Monday, June 05, 2006

When Brits get bashed in films, they usually deserve it

Concubhar Ó Liatháin:

I haven't been to see The Wind that Shakes the Barley, the Ken Loach film about Ireland's war to free itself from the brutal grip of British imperialism, yet but, by the end of the week, all things being equal, the deed will be done.

At the outset, I should declare that I have a vested interest in that my mother and father are participants in the movie, a substantial part of it was ‘shot' (oops) around Cúil Aodha, the Gaeltacht village in west Cork from which I hail, last summer.

They're both now enjoying the reflected glory of being part of a Palme d'Or winning movie. A career in Hollywood beckons.

When the news of the Palme d'Or win was announced on Sunday night, the equivalent of the World Cup in movie terms, I thought there would be an all out celebration on the British TV channels which presume to broadcast in Ireland as if the country was part of their ‘nation'.

Yet the news was buried in that evening's BBC news when the announcer mentioned, in passing, as it were, that the British film-maker Ken Loach had won the award for his film ‘chronicling Ireland's fight for independence in the 1920s'.

An accurate if downbeat description of the movie and its great triumph.

If you want to uncover the true attitude of the BBC towards this film, you'd have to read their online review which describes Loach's movie as one of “his weaker films” and laments the decision of the Cannes jury to reward it with the Palme d'Or thus ensuring it “reaches a wider audience”.

Of course the BBC reviewer believes that this is a bad thing because, among the faults he finds with the movie, its script is “one-eyed and unashamedly so” and its aim is political - “to show an occupied country which rises up to throw off the yoke of an occupying army”.

“Such a lack of balance, however, results in a one dimensional script," he enthused. The British are depicted as cardboard cut-out thugs, he feels.

In a quick survey carried out by myself on films in which British forces are featured, the vast majority of movies depicted them as brutish and thuggish.

I'm thinking here of the likes of Braveheart, The Patriot, The Four Feathers and not forgetting Michael Collins.

Has the penny ever dropped with the BBC or other self styled ‘impartial’ British media outlets that the reason for this ‘one-sidedness’ is that British forces were – indeed are – brutes and thugs.

And all the counterpropaganda in the world won’t change that ‘one eyed’ view of things.

I can’t wait to see the film.

I spy with my little eye... stories not quite right

3 Comments:

At 10:48 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I guess down through the years it is hard to get rid of the "thug" image.:)
Curtis
dog training

 
At 10:57 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Particularly when your dissolving regime is as thuggish as ever (see the current project of nation mugging in Iraq).

 
At 3:38 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

You sir, are merely another ugly fool from a long, long drunken line of drunken fools.
It is only natural for Drunken, failed fools, such as yourself, to be jealous of the success of your neighbors, both to the left, and to the right of your little, useless D-ireland. Even bloody Iceland is culturally superior to you. In fact, you clowns should be greatly honored for the fact that the English were generous enough to include you in their empire: It should have been Iceland. He'll, even the Inuit who live in bloody Igloos, amid the frozen wastelands of Greenland are much more productive and accomplished than any of your lot. After all, the average Irish citizen benefited a hell of a lot more(just like Scotland and Wales)
than the average citizen of England, from the union with Britain. Trust me, there is not a day that goes by when I don't reflect upon the horrible damage caused by the British-Irish union. However, my reasons for this conviction are MUCH, MUCH, MUCH different from yours. I Sincerely wish that Ireland had not remained the unwanted, poor, lecherous relation that she was, and for so long. But the virulent cancer (the Irish)of the British Isles colon (Ireland) eventually spread. To the ruin of all. Never doubt that irrational hatred and exceptional ignorance accompany the Irish where ever they have gone.
That is why it is so very ironic and entertaining to hear the accusatory cries of a race that is made up of the most shameless propagandist, the most cowardly soldiers, the most back stabbing 'politicians', the most incompetent workers and insufferable con men that the world has ever known; who can somehow find the bloody nerve to accuse the members of a people far more accomplished,honest and hard working, of supposedly committing those same acts that you, an Irishman, (with, by the way, a silly, meaningless name, written in a language all but dead, a language that barely 5% of the population can actually speak. Meaningless.) are not merely guilty of, but the undisputed masters of.
So keep rambling on about events that are no more true that Star Wars or the Lord of the Rings.
It is the only skill the Irish actually possess. After all,I understand, and even feel genuine pity for the shameful feelings of a race of people who have contributed NOTHING to civilization, other than
terrorism, robbery, slave trading,
Keep reminding the world of those 'true events', or show people your copy of Harry Potter and the Pervy Pedophile Priest of the Pale. Both are equal in their factual descriptions of true events. That way everyone can blame the English
for crimes they did not commit, to
provide more excuses for why
the Irish are the most lazy, irrational, violent, racist, religious maniacs alive.

The only leader that the Irish
deserve is another Oliver Cromwell.

Long live the Queen!

Ta

P.S
Why do most great Irish writers have predominantly English blood?

Jonathan Swift
Oscar Wilde
George Bernard Shaw
William Butler Yeats
Richard Sheridan
James Joyce
Synge
Laurence Sterne
Oliver Goldsmith
Iris Murdoch
Edmund Burke
Charles Parnell

 

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