first five decades after Irish independence in 1922 witnessed the emergence of what historians now refer to as Ireland’s spiritual empire: an ever-expanding network of Irish religious orders dedicated to establishing a worldwide network of Catholic missionaries” (Smith 2007, 157). Often there was a lack of choice for those who took up holy orders and ended up either in an unfamiliar and perhaps unwelcoming part of the world, or working within one of the institutions that have since been revealed as places of inhumane cruelty. Sixsmith’s book and Philomena gesture toward this in the figure of the kind young nun who Philomena befriends. 6. The treatment of women within Ireland’s “architecture of containment” (Smith 2007) has a significant corpus within screen media, including the documentaries Dear Daughter (RTÉ 1996); Sex in a Cold Climate (Channel 4, 1998); an episode of RTÉ’s Prime Time “Magdalene Laundries” from 2012; and non-documentary features such as The Magdalene Sisters (2002); Sinners (2002); as well as Philomena. 7. Coogan is but one of several comedians of his generation from the North of England who signal their Irish roots through their voice. Bolton comedian Peter Kay, whose mother is from County Fermanagh, often (convincingly) mimics his mother’s accent in his stand-up act, bestowing a similar accent to several of his comic creations, most prominently his transgender character, singer-songwriter Geraldine McQueen. Caroline Aherne, celebrated co-­

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writer of The Royle Family (1998–2012), was raised in Wythenshawe, Manchester, the daughter of Irish parents. Aherne used an Irish accent when voicing her early nineties’ character Sister Mary Immaculate, a satirical take on the Irish nuns who commonly taught in Catholic schools across the UK and Ireland, such as the convent school she attended in Manchester.

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and-­style/abroad/will-­mother-­and-­baby-­homes-­commission-­advertise-­to-­the-­ hidden-­irish-­diaspora-­1.2859793 (accessed 28 July 2021). Stallybrass, Peter, and Allon White. 1986. The Politics and Poetics of Transgression. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP. Tyler, Imogen. 2013. Revolting Subjects: Social Abjection and Resistance in Neoliberal Britain. London: Zed Books. Walsh, Ian R. 2014. “The Dublin Dame: from Biddy Mulligan to Mrs Brown.” In For the Sake of Sanity: Doing Things with Humour in Irish Performance, ed. Eric Weitz, 63–76. Dublin: Carysfort Press.

CHAPTER 7

Coda: The COVID-19 Pandemic and Irish Screen Media

The COVID-19 novel coronavirus and the radical disruption it has caused since it emerged in 2020 provide a clear, if unfortunate, demarcation of the temporal bounds of the present book. My consideration of transnationalism, regionality and diaspora in Irish media is bookended by the post-2008 economic crash that brought with it years of austerity, swelling the ranks of the Irish diaspora; and the pandemic with its profound loss of life and a sweeping set of social recalibrations that are still unfolding at the time of writing. If the post-2008 symbol of the death of the Celtic Tiger was the images of abandoned ghost estates that dotted the landscape, the global pandemic has a more diffuse visual imagery, ranging from the masks that have become an everyday part of life to the images of deserted streets in once crowded urban centres that circulated widely in 2020 and, more recently, the sight of anti-mask and anti-vaccine protests in city centres across Ireland. The massive efforts made by governments around the world to mitigate the social and economic impact of the pandemic provoked optimism in some quarters, with one writer suggesting it showed the possible emergence of “a new variant of capitalism” (Elliott 2021) that would jettison some of the austere practices of neoliberalism. Those who remember similar pronouncements made in the wake of the global crash just over a decade earlier will be understandably cynical. As the world reeled from the horrific spread of the virus in 2020, many people around the world seemingly rediscovered the value of television, which offered a consoling sense of collective engagement amid the fear © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. P. McIntyre, Contemporary Irish Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94255-7_7

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and uncertainty that characterised those times (Hermes and Hill 2020). During this shift back to television, one Irish drama, Lenny Abrahamson and Hettie MacDonald’s adaptation of Sally Rooney’s novel Normal People (2020) became a lockdown viewing staple across the world, making stars of its young leads and drawing plaudits from critics, and even tweets of approval from a Kardashian sister. A BBC/Hulu co-production with support from Screen Ireland, the series’ near-simultaneous release in the UK, Ireland and the US, as well as further afield, seemingly demonstrated television’s power to construct a transnational viewing public at a time of physical atomisation due to measures taken to curtail the virus. US Comedian Amy Poehler’s joking description at the 2021 Golden Globe Awards of Normal People as “an emotional show about two young lovers in Ireland … best viewed in bed with your hot laptop right on your crotch” (Piña 2021) bespoke both emergent norms of post-tv media consumption, as well as some of the appeal the drama held outside of Ireland. This partially resided in an eroticism marked by a distinctive regionality (curiously provoking a fetishization of the GAA shorts worn by actor Paul Mescal). The programme reactivated tropes of Irishness as a salve to contemporary stresses that has a genealogy going back to The Quiet Man (1952) and beyond, while simultaneously invoking a nostalgia for a more recent past when mobility within and beyond the nation was a thing of ease for those with adequate means to do so.

