The latest episode of “Voyager” is the straw that broke this camels back. It’s called “Fair Haven” and is set in a rural Irish village ( holodeck programme ) .
As per usual with these things it’s full of twee Irish bullshit . Full of boyo’s that are hard drinking / fighting men who have a roguish glint in their eye . A priest ( off-course ) who dishes out hail mary’s like there’s no tomorrow. There’s also a Barry Fitzgerald look alike who like’s to wet his whistle and charm the women . The actors off-course have an Irish accent that is as good as Dick van Dikes’s cockney in “Mary Poppins” .
But it not just “Voyager” that does this stuff . I don’t think I have ever seen an accurate portrayal of Ireland on T.V. of movies ( unless Irish people had something to do with the production ).
I really wish these fuckwits who write this shite could be put into the middle of Ballyfermot ( a relativly poor area of Dublin ) and they’d see that Ireland is like any modern western country with all the same problems .
There are no leprechauns , pixies or brainless drunken wankers ( well maybe a few ) saying “soft day, thank God”.
I might have tunnel vision about this but I can’t think of any other Nation this is so consistently misrepresented in such a way ( actually Jamaica and Australia do come to mind but still ) . Every time I see that some programme is going to be set in Ireland I say to myself “here we go again” and I can’t remember ever being proven wrong .
I know that it happens all the time on T.V. eg. Almost all "middle class English sit-coms ( “The Good
Life” ), the two Dutch Guys in the lock-stock T.V. show ( you’ll be getting it soon Americans ) and anything with that red headed freak "Lucille Ball " in it but it’s not all the fucking time .
If you think it is please add you own gripe about stereo-typing .
Voyager is coming to an end and “Fair Haven” has been almost destroyed . Thanks be to Jesus.
Um, wasn’t “Fair Haven” supposed to be set in the late 1800’s/early 1900’s? Wouldn’t be accurate to portray it as a “modern western country,” then, would it, boy-o?
Oh, but potrayal of Irish-Americans in mass media entertainment is so accurate and diverse! Irish-Americans can play cops, priests or terrorists!
Being Irish-Italian-American makes it hard for me to watch the movie The Untouchables. It’s all ruthless Italian gangsters and corrupt Irish cops. And who comes in to clean it up? WASPy Kevin Costner.
Plus it’s irritating that the only Irish good guy is played by someone who isn’t actually Irish and the only Italian good guy is played by someone who isn’t actually Italian.
I lived for four years in Edinburgh, and have spent some time in Reading (Berkshire). It’s the O’Bollocks-style chain pubs that infest both of these places that are as much to blame as anything else for the “Oirish” stereotypes. I’m fed up with fucking pubs that think “authentic Irish” is warm Guinness and a “diddly-diddly” band - I’ve seen 'em in Edinburgh, Reading, London, Sydney, Melbourne, Darwin, Amsterdam - if anything perpetuates a stereotype, it’s the appropriation by a blinkered marketing department.
Mattk you are spot on. I hate those type of pubs. The only Irish people who drink in them are dipshits who don’t know how to have a good time in a foreign country . I was dragged into one in Bangkok and it had Daniel O’Donnell playing on the stereo for fuck sake , the man who put the cunt into country music .
Can anyone name a place or period that is not incorrectly stereoyped? Even such “easy to get right” stuff as suburban-1950’s-U.S. in Leave it to Beaver(c’mon, all they had to do was ask the crew if it looked right) are generally pretty wrong on substantial details.
The closest I’ve ever seen a movie come to accuracy was the background to Dead Poets Society in which the foreground/plot/characterization was interesting, but hardly realistic, but they kept getting the background details of a 1960’s American college-prep boarding school really close.
There is a reason why the word Hollywood is short-hand for “unreal.”
Tomndebb My Left Foot was a very good and pretty accurate portrayal of Christy Brown’s life . It had a vast majority of Irish in the crew and cast with the obvious exception of Daniel Day-Lewis who is the most impressive non-Irish Irishman I’ve ever seen .
There are many other examples , “The Snapper” to mention one but on the whole Hollywood is just clueless ( now there’s a surprize )
Strangely enough Coldfire , the last time I was in Amsterdam I wore clogs , got stoned and did the “oohh look some hookers in window” thing . And that was on St. Patrick’s Day. Except for green balloons on the bridges over some canals it was a nice breath of fresh air.
I thought you were cultivating the “clog boy” thing .
