The Oscars are upon us, and you know what that means: rich celebs, dripping with diamonds, are set to announce their vigilance to the world.
It’s still six weeks before the Academy hands out Hollywood’s most prestigious gongs. Six weeks until we all have to endure another round of love songs making real speeches. That’s what the Oscars have become in recent years — a soapbox of politically correct cleaning.
This glittering ceremony has evolved from a celebration of the film’s achievements into a three-hour pointer to the television crowds, covering everything from climate change to racial justice to gender equality.
As US comic Toby Muresianu put it, watching the Oscars is now like “three hours of being told to eat your veggies.”
It’s no longer enough for these thesps to remind us that they’re wealthier and more glamorous than we little folks. They also feel the need to emphasize their moral superiority. Having the “right” views is just as important as wearing haute couture that grabs the headlines.
The Oscars are upon us, and you know what that means: rich celebs, dripping with diamonds, are set to announce their vigilance to the world
In that case, ahead of this year’s ceremony, I have a question for the Hollywood establishment. If you’re so bright, why are you singing the praises of a film riddled with clichés about the Irish?
Given that social awareness is this season’s must-have, why praise a film that portrays the Irish as cruel, half-witted idiots? If political correctness is your religion, how come you’re all giggling along at a film that’s basically a two-hour taunt about Auld Ireland and its zany residents?
Of course I’m talking about The Banshees Of Inisherin. It’s pure paddywhackery. I can’t remember the last time I saw so many Irish cartoons on the big screen.
Written and directed by acclaimed London-Irish playwright Martin McDonagh, it tells the story of two friends, Colm (Brendan Gleeson) and Padraic (Colin Farrell), who live on a fictional island off the west coast of Ireland.
(If you plan on watching the film, skip the next three paragraphs — but for everyone else, here’s a synopsis.)
It’s 1923, the Irish Civil War is raging on the mainland and Colm and Pádraic suddenly and inexplicably find themselves at odds. Colm tells Pádraic that if Pádraic ever speaks to him again, he will start cutting off his fingers. And he does. He uses his secateurs to remove his fingers and then slams his bloodied fingers at Pádraic’s door.
Pádraic’s donkey Jenny eats one of the fingers and suffocates. This drives Pádraic mad with grief, and in retaliation he burns down Colm’s house.
That’s it. That’s the story. Those crazy Irish, what are they like?!
It’s 1923, the Irish Civil War is raging on the mainland and Colm (Brendan Gleeson) and Pádraic (Colin Farrell) suddenly and inexplicably clash
Colm tells Pádraic that if Pádraic ever speaks to him again, he will start cutting off his fingers
The Hollywood elite love The Banshees Of Inisherin. It has been nominated for no fewer than nine Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director. Farrell is nominated for Best Actor and Gleeson is nominated for Best Supporting Actor. All of this pierces Hollywood’s alert facade, its loud insistence that we’re fair and kind to all peoples.
Watching an auditorium of eligible celebs cheer and cheer on a movie that portrays the Irish as drunks, imbeciles, gossip and rants is sure to ring the death knell of Hollywood’s PC self-image. I hope so anyway.
Ironically I was so excited to see The Banshees Of Inisherin. Not just because of all the media hype, but because it’s set in the part of Ireland my parents are from. In fact, McDonagh’s father hails from the same region as my parents: Connemara on Ireland’s wild Atlantic coast.
Inisherin may be a fictional island, but it’s clearly based on real islands off the Connemara coast, such as Inishmore and Inishbofin. Places I’ve visited many times. places of wonder. Places full of fascinating history.
So you can imagine my disappointment when I finally saw this unrelentingly dark film that features every cliché about us Paddies.
In addition to the surreal madmen Colm and Pádraic, there is a village idiot named Dominic, a curious old witch, old women in shawls spreading dark prophecies in front of roaring fires. There’s maudlin bar chants, a sinister priest, and a horrible cop who’s probably sexually abusing his son.