Early Representations: Together and “Strangers on a (Dublin) Train” Cultural texts (outside of documentary and news formats) which tackled the pandemic head on at an early stage, perhaps understandably, seemed to struggle to find the correct form with which to address the monumental shifts the global event had precipitated.1 Two Irish-related texts took significantly different approaches to the pandemic. Together, which first aired in June 2021, is a drama from second-generation Irish writer Dennis Kelly, which reunited him with his Pulling (2006–2009) collaborator, Sharon Horgan. The second text, “Strangers on a (Dublin) Train,” is an episode of anthology series Modern Love (2019–), helmed by series showrunner, Irish director John Carney, which was released on Amazon Prime in August 2021. Both texts utilised a modest canvas, though in different forms, in their thematic engagement with shifts caused by the pandemic.

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Together, though feature length, was broadcast on BBC television and primarily constituted a two-hander—the theatrical term an apt one given the many stage conventions that the programme utilised. It features Horgan and Scottish actor James McEvoy as the unnamed central couple identified only as He and She (with a further limited screen presence in that of their child, Arthur [Samuel Logan]), who navigate an already fractured home-life (replete with the caustic dialogue with which Horgan is often associated) amid the turmoil of the first year of the pandemic. The limitation in terms of cast size is matched by the spatial bounds of a drama set entirely inside the family home. “Strangers on a (Dublin) Train” is a mere 35 minutes in length, though more expansive than Together in terms of the mobility afforded its characters (and audience), who during the episode travel from Galway to Dublin and then across the capital city. The physical curtailment that was a defining feature of pandemic lockdowns is here transposed into the barrier that the young lovers must surmount in order to secure a satisfactorily romantic resolution. Both these pandemic-­ set texts use the couple form as a means of framing their depiction of the uncertainties of the COVID-19 era. The lack of a firm romantic resolution in both registers on one level the contemporaneous uncertainties regarding any closure for an ongoing global health crisis that at the time of these texts’ release (and, indeed, as I make final amendments to this coda in Winter 2021) showed little sign of abating. The affective tone of each of these pandemic representations contrasts significantly. Together conveys despair and a claustrophobic intensity that undermines the usual positive connotations of its titular adverb. The choice of title is thematically apt given how the word “together” was rhetorically mobilised in various campaigns aiming to foster collective adherence to the new behavioural protocols the emergence of the virus precipitated (see McIntyre et al 2022). Indeed, the narrative emphasises how the companionship and support that the term connotes can quickly degenerate into feelings of entrapment in the conditions of duress that for many characterised the onset of the pandemic. Together also plays upon its title’s adjective form with its connotations of mental stability, a quality that is strained by the events depicted. “Strangers on a (Dublin) Train”, by contrast, elides the negative consequences of the pandemic through its chronological positioning at the very outset of the lockdowns. The tone of the anthology episode is one of optimism, focused as it is on a nascent romantic relationship. The novelty of emergent interpersonal conventions such as bumping elbows instead of shaking hands, and fads such as baking,

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ambitious reading plans, fitness regimes, and gardening that were a shared (if short-lived) feature for many during the initial lockdowns are presented as worthy objects of nostalgic reminiscence, despite being relatively recent phenomena at the time of the episode’s release. Similarly, the elbow bump the two central characters self-consciously enact in Dublin’s Heuston Station is presented with a cinematic flourish as the camera dollies in and an improbable gust of steam partially obscures the potential lovers (see Fig. 7.1), a move that evokes the aesthetics of romantic classics such as Brief Encounter (1945). Together and “Strangers on a (Dublin) Train” for all their differences are united in exhibiting an unease with genre that indexes the uncertainty that the pandemic brought to everyday life. The late critical theorist Lauren Berlant (2008, 2011) used the term “genre” in a wider sense than it is customarily deployed to signal the given set of expectations a subject brings to their everyday experiences, a form of sensemaking necessary to parse the incessant stream of experience. For Berlant, a genre can encompass things as diverse as sexual identity, trauma, or the textual genres which we are more accustomed to seeing the term describe. Uniting all these forms of genre, is the structuring role of pre-held expectations: “Genres provide an affective expectation of the experience of watching something unfold, whether that thing is in life or in art” (2011, 6). The pandemic’s profound disruption of everything from everyday trips to the supermarket to our means of grieving a departed loved one undermines the validity of expectations and brutally exposes the potential mutability of things we

Fig. 7.1  In “Strangers on a (Dublin) Train” emerging interpersonal protocols of the pandemic era are recast as novel and romantic

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unwittingly depend on to provide structure and meaning to our lives. In such circumstances, it is unsurprising that nascent attempts to work through the uncertainties that characterise the pandemic era in the cultural arena should find expression in forms that fail to conform to audience expectation or undermine genre conventions in some manner. Together’s flouting of genre comes mainly through its evasion of contemporary television or cinematic norms of representation. In many ways, the drama evokes an earlier mode of television, the anthology drama that flourished on both sides of the Atlantic from the 1950s, but which had greater longevity in the UK in such formats as ITV’s Armchair Theatre (1956–1974) and ITV Playhouse (1967–1983), as well as The Wednesday Play (1964–1970) and Play for Today (1970–1984) on BBC. Such anthology formats provided a showcase for emerging writing and directing talent, but also often allowed for pressing contemporary issues to be presented in dramatic form in a manner that generated significant public discourse. The most famous example of this is “Cathy Come Home,” directed by Ken Loach which aired as an episode of The Wednesday Play in 1966, precipitating a public debate on the issue of homelessness and drawing attention to it just as the charity Shelter was coincidentally being launched. Another landmark piece of television that Together seemingly draws upon is Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads (1988, 2020). Bennett’s series of stand-alone monologues are canonised examples of British television drama (alongside the more formally experimental works of Dennis Potter), yet the overt theatricality evident in Talking Heads hasn’t had an abiding influence on the form which tends to eschew such experimentation in favour of naturalistic modes. Together, though, revisits both the pressing engagement with contemporary social concerns evident in “Cathy Come Home,” and the fourth-wall breaking theatrical format of Talking Heads in its portrayal of the injustices and upheavals of 2020.2 The unprecedented nature of the shifts that occurred as societies across the world went into various forms of lockdown, of course, exacerbated a precarity that was already set in place for many people due to the rise of zero-hours contracts, cuts to social care, and various other symptoms of neoliberal and post-Fordist shifts in employment and state social provision. Indeed, Together takes such conditions as one of its main themes, detailing the pandemic-era vulnerability of frontline and gig-economy workers throughout the narrative. The two central characters relate, directly to camera, and in conversation with one another, the travails of careworkers, relatives, furloughed employees, as well as the impact the

