#irish representation

[lyledebeast]

If I'm remembering this right, what Remmick says to Sammie in his last-ditch effort to turn him when they're both in the water saying the Lord's Prayer together is that the man who taught him that prayer also stole his father's land. When I was in the theater watching it, that line caught me off guard, but I just assumed Remmick is very, very old. Roman empire old. But then I've seen Jack O'Connell, his actor, say in interviews that he's more like 600 years old. If that's the case, Ireland had been Catholic for hundreds of years and would be for hundreds to come, and the idea that he was forced to learn one of the most common Catholic prayers as an act of colonial subjugation is preposterous.

It also occurred to me that Remmick's father's land being taken could be a reference to the Cromwellian Act of Settlement in 1652, which was an act of colonial subjugation, and it was rooted in religious difference. However, the subjugated in that case were Catholic. The same religion being used as a tool of oppression in some parts of the world was the religion of the oppressed in others. History is wild.

So, did Ryan Coogler just . . . forget about Catholicism? Did he just erase hundreds of years of Irish history to make Ireland's narrative of colonization more similar to Africa's than it actually was? That would be horribly hypocritical and fly in the face of the film's best features: its commitment to telling the truth about history and its celebration of diversity. Surely that's not it.

What I think is much more likely is that Remmick is lying about his own history to try to convince Sammie that they have more in common than they actually do. He's told plenty of other lies to get to this point, and he's desperate. That all the information we get about Irish history comes from a deeply unreliable character in very few lines leaves a lot of room for misinterpretation, but at over two hours, Sinners' run time is already pushing it for a horror film in 2025. There are a lot of characters I'd like to know more about. With that being said, there is definitely more time spent on the nuances of African and African American history, and that is as it should be for this film.

[miles-obriens-endless-torment]

Choose your fighter

[kurtcobainsghost]

She needed so much more screen time. Also I hate the new gen with every fibre of my being.

[queermarzipan]

Guys. Guys guys guys. All my Irish followers. Read this fic, right now, immediately. I. I s wear. I swear I'm not lying. Read it

My comment is under LyraParry12 if you wanna know why but I won't do spoilers so. It's There

[delightsome-moved]

I will not say this again: SHUT. YOUR INCESSANT. FUCKING. TRAP. DON'T TALK ABOUT ME, I WON'T TALK BOUT YOU. SIMPLE AS FUCKIN' THAT. FUCK OFF

[lyledebeast]

Wildernesses and Blood Facials: The Patriot vs The Nightingale, Part 1

I can no longer watch a film that features revenge prominently as a theme without comparing to Roland Emmerich's psuedo-historical epic from 2000. Therefore, it is no surprise that I found myself watching Jennifer Kent's much grittier, much less romanticizing tale of early colonial Tasmania and thinking, "This is what The Patriot should have been."

The Patriot is a guilty pleasure for some, me included, but few would deny that it is an ahistorical, racist, jingoistic mess. However, it is a very influential mess as revenge films go. Imagine my surprise at seeing a direct allusion to the famed unhorsing scene in The Patriot in Gina Prince-Bythewood's The Woman King (2022), not to mention numerous less recent films and shows. While a lot of the comparisons I'm going to draw between these two films may not occur to anyone but me, there is one particular scene in The Nightingale that is very hard to imagine wholly uninfluenced by a similar scene in The Patriot.

I will get into that comparison very soon, but before I start on the two remaining posts in this series, I need to clarify why one important character will be mostly absent from them. Billy (Baykali Ganambarr) is an Aboriginal man who is native to Tasmania and serves as main protagonist Clare's (Aisling Franciosi) guide through the wilderness. While he initial does so under duress, the two discover common ground, and their relationship evolves into something more akin to a partnership. The reason I will not say much more about Billy after this post is he has no counterpart in The Patriot as Clare and the film's villain, Hawkins (Sam Claflin) do.

Like 18th century South Carolina, 19th century Tasmania operated under a racialized caste system with Englismen at the top, Aboriginal people at the bottom, and Irish convicts in between. When Billy initially takes Clare for an English woman, she is appalled, giving him a tongue-lashing in Irish Gaelic to prove her point. Yet she also takes for granted that her Whiteness puts her in a position of superiority over him, and even later when her views start to change, she still draws on her comparative privilege to protect Billy from capture. Apart from some pithy, ahistorical one-liners, The Patriot takes the racial hierarchy of colonial America for granted. It frames the American Revolution as a conflict between two groups of White people. Native Americans are almost wholly erased. Black people, enslaved and free, are part of the scenery, and the ones who do speak do so mainly to confirm the magnanimity of their White employers.

There is one moment in The Nightingale that made me a little afraid it was going to go down a similar road. Clare and Billy are taken in by a kind-hearted Englishman who offers them food. While Clare sits down at the table, Billy takes his position on the floor with his back against the wall. When the man insists that he sit at the table with them, Billy begins to weep. But these are not tears of gratitude. "This is my country," he says, his voice breaking. He has been so disempowered and displaced in his own home that even his ability to eat with dignity is dependent on the whims of immigrants.

The Nightingale is a tragedy, but it is a tragedy for different people in different ways, and the experiences of these characters become a source of empathy where before was only hostility and bigotry. Clare, who first responds to the idea of Billy guiding her with "I'm not travelling with a black. You think I want to end up in someone's stew pot?" ends by considering Billy the only friend she has left. The transformation she undergoes sets her in sharp contrast with The Patriot's Benjamin Martin, who remains the same through all the atrocities, both those done to him and those he commits himself.

[lyledebeast]

[lyledebeast]

I saw Killers of the Flower Moon in the theater back in November, and now I'm watching Gangs of New York (1999) because it's St. Patrick's Day and what else does one do? (Besides drink beer and eat Irish food, which I also have covered). And comparisons are occurring.

One of the justified complaints a lot of people had about Killers of the Flower Moon was that it centered the perspective of the White villains at the expense of their Osage victims' perspectives. Similarly, Gangs of New York features an antagonist who is remarkably nuanced and human even as he sincerely holds very bigoted beliefs. That's not a problem in itself--bigots are human--but it becomes one when Bill's main object of vitriol is recently arrived Irish immigrants, and no main Irish character has arrived in America since Amsterdam was sent to Hell Gate.

One of the most memorable scenes shows Irish men stepping off the boat and being immediately conscripted, outfitted for war, and shipped off to fight for the Union in Tennessee, but here and elsewhere the Irish-Irish blend into the setting rather than standing out as characters in the main storyline. As flawed as Killers of the Flower Moon is, it does represent some improvement on Scorsese's part in representing minorities. it would have been nice to see the native actors get more screentime (and, ahem, an Oscar) but their characters are hardly confined to the background of their own story.