Inisherin may be a fictional island, but it’s clearly based on real islands off the Connemara coast, such as Inishmore and Inishbofin
It’s as if someone fed every single cartoonish Irish stereotype into an AI website and said, “Write a film about Ireland in the 1920s.”
One of the film’s few critics – Irish writer Luke Dunne – slammed McDonagh for “wringing our hands over us poor useless creatures”. Any snobbish prejudices about the “terrible characters you find in any Irish village” come through in this film, says Dunne.
And he’s right. Only one goblin is missing. (Though, to be honest, a goblin or two would have at least brightened the mood of this terribly dark and fashionably dark comic book tale.)
The characters are always in the pub (well, they’re Irish). And they’re all stupid. Amazingly stupid. You’ve never heard of Mozart. You’re pronouncing Beethoven wrong. Farrell’s character is confused by the word “embedded”.
As Dunne says, McDonagh should have titled it “The Thick B*****ds Of D***head Island” and be done with it.
For me, one of the most unnerving things about the film is the islanders’ confusion about the civil war.
They just can’t understand whose shots and explosions they occasionally hear in the distance. And they certainly can’t figure out who’s fighting who or why.
One of the film’s few critics – Irish writer Luke Dunne – slammed McDonagh for “wringing our hands over us poor useless creatures”.
That’s bizarre. The Irish Civil War was one of the simplest conflicts in modern times. A treaty was signed with Britain – the Anglo-Irish Treaty – which provided for the partition of Ireland between the Republic and the North. Some Irish accepted the treaty and others did not. So they went to war.
The notion that rural westerners were too childish and uneducated to understand this conflict is deeply offensive.
In fact, I’ve had some of the most insightful conversations about Irish history – including the Irish Civil War – with old people in the west of Ireland. The kind of people McDonagh seems to believe in spend every waking hour scratching their heads in confusion at the world’s insane complexity.
What the literary set is saying, of course, is that McDonagh is indeed satirizing Irish stereotypes.
He doesn’t make fun of the Irish. No, no: he makes fun of people who make fun of Irish people. It’s all very clever and ironic and postmodern and if you don’t get it you might be just as stupid as these Inisherin people.
Well I’m not buying it. For nearly 30 years, McDonagh has been exciting the gossiping classes in his plays and films with Irish characters who are dense, drunk, violent and always odd.
His vision of Ireland is now the vision of Ireland, at least in the eyes of the genteel who frequent Broadway, the West End and the art house cinema scene.
It all got me thinking about how many millions of people must see Ireland as a crazy, stupid and brainless place.
For nearly 30 years, McDonagh has been exciting the gossiping classes in his plays and films with Irish characters who are dense, drunk, violent and always odd
From Angela’s Ashes, the film adaptation of Frank McCourt’s famous memoirs of misery, to The Magdalene Sisters, the film about the Irish Church’s mistreatment of ‘wayward’ women; to The Banshees Of Inisherin, with its drunk, insane, depressed characters – moviegoers must think Ireland is the strangest place on the planet.
And imagine if a Banshees-style film had been made about some other nation or people. Imagine if there were a film that portrayed a Muslim country as a backward hellhole or Africans as crazy wackos. There would be an uproar. Luvvies would tweet their anger. The Oscars would be loud tut-tut.
But when it comes to us paddies, it seems you can say anything you want. The Irish remain fair game in the world of the Awoken.
I’m not easily offended. And I would certainly never call for the cancellation of things that upset me. Want to see The Banshees Of Inisherin? Knock yourself out. But I felt attacked by this film. It feels like a lazy, condescending swipe at the poor, rural Irish of the early 20th century, who were actually far smarter and warmer than McDonagh portrays.
The applause we’ll hear for this film at next month’s Oscars will show just how hypocritical bright Hollywood really is.
n Brendan O’Neill is the chief political writer at Spiked.