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virus and the measures taken to curtail it have had on their own mental health. At one point, in an overt attempt to dwell on the good things that have come out of their difficult year at He’s insistence, She offers that fact that Maryama, her mother’s one-time carer, had recovered from coronavirus, only for He to remind her that they hadn’t informed them (the audience) and so it didn’t really come across as good news after all. The glances from one another to the camera, often mid-sentence, generate both an empathic bond between audience and character, while also, due to the relative novelty of such an approach in a television drama, constituting a barrier to overcome. As television critic Lucy Mangan (2021) phrases it in a laudatory review, “… if you are not put off – if you like it, or if you lean in, or perhaps if you lean to the side and round the unexpected presentation to what is behind – Together is an absolute wonder.” Unlike Together, which jettisons the comforting familiarity of televisual naturalism, “Strangers on a (Dublin) Train” adheres to genre conventions, but almost to excess. Carney presents his episode as a mini-romcom that, as the title suggests, is filled with references taken from popular culture, but such allusiveness is overdetermined. Indeed, alongside the episode’s titular reference to Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train (1951), there are numerous highly reflexive allusions to romcom tropes and, repeatedly, the film Before Sunrise (1995). The episode’s central narrative conceit of the couple arranging to meet at a future point while not having each other’s contact details is overtly indebted, of course, to Richard Linklater’s iconic romance. The potential couple, Michael and Paula, though Irish in the episode, are played by English actors Kit Harrington and Lucy Boynton, each bringing along some associations from their other more noted roles. In particular, Harrington’s career-making depiction of Jon Snow in Game of Thrones (2011–2019) is acknowledged in dialogue referencing the fantasy series, as well as through Michael watching Lord of the Rings (2001–2003) (the later television series’ most significant genre predecessor in popular culture) as he prepares for a long wait in his car to see if Paula emerges into the street on which he has ascertained she lives. Adding a further allusive dimension to “Strangers on a (Dublin) Train” is an overwhelming sense that it stages a condensation of director Carney’s themes and stock tropes. This is evident, for instance, in the opening train ride of the episode when a bearded singer-songwriter and his travelling companion launch into an impromptu song seemingly about the central couple, a narrative intervention that calls to mind Carney’s features Once

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(2007) and Begin Again (2013), that often foreground site-specific musical performance. Later, Michael returns to his brother’s Dublin apartment, where we see Irish actor Jack Reynor playing an advice-giving stoner remarkably reminiscent of the actor’s fraternal role in Carney’s Sing Street (2016), a feature that also co-stars Boynton as the primary love interest. Combined, the allusions to Carney’s own work, overtly signalled genre tropes, and the saturation of pop cultural references lend the episode a maximalist quality that counteracts the easy-going feel-good affect more commonly associated with the romcom. In this way, the episode seems overly conscious of the potential difficulties presented by a pandemic-set romance and seems at pains to hold at bay any negative associations such a depiction will inevitably generate. My yoking together of these two texts as exemplary of Irish popular cultural manifestations of the pandemic, of course, foregrounds some of the issues of national provenance that I have tracked throughout this book. The casting of Horgan, who acts in her own accent in a narrative that takes place in the UK and aired on its national broadcaster, is suggestive of the fraught positioning of many Irish living in the mainland UK during the pandemic (a phenomenon I consider further in the following section). Kelly’s second-generation Irish status also recalls Martin McLoone’s (2011) injunction for Irish studies scholars to be attentive to the contributions made by such subjects to wider popular culture in the UK. Pulling a critical frame around such texts allows for a broader understanding of Irish popular culture that acknowledges the impact of waves of migration within Ireland and further afield. In contrast to Together, “Strangers on a (Dublin) Train” is set in Ireland and written and directed by an Irishman. Though, as mentioned, its two leads are English actors playing Irish characters. Indeed, much of the media attention this episode generated related to Harrington’s surprisingly good Irish accent, an issue that had come to the fore some months earlier due to widespread (at least within Ireland) consternation regarding the inauthentic Irish accents heard in Wild Irish Thyme (2020). The episode, like all those in Modern Love, is an adaptation of a non-fiction essay published in the New York Times, though in this instance, the essay detailed an encounter that happened on a train from Paris to Barcelona (Kranc 2021) rather than a journey within Ireland. These details of casting, adaptation and national provenance, in both Together and “Strangers on a (Dublin) Train” demonstrate the transnational entanglements that are characteristic of twenty-first century mediascapes. Such entanglements, of

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course, also reflect the broader global interconnections that have both driven the global transmission of the virus and facilitated the transnational collaborations that have generated medical responses to its spread and mutation. As such, these contradictory Irish/transnational texts reflect in some measure complexities of pandemic-era media and society.