Just to clear it up: I was joking. I don’t mind the stereotypes, really. I just consider the source: fat ugly dumb hamburger eatin’ gun totin’ gashog drivin’ no-idea-where-Holland-is patriotic imbeciles. And these are the good ones. Don’t get me started on the ones that don’t like football (yeah, yeah. Soccer.).
The way Irish-Americans perpetuate the stereotypes is what pisses me off. Especially around St Patrick’s day. All that green beer, green hats, green shamrocks, green river shit is annoying, then the corned beef and cabbage dinners are enough to make you puke. Especially since me maither (oops) cooked them in the Traditional Irish Manner–inedible. The whole thing is like smoking crack and eating fried chicken and watty-melon on Dr King’s birthday.
But I wasn’t raised Pig-Shit Irish; I’m Lace-Curtain Irish and am against just about anything. Especially every episode of Voyager.
So I’m standing on the corner in Sydney, waiting for the signal. This lady with a kid walks up next to me. She leans over and says, ‘Look, honey, an American. All of them so big and rude’. I glance at her and go back to watching traffic until the light turns green. Never said a word or stared, nothing.
What the hell is that? I never smacked anybody the whole trip, didn’t call anybody garcon, even laid off the cussing. It’s not like the rest of the world is all that nicey nice. Oh well, at least we’re not cute. I can take almost anything but cute.
you dont have to be Oirish to be Irish…
I’m sick of it.
Flatley, you are to blame.
Darby O’Gill, you are to blame.
Batman, you are to blame.
you want to see a close portrayal of how Dublin is?
Rent the Snapper, or the Committments.
2 very good portrayals of Dublin City living. a little over the top, but closer than the usual shit.
What did Gene Roddenberry have against the Irish??
Voyager last night was the second Star trek episode that made the Irish look like a bunch of drunken dropouts from the 18th Century.
At least Voyager had it on the Holodeck, where as TNG had 24th century Schiddly-Eyi Oirish making potin in the cargo hold…
anyway, when I saw Voyager, I switched off after about 5 minutes and watched a facinating “Champange Lifestyles with Uri Geller” that had me laughing for the rest of the evening…
I guess I should be offended quite a bit. I’m part English, Scottish, Welsh, Dutch, German, French, Spanish, Filipino, and Shawnee. So, who said Hollywood ever went for realism all of the time? Something that annoys me a bit is what i’ve seen come out of Hollywood about Asians. In Hollywood, Asians tend to be considered as:
Chinese or Japanese (What? There are other Asians besides these two groups?)
They speak with a comical accent that leaves audiences rolling.
They are usually cooks, in a gang (specially a mysterious chinese mafia or something), or know some martial art.
The women are these fragile things that are subservient to their husbands, and have this mysterious, exotic air about them.
Then again, i’ve not seen too many movies in Hollywood that deal with Asians in ways other than what I listed. I also dont see many movies, so well, i can only go off what I know.I guess I should be glad Hollywood doesnt pay attention to Filipinos (Despite being the largest Asian ethnic group in California, at least). I might explode if they stereotyped us in the way they do with everyone else :). But it’s nice that Asians are now being cast in roles other than the above mentioned now (damn, finally…).
Reminds me of the episode of Star Trek: TNG where Beverley Crusher falls in love with a “Scottish” ghost. Pile of shite that was. Incidentally, regarding your topic, I have come to think of the term “Oirish” as relating to all the bollocks you mention, the theme pubs, dodgy accents in films etc.
Pffft. Y’all have it easy. A good friend of mine just wrote a book called Alternate Channels (available at Amazon.com) that talks about the portrayal of gay men and lesbians from 1930’s radio to “Will & Grace.”
Bottom line? All gay men were sexless, limp-wristed charicatures, and all lesbians were man-hating psychotic murderers. Top that! (Thankfully, things have obviously changed, albeit slowly.)
Doobieous, I think things are starting to change for Asians as well - evidence some of my favorite Asian actors, such as Garrett Wang (Harry Kim on “Voyager”), Von Flores (Agent Sandoval on “Earth: Final Conflict”), the guy who played the Crow on the TV series, etc. (Can you tell I’m a rice queen and a sci-fi geek? :D) But, yes, your summation has been fairly accurate, and I hope things change for the better (but, with Hollywood, I wouldn’t hold my breath). Thank goodness for Jackie Chan (have you seen “Shanghai Noon” yet?).
You wrote:
Um, I really need to see a picture of you now.
Yes, I know - I’m moving to Mira Mesa in San Diego in the fall. Whoopee!
(Thankfully, things have obviously changed, albeit slowly.)