Masculinity in Contemporary Irish Cinema

In the mid- to late-1990s, Irish Cinema underwent a radical shift, which entailed, among other significant features, a thematic trajectory from the rural to the urban, from the historical to the contemporary and from the local to the universal (McLoone 2000, Ging 2002, Barton 2004). This shift also involved a radical reconfiguration of cinematic masculinities, not only in terms of the representation of characters but also regarding how masculinity as discourse was being addressed: the earlier critiques of traditional patriarchal masculinity, which emerged from a more politically-engaged and less commercial period in Irish filmmaking (Rockett 1994: 127), began to give way to more ambiguous, male-centered narratives, whose protagonists resist unequivocal ideological categorization. What is most striking about this cycle of male-themed and male-oriented films is its preoccupation with underclass, criminal and socially marginalized masculinities and the popularity of these underclass antiheroes at the height of the Celtic Tiger, a time of unprecedented economic prosperity in Ireland. Although recent years have also seen the emergence of a number of films set in middle-class mileux and featuring non-normative, sexually-fluid and reconstructed masculinities (About Adam, Goldfish Memory and When Brendan Met Trudy), the hapless criminal, the stoner, the 'loser' and the underclass rebel remain influential masculine types (Spicer 2001) in contemporary Irish cinema. Arguably, this trend has as much to do with the popularity of underclass-rebel and neo-gangster iconography across the global mediascape than it does with the social and economic specificities of modern Ireland. Elements of the British gangster cycle (Chibnall 2001), the British underclass (Monk 2000), the American smart film (Sconce 2003), the gross-out comedy (Greven 2003), the male rampage film (Pfeil 1996) and the new brutalism of Quentin Tarantino (Shelley 1993) are variously identifiable in a wide range of Irish films made over the past decade. Most of these films revolve around themes of crime and social exclusion, and feature sympathetic antiheroes who are variously marginalised, criminally active and ostensibly opposed to the status quo. They include I Went Down, Saltwater, Flick, Last Days in Dublin, The Actors, Head Rush, Intermission, The General, Ordinary Decent Criminal, Veronica Guerin, Accelerator, Crushproof, Adam and Paul and Man About Dog. Many of these have been big commercial successes and even those that did not enjoy sustained theatrical release, such as Accelerator and Crush Proof, have achieved cult status through video viewing among certain audiences (Ging, PhD findings: unpublished). In press reviews and in the films' own marketing strategies, comparisons with Trainspotting, Lock Stock and Pulp Fiction have been ubiquitous. Thus, in spite of Irish cinema's increasing generic and stylistic diversity and its growing ability to accommodate different scales and models of filmmaking, there remains a strongly identifiable trend within indigenous filmmaking over the past ten years, whereby traditionally male-oriented (sub)genres with universal appeal have been reappropriated within an Irish context. These constructions of masculinity signify an important break with Irish cinema's preoccupation, up until the mid-1990s, with stringent critiques of oppressive, absent and ineffectual fathers (Maeve, Exposure, The Field, Korea, The Butcher Boy, Guiltrip, Country, A Soldier's Song, Into the West, Our Boys, The Family and Amongst Women). More recent portraits of modern Irish masculinity are, by comparison, not only less culturally-specific but also less critical of hegemonic masculinity. However, rather than signalling men's willingness to adapt to the changes wrought by second-wave feminism, these developments are suggestive of a somewhat more complex dynamic in the contemporary 'genderscape', whereby the more traditional elements of 'hard' masculinity, such as excessive displays of drinking, fighting, (hetero)sexual bravado and involvement in crime, have been resurrected and repackaged in the form of the underclass rebel. …