Conclusion: Maintaining the Delicate Fiction of Home This book has traced forms of movement within and beyond Ireland at regional, national and transnational scales. The curtailment of mobility during the pandemic, of course, also happened on multiple scales. Video-­ calling technologies that were increasingly the default mode of communication for diasporic subjects maintaining contact with “home”, and which were textually incorporated into television programmes dealing with emigration such as RTÉ’s Missing You (2013, 2017) (see Negra et al. [2019, 858–860]) provided means of contact for families separated by much shorter distances during the pandemic. This was most poignantly the case for nursing home residents who used applications such as Skype and Zoom to communicate with their families. Such technological solutions provide a virtual co-presence that, while valuable, can often, as one study of mediated migration has found, paradoxically emphasize physical distance (Madianou and Miller 2013). Indeed, Together presents a dramatic treatment of this phenomenon, when Horgan’s character narrates the experience of watching her mother’s death via FaceTime. It is not known how many similar incidents occurred during the worst months of the pandemic, as the virus spread rapidly through nursing homes on the island of Ireland at a time of strict lockdown, though the amount of deaths that occurred in those facilities, at least a 53% increase according to some reports (RTÉ News 2021), would suggest this was not an unusual phenomenon. The pandemic’s obstruction of transnational mobility for Irish diasporic subjects was also a cause of distress. Conflicted governmental messaging and the inability of many to visit Ireland in Winter 2020 inevitably raised tensions within Irish diasporic populations that have persistently felt insufficiently acknowledged by successive governments. It is hard to overestimate the importance of yearly visits home for Christmas for many diasporic subjects. Fintan O’Toole (2016), dwelling upon the psychic impact of Ireland’s history of emigration in a pre-pandemic context, has characterised the Irish Christmas as “a fiction of home.” He writes:

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It is a work of fuss and travel and shopping and making up beds and peeling sprouts and spuds and collecting turkeys and soaking hams. But it’s also a work of the imagination. … At Christmas, Ireland looks like what it might be if we were not an emigrant culture, if history had not unsettled us and left with such a complicated relationship between people and place. The Irish Christmas is a kind of alternative history in which everything, and everybody, is at home.

The pandemic disruption to annual Christmas homecomings and other special gatherings constituted a severe fracturing of this consoling fiction. One diasporic subject from Northern Ireland described his inability to make it home for Christmas in 2020 in words which echo the anxieties of many during this time of emotional intensity and separation: “I worry I will not be there when I’m truly needed. And I sense my own inbetweenness again, that potential to split. All the ties that I’ve done my best to maintain, are beginning to loosen” (Crummy 2020). The sentiment expresses the sense of fractured movement I have charted throughout this book, and emphasizing how the pandemic has compounded the sense of “inbetweenness” that characterises the liminal positioning of many such Irish subjects in the contemporary era. How pop cultural narratives process the events of recent times and the new modes of belonging that are being constructed, of course, has only begun to be tentatively sketched but my hope is the present book will facilitate further research into the social and cultural shifts currently under way.

Notes 1. This, of course, wasn’t only the case for the Irish-related texts I detail in this chapter. The Morning Show (2019), for instance, the high-profile flagship US drama that airs on Apple TV Plus, demonstrates a similar confusion of form. As one critic suggested, the drama’s second season, which details the impact of the pandemic is “chaotic, uneven and hamfisted, yet compulsively watchable” (Horton 2021). 2. A more straightforward, though harrowing, account of the pandemic was Channel 4’s Help, which was broadcast in September 2021. A naturalistic drama, Help presented the onset of the pandemic as it impacted a care home in Liverpool.

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Bibliography Berlant, Lauren. 2008. The Female Complaint: The Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American Culture. Durham: Duke UP. Berlant, Lauren. 2011. Cruel Optimism. Durham: Duke UP. Crummy, Colin. 2020. “This Year, for the First Time, I Won’t Go Home for Christmas. Will My Family Ties Loosen for Good?” The Guardian, 12 Dec., https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/dec/12/this-­year-­for-­the-­ first-­time-­i-­wont-­go-­home-­for-­christmas-­will-­my-­family-­ties-­loosen-­for-­good (accessed 01 Oct 2021). Elliott, Larry. 2021. “During the Pandemic, a New Variant of Capitalism has Emerged.” The Guardian, 30 July, www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jul/30/pandemic-­new-­variant-­of-­capitalism-­spending-­covid-­state (accessed 01 Oct 2021). Hermes, Joke, and Annette Hill. 2020. “Television’s Undoing of Social Distancing.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 23(4): 655–661. Horton, Adrian. 2021. “How Did The Morning Show Become the Messiest Show on TV?” The Guardian, 20 Oct., www.theguardian.com/tv-­and-­radio/2021/ oct/19/morning-­show%2D%2Dmessy-­apple-­tv-­season-­2 (accessed 09 Dec. 2021). Kranc, Lauren. 2021. “Did the ‘Strangers on a Train’ from ‘Modern Love’ Season 2 Ever Reunite? We Asked One of Them,” Esquire, 13 Aug., www.esquire. com/entertainment/tv/a37303196/modern-­l ove-­s eason-­2 -­e pisode-­3 -­ strangers-­train-­true-­story-­interview/ (accessed 09 Dec. 2021). Madianou, Mirca, and Daniel Miller. 2013. Migration and New Media: Transnational Families and Polymedia. London: Routledge. Mangan, Lucy. 2021. “Together Review – Sharon Horgan and James McAvoy Let Rip in Lockdown Tour De Force.” The Guardian, 17 Jun., www.theguardian. com/tv-­and-­radio/2021/jun/17/together-­review-­sharon-­horgan-­and-­james-­ mcavoy-­let-­rip-­in-­lockdown-­tour-­de-­force (accessed 9 Dec. 2021). McIntyre, Anthony P., Diane Negra, and Eleanor O’Leary. 2022. “Mediated Immobility and Fraught Domesticity: Zoom Fails and Interruption Videos in the Covid-19 Pandemic.” Feminist Media Studies, https://doi.org/10.108 0/14680777.2021.1996425 McLoone, Martin. 2011. “Why Didn’t Kevin Keegan Play for Ireland? Contrasting Narratives of the Irish in Britain.” Irish Studies Review 19(1): 19–30. Negra, Diane, Anthony P. McIntyre, and Eleanor O’Leary. 2019. “Broadcasting Irish Emigration in an Era of Global mobility.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 22(5–6): 849–866. O’Toole, Fintan. 2016. “The Irish Christmas is a Fiction of Home.” Irish Times, 20 Dec., https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-­o-­toole-­the-­irish-­ christmas-­is-­a-­fiction-­of-­home-­1.2911608 (accessed 9 Dec. 2021).

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Piña, Christy. 2021. “Golden Globes: Read Tina Fey and Amy Poehler’s Opening Monologue.” The Hollywood Reporter, 28 Feb., https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-­n ews/golden-­g lobes-­r ead-­t ina-­f ey-­a nd-­a my-­ poehlers-­opening-­monologue-­4140423/ (accessed 01 Jun 2021). RTÉ News. 2021. “53% Increase in Notified Deaths - Kildare Coroner.” RTE.ie, 13 Apr., www.rte.ie/news/regional/2021/0413/1209560-­kildare-­coroner/ (accessed 9 Dec. 2021).

Index1

A Abortion referendum (2018), 16 Accent, 14, 15, 18, 25–27, 29, 33–38, 49, 51, 55–57, 68, 94, 99–101, 177, 227, 233n7, 245 Adventure Time, 162 Agnes Browne, 214, 219 Aisling books (McLysacht and Breen), 190 Akram, Yasmine, 177, 222 All Round to Mrs Brown’s, 205, 222 Andrejevic, Mark, 9 Angelo’s, 161 Annually Retentive, 161 Arranmore, 1 Ashmawy, Baz, 17, 203, 205, 206, 220–224, 228, 233n4 Ashmawy, Nancy, 17, 203, 205, 220–224, 228, 233n4 Austerity, 3, 6, 8, 10, 16, 46, 59n9, 89, 115, 117, 118, 122, 157, 160, 239

B Back to Life, 68, 177 Baker, Stephen, 8 Ballykissangel, 42, 49, 66 Banking crash, 1, 46, 160 Bank of Ireland, 17, 203, 220, 224, 233n4 Barton, Ruth, 13, 24, 26, 33, 34, 36–38, 43, 48, 50, 56, 82, 84, 101n2, 154, 159, 164, 184, 188, 193, 194n3, 208 Baz and Nancy’s Holy Show, 220, 224 Baz: The Lost Muslim, 221 BBC, 13, 39, 41, 43, 66, 68, 92, 94, 101n1, 137, 143, 177, 216, 219, 220, 241, 243 Bea, Aisling, 12, 26, 37, 153–193 Belfast, 8, 13, 14, 69–71, 73, 77, 78, 101n2, 101n3 Belfast Agreement, see Good Friday agreement Belfort, Jordan, 7

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 A. P. McIntyre, Contemporary Irish Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94255-7

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INDEX

Berlant, Lauren, 36, 69, 72, 186, 193, 242 Better Off Abroad, 223 Biddy Mulligan (O’Dea), 208, 214 Biggie Smalls (The Notorious B.I.G.), 129 Blair, Tony, 8 Bloody Sunday (1920), 114 Bloody Sunday (1972), 73, 132 Bojack Horseman, 162 Bono, 8 Bon Secours Mother and Baby home, 230 Boxing, 11, 116, 117, 123–127 Boyle, County Roscommon, 12, 44, 47 Boym, Svetlana, 48, 144 Brah, Avtar, 12, 179 Brexit, 10, 36, 92, 133, 142, 144, 177, 214, 215 Brooklyn, 172 Buckley, Jessie, 36 The Butcher Boy, 225 C Calvary, 25, 35, 47 Campbell, Neil, 15, 72 Carney, John, 164, 240, 244, 245 Carroll, Hamilton, 128 Cartoon Saloon, 25, 51–54, 56 Catastrophe, 10, 36, 39, 153, 154, 160–162, 164, 166, 167, 169–171, 175, 194n4, 212, 219 Catholic church, 13, 44, 87, 97, 158, 172, 223, 226, 228, 233n5 Catholicism, see Catholic church Celtic Tiger, 7, 16, 26–28, 35, 45, 46, 48, 89, 113, 123, 157, 160, 165, 180, 190, 209, 231, 239

Channel 4, 13, 18, 31, 39–41, 68, 94, 99, 101n1, 155, 161, 176, 233n6, 247n2 China Nebula (production company), 54 Cleary, Joe, 6, 7, 138 Clinton, Bill, 66 The Commitments, 82 Conaty, Roisin, 174 Conservative Party (UK), 8 Convergence culture, 18 Coogan, Steve, 16, 38, 206, 207, 225–228, 233n7 Cork European Capital of Culture (2005), 76 Corporate tax rate, 7, 25, 122 Coulter, Colin, 7, 8, 89, 101n5, 157 County Roscommon, 12, 23, 27, 34, 38, 41, 44, 45, 47, 49, 55, 56 COVID-19 pandemic, 2, 3, 10, 31, 157, 212, 213, 239–247 Coyle, Nadine, 94 Creative Ireland, 158 The Crisis of care, 204 Cronin, Mike, 15 D Dadbod, 28 Dana (Rosemary Scanlon), 93, 94, 124 Dating Amber, 162 “The Death of Innocence” (mural), 94, 95 Delaney, Rob, 153, 164, 171, 172 Deleuze, Gilles, 14 Democratic Unionist Party, 8 Dench, Judi, 16, 203, 226 Derry, 5, 9, 10, 13, 15, 18, 19 Bloody Sunday (1972), 73, 132, 143

 INDEX 

Derry City F.C., 133 Free Derry wall, 88, 97, 98 history of, 19, 69, 72, 145 murals, 88, 94, 95, 97 schoolgirls, 66, 93, 95, 97 UK City of Culture (2013), 98 Derry City F.C., 133, 134, 140 “Dream Big” campaign (Budweiser), 119, 121 Derry Girls, 5, 9, 10, 13, 15, 18, 19, 39, 41, 49, 65–101, 101n2, 138, 156, 188, 194n4, 212, 215 Diaspora, 1–19, 35, 49, 109, 132, 141, 143, 165, 225–231, 239 “Diaspora spaces” (Brah), 12, 179 Diasporic citizenship, 174 Diasporic non-assimilation, 35, 112, 132–133, 136, 140, 141, 145 Distant Love (Beck and Beck-­ Gernsheim), 169 Dittmer, Jason, 18 Divorce, 162, 169 Dog Ears, 25, 51, 53–56, 59n10 Donegal, 1, 2, 48 Dornan, Jamie, 26, 37 Doyle, Roddy, 82 Dublin, 7, 44, 45, 52, 54, 58n6, 68–71, 74, 76, 96, 101n2, 101n3, 110, 114, 116, 117, 119, 120, 124, 131, 132, 145, 160, 163, 181, 188, 208, 214, 215, 241, 245 Dunbar, Adrian, 14, 213 E Earl Haig poppy, see Poppy protest Englishness, 142 Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, 14 Entrepreneurialism, 7, 8, 165, 166 EuroMillions Lottery ad, 2 Extra Ordinary, 42, 188–191

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F The Fall, 37, 155 Fassbender, Michael, 26 Father Ted, 39, 40 Femininity, 78, 91, 154, 156, 174, 178 “Feminist killjoy” (Ahmed), 174 Fey, Tina, 170, 171, 185 50 Ways to Kill Your Mammy, 17, 19, 203–231 First World War, 10 Fleabag, 166, 215, 216 Floyd, George, 11, 126 Football (soccer), 10, 45, 48, 110, 111, 126, 127, 132, 134, 135, 140–142, 145, 220 Football Focus, 135, 137, 143, 144, 145n3 Foreign direct investment (FDI), 4, 49–52, 73, 78, 87, 110 “The Forgotten Irish,” 180–183 Forte, Will, 189, 190 Fox, Richard Kyle, 124 Frank of Ireland, 163–165 Freeman, Elizabeth, 93 Fricker, Brenda, 209–213, 221, 229 Fricker Irish mammy memes, 211, 212, 232n1 G Galt, Rosalind, 13 Game Night, 162 Game of Thrones, 14, 244 The Gathering, 15 Genre conventions, 84, 243, 244 Get Shorty, 25, 27, 28, 37, 38 Gibbons, Luke, 43, 47 Ging, Debbie, 35, 84, 114, 204, 212 Girlhood, theories of, 90, 178 Girls, 166, 216 Gleeson, Brendan, 58n3, 164

254 

INDEX

Gleeson, Brian, 163, 164 Gleeson, Domhnall, 26, 163, 164 Global cities, 69, 70, 77 Globalization, 3, 9, 69, 70, 83, 92, 98, 214 Good Friday agreement, 8, 10, 66, 77, 91, 134 Gray, Breda, 154, 180 Guattari, Félix, 14–15 H Hall, Stuart, 18 Hamm, Jon, 32 The Handmaid’s Tale, 173 Harvey, David, 70, 77 Hegde, Radha S., 3, 16 Herself, 163, 194n2 Hickman, Mary J., 11, 15, 146n6, 182 Higgins, Maeve, 11, 12, 17, 19, 26, 42, 153–193 #HomeToVote campaign, 175 Horgan, Sharon, 7, 16, 19, 26, 27, 37, 42, 50, 153–193, 194n4, 194n5, 212, 219, 240, 241, 245, 246 Hulu, 41, 52, 156, 173, 176, 240 Hume, John, 8 Hush-a-Bye Baby, 94, 96, 97 I I Could Read the Sky, 180 Idiomatic expressions, 14 Ikea, 8 Ireland abortion referendum (2018), 96 corporate tax rate, 7, 25, 122 football and, 111, 135 Irish accent, 33, 35, 37, 227, 234n7, 245 animation, 49–54, 56

diaspora, 4, 11, 15, 19, 35, 132, 143, 227, 230, 239 feminism, 158 Irish Mammy, 19, 203–213, 218–224, 226–229, 231, 232n1, 232n2 masculinity, 36, 44, 113, 114 Irish-American masculinity, 124 Irish Development Agency (IDA), 50 Irish diaspora, 15 football and, 141 The Irish in Us: Irishness, Performativity and Popular Culture, (Negra), 32 Irish Mammy, 19, 203–213, 218–224, 226–229, 231, 232n1, 232n2 An Irishman Abroad, 137 Irish Republican Army (IRA), 94, 137, 144 Irish state, 1, 4, 6, 10, 15, 76, 210, 245 “The Island,” 2 Island narratives, 2, 56 Italia ‘90 Soccer World Cup, 2, 42, 48, 118 The IT Crowd, 26, 27 ITV, 38, 94, 243 J Jenkins, Henry, 18, 19, 212 K Kearney, Michael, 12 Kelly, Dennis, 161, 164, 240, 245 Kennedy, Liam, 16 Kenny, Pat, 181 King-O’Riain, Rebecca Chiyoko, 17, 222 King, Stephen, 14 Kitchin, Rob, 6

 INDEX 

L Labour care work, 159 caring labour, 158, 181, 204, 213 Labour Party (UK), 8 The Last Leg, 30, 31 The Late Late Show, 7, 187 Lee, Philomena, 16, 203, 206, 225, 226, 228, 231, 233n3 Linehan, Graham, 26, 40 Line of Duty, 13, 14, 213 Lisburn, 69, 73 Littler, Jo, 204, 212, 213 Living with Yourself, 155, 177 London, 2, 23, 37, 58n6, 88, 101n1, 125, 128, 143, 154, 163, 167, 177, 179, 180, 182, 184 Londonderry, see Derry The Lost Child of Philomena Lee, (Sixsmith), 205, 225 Lucan, Arthur, 207, 208 Lynott, Phil, 17, 222, 232n3 M Maeve Higgins’ Fancy Vittles, 155, 184, 186, 189 Maeve in America: Essays by a Girl from Somewhere Else, 12, 155, 185 Maeve in America: Immigration IRL, 12, 185 The Magdalene Sisters, 225, 226, 233n6 Marriage equality referendum (2015), 175 Marriage Referendum, 16 Mascots, 35 Mathews, Arthur, 40 Mayweather Jnr., Floyd, 11, 116, 119, 125–128, 131 McClean, James, 5, 10, 17, 19, 35, 109–145 social media usage, 135

255

McCourt, Frank, 52, 65, 96 McDonald, Peter, 42, 46, 48 McElroy, Ruth, 13, 67 McGavigan, Annette, 94 McGregor, Conor, 7, 11, 17, 19, 71, 109–145, 165, 187 class positioning (see Working-class representation) corporeality of, 121 “Dream Big” campaign (Budweiser), 119 historical precedents of, 123 self-branding, 115 sexual assault accusations, 116 McIlroy, Rory, 109 McKee, Lyra, 9, 91–93, 96 McLaughlin, Greg, 8 McLoone, Martin, 84, 168, 225, 226, 245 Medhurst, Andy, 18, 68 Memes, 14, 18, 36, 207, 209–213, 221, 232n1 Mercurio, Jed, 14 Merman Productions, 7, 155, 162, 163 Mescal, Paul, 240 Middle-class subject formation, 217 Military Wives, 162 Mills, Brett, 38, 68 Misfits, 83 Missing You, 246 Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), 7, 11, 111, 115, 116, 124, 125, 187 Mobility, 4, 12, 13, 26, 32, 57, 58n5, 65, 79–84, 118, 141, 154, 156, 166, 172, 178, 188, 189, 204, 205, 208, 221, 223, 225, 228, 229, 240, 241, 246 Modern Love, 164, 169, 171, 240, 245 Money fight, 11 “The Money fight” (McGregor vs Mayweather Jnr.), 11, 125–130

256 

INDEX

Moone Boy, 23–57, 58n7, 65–67, 89, 156, 188, 219, 227 Morley, David, 4, 141 Motherland, 162, 169 Mothers of Invention, 186, 191 Moynihan, Sinéad, 11, 15, 179, 195n7, 230, 232n3 Mrs Brown’s Boys, 10, 18, 19, 86, 203–231 Mrs Brown’s Boys D’Movie, 219 Mullally, Una, 176 My Left Foot, 209, 211, 231, 232n1 N Naked Camera, 184 Nationalism, 9, 10, 114, 140, 142, 144 Neeson, Liam, 36 Negga, Ruth, 26, 36, 222 Negra, Diane, 6, 7, 16, 28, 32, 33, 56, 58n1, 65, 70, 117, 120, 128, 136, 153, 160, 164, 165, 175, 208, 220, 223, 241, 246 Neoliberal capitalism, see Neoliberalism Neoliberalism, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 72, 120, 166, 204, 220, 239 Netflix, 18, 41, 52, 54, 56, 92, 99, 156, 177 Newsnight, 92 Ngai, Sianne, 69, 72, 75–78, 169, 193 Noonan, Caitriona, 13, 54, 67 Normal People, 165, 240 Northern Ireland, 5, 6, 8–10, 14, 25, 37, 38, 51, 53, 54, 66, 67, 69, 72, 73, 77, 78, 89, 94, 96, 97, 101n5, 109, 111, 132–135, 140, 141, 172, 247 corporate tax rate, 7, 25, 122 peace process, 8, 66 politics, 73, 78 Norton, Graham, 175, 176 Nostalgia, 9, 41–43, 47–49, 67, 93, 212, 231, 240

O O’Brien, Anne, 159, 164, 169, 192 O’Carroll, Brendan, 7, 19, 154, 203, 206, 208, 213–220, 231 O’Connor, Sinead, 129, 166 O’Dea, Jimmy, 208, 214 O’Doherty, Claudia, 189 O’Dowd, Chris, 7, 12, 19, 23–57, 65, 174, 219 Off You Go: Away from Home and Loving it. Sort of (Higgins), 155, 182, 184 O’Kane, Deirdre, 42, 46, 194n1, 194n5 Old Mother Riley (Lucan), 207, 208 O’Leary, Eleanor, 16, 58n5, 101n4, 118, 137, 175, 188, 223, 224, 241, 246 O’Leary, Michael, 129 Ong, Aihwa, 12 O’Riordan, Nicholas, 34 O’Sullivan, Maureen, 28, 44, 58n6 O’Toole, Fintan, 24, 25, 50, 246 P Peace dividend, 8, 77, 101n5 Peace process, see Northern Ireland, peace process Peck, Jamie, 6 People’s Republic of Cork (PROC), 74–76, 82, 88, 97 Peripheral city, see Second city Perry, Tyler, 218, 219, 231 Philadelphia, Here I Come! (Friel), 42 Philomena, 16, 19, 182, 203–231, 232n3, 233n5, 233n6 Poppy protest, 10, 132–133, 138, 142 Post-2008 economic crash, 223, 239 Post-Celtic Tiger period, 10, 23, 29, 31, 41, 70, 116–121, 166 Post-Troubles, 114

 INDEX 

Post-Troubles period, 73, 90, 91, 114 Psychobitches, 161 Puffin Rock, 23–57 Pulling, 161, 162, 164, 171, 184, 194n4, 240 Q The Quiet Man, 11, 42, 240 R Regional idiomatic phrasing, 15 Regionality, 1–19, 50, 54, 67, 239, 240 Republic of Ireland (national football team), 111, 135 Rhys Meyers, Jonathan, 29 Riverdance, 7, 166 Ronan, Saoirse, 26, 36, 37, 58n2 RTÉ, 40, 42, 48, 67, 68, 94, 99, 119, 122, 138, 145n2, 155, 163, 180, 184, 189, 217, 220, 221, 223, 224, 233n6, 246 The Rubberbandits, 67, 188 S Sands, Bobby, 144 Sassen, Saskia, 70, 71, 77 Scott, Andrew, 26, 47 Second city, 19, 65–101, 101n2 Second-generation Irish, 138, 172, 225, 240, 245 Second-generation Irish diaspora, 227 Second-tier city, see Second city Section 481 tax relief (audio-visual sector), 53 ’71 (2014), 13 Shameless, 83, 215 Shining Vale, 163, 164 Sinn Fein, 8

257

Sixsmith, Martin, 16 Sky One (UK), 38–42, 45, 58n4, 203, 220 Smalls, Biggie (The Notorious B.I.G.), 129, 145n2 The Snapper, 82 Social and Democratic Labour Party, 8 Song for a Raggy Boy, 225 Songs for While I’m Away, 17 Sport, 4, 7, 18, 109–145, 194n4 Stardom and celebrity, 23, 24, 111, 112, 157 State of the Union, 27, 36 Stoke City F.C., 132, 134, 137, 144 “Strangers on a (Dublin) Train,” 240–246 Streaming video on demand (SVOD), 18, 40, 41, 49, 52–54, 56, 156, 163, 166, 219 Sullivan, John L., 123–125 T Taylor, Katie, 113 Television funding structures, 100 post-tv, 240 transnational distribution, 100 Terry, Serena (@mammybanter), 212, 213 Theodore, Nik, 6 This Way Up, 10, 12, 36, 39, 155, 174–182, 184, 188 Three Business, 1 Tiktok, 207, 212, 213 Together, 162, 240–246 “Together for Yes” campaign, 16, 172, 173 Transatlantic television, 98, 166 Transnationalism, 1–19, 38–41, 50, 109–145, 188–191, 213–219, 223, 239

258 

INDEX

Trimble, David, 8 The Troubles, 5, 8, 10, 37, 38, 67, 68, 73, 74, 77, 88–90, 92, 93, 96, 98, 101n5, 114, 132, 138, 143, 172 Trump, Donald, 11, 126, 185 Trumpism, 10, 11, 92 Tyler, Imogen, 85, 204, 205 U Ulster Unionist Party, 8 Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), 115–117, 119, 124, 125, 128, 131 U2, 7, 8, 65, 85, 86 V The Van, 82, 83 Varadkar, Leo, 7, 17, 222 Vikings, 14

Voice accent, 36, 56 intonation, 55 Volcic, Zala, 9 W White, Dana, 124, 125 Wiig, Kristin, 32, 34 Williams, Raymond, 72 Wilson, Julie, 5, 129 Wolfwalkers, 52 Working-class representation, 82, 83 Y The Young Offenders, 13, 15, 19, 41, 49, 50, 65–70, 74, 79–88, 90, 97–100 Z Zupančič, Alenka, 18