The accelerating commodification of irishness

[WashYourHands]

@shiels ever been in the US for St Pats?

something tells me you wouldn’t like it, pure craic-ititis

it travels too

 

[WashYourHands]

and stains

 

[Clinamenic]

@shiels ever been in the US for St Pats?

something tells me you wouldn’t like it, pure craic-ititis

it travels too


View attachment 15844

Yeah in Chicago they dye the river green, and the streets are full of drunk people in the early afternoon. At least, that was what it was like when I was last in Chicago for St. Pats.

 

[WashYourHands]

Insert The Depaaaahrted, Irish mobs, Boston

from Irish to Irish-American

@martin @droid penny for a few thoughts on o.p?

 

[WashYourHands]

Is it accelerating? It’s become a series of accumulative tropes as per your point about Italians and cultural traits y’day @shiels and when so much is staid why do you think I put McLaglen as an av (a bok/prod in a war crime of a film)

 

[WashYourHands]

The master copy of Banshees should be deleted, burned, whatever it takes to remove all trace of it from planet Earth

If you liked the scenery it’s much more thrilling living it in person

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Back to the quotidian

 

[WashYourHands]

preparing for @luka napalm

‘there are no trees”

 

[martin]

@martin @droid penny for a few thoughts on o.p?

I didn’t know this was a thing again, to be honest – I remember when Irishness became cool around the mid-'90s, and Caffrey’s suddenly became really popular and was on tap everywhere (I haven’t seen it since…). Plus Father Ted, Cranberries, Sean Hughes, Roddy Doyle, The Butcher Boy, rise of The Swan in Stockwell, the Michael Collins film, etc etc.

Not sure what drove it – maybe people adopting the Ireland team during USA ’94 because England didn’t qualify? Or like you said, maybe the winding-down of the Troubles?

It’s easy to laugh and cringe at now, but it made a refreshing change from attitudes in the ‘80s, when seriously hateful anti-Irish shit was more common. Stuff like Americans wearing floppy leprechaun hats and dying the river green don’t really bother me (actually, I always wanted to go to the NYC St Paddy’s parade), though it’s quite odd so many of them hit the roof after Sinead ripped up the pic of the Pope – like, if you’re only after cosy fetishisation of a culture, might as well binge-watch Ballykissarsehole...it's just Fantasyland at that point.

 

[shakahislop]

there's something quite amazing about everyone in US polite society being so careful in what they say, so careful to avoid racial stereotypes, dancing around the subject, afraid to say what they see and think because matters of ethnicity are so sensitive, and then seeing a van drive past painted green called something like 'Irish Removals' with a massive leprechaun on the side. it's an interesting blind spot.

 

[shakahislop]

the english conflation of ireland and irish people with authenticity and warmth was a surprising emergence. i never liked it actually. it made me jealous.

seems a parallel to that southern english thing of projecting positive qualities onto people from the rest of the UK. the majority and their ideas about the minority (i mean it really is the majority, so much of the UK population is in the south and the midlands). the people in charge of media representation too. it's like an inverted projection of what southern people don't like about themselves and their culture

 

[shakahislop]

one group or another being represented in media, without people from that group being involved in generating those representations, is basically always a problem i think

which is probably, i am guessing, what happens a lot with ireland, probably most of the people who produce media about it are american or from the UK

the second most recent series of always sunny being a good example of how america sees ireland

 

[IdleRich]

Maybe there is some phenomenon whereby a set of cultures (ethnic cultures or otherwise) take turns being the "it" culture, in the eyes of a larger, more globalized culture? EG like version hints at above, Banshees made Irish an "it" culture during Emmy consideration season, not sure if Squid Games had the same effect, seeing as it didn't seem to emphasize South Korean culture per se.

I'd imagine, in the case of the western/US globalized cultural complex, only certain cultures could receive this treatment without it feeling like we're exoticizing some radically different culture. Maybe you could say that about the effect Banshees had, but I think, at least in the US, that particular Aran Islands subculture (or wherever it was set) is close enough to US culture for us to feel comfortable propagating stereotypes, but far enough away for it to be interesting or novel enough to trend in the mainstream mindshare.

Almost like the concept of the "habitable zone" in astronomy, a certain orbital region around a star whereby the planetary body is close enough to have its h2o in liquid form, but not close enough for the temperature to be too hot to sustain what we'd consider life.

Like an inverted uncanny valley

 

[version]

there's something quite amazing about everyone in US polite society being so careful in what they say, so careful to avoid racial stereotypes, dancing around the subject, afraid to say what they see and think because matters of ethnicity are so sensitive, and then seeing a van drive past painted green called something like 'Irish Removals' with a massive leprechaun on the side. it's an interesting blind spot.

Some Americans seem to have this monolithic conception of 'whiteness' that doesn't account for things like the English treatment of people from Ireland or Poland or even general cultural differences among white people.

 

[linebaugh]

Thats more a deliberate choice to not consider you all

 

[Clinamenic]

Some Americans seem to have this monolithic conception of 'whiteness' that doesn't account for things like the English treatment of people from Ireland or Poland or even general cultural differences among white people.

Yeah thats one of the leading criticisms I have with university social justice culture, this monolithic vision of whiteness. There was a James Baldwin essay where he got into how whiteness, in this sense, only really has meaning vis a vis non-whiteness (especially blackness), specifically in America. Here whiteness doesn't really have any definitive cultural history or identity, beyond simply its caste/position in the American slave economy, and this helps explain why Americans (and those of other nations, to varying degrees) struggle to identity with whiteness in a socially acceptable way. Whereas, a white person in America would usually be met with much less cultural friction if they celebrated their specific ethnic heritage, EG Irishness, rather than whiteness as such.

 

[version]

There was a bloke called Theodore Allen who argued 'whiteness' in America was invented by the ownership class as a weapon against class solidarity across racial lines.

 

[Clinamenic]

There was a bloke called Theodore Allen who argued 'whiteness' in America was invented by the ownership class as a weapon against class solidarity across racial lines.

That sounds like an effective strategy, even though I do have doubts about how coherently these system-wise stratagems can be ideated and executed by a well-coordinated group of elites. That said, this could also be something that doesn't need much coordination to perpetuate - arguably the best of such plans can be organically perpetuated by natural cultural dynamics. Anyway, culture war profiteering has seemingly long been lucrative, perhaps the primary business model of some major news outlets today, aside from advertising maybe.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Joe Biden, as I recall, has claimed to "be" Irish. Does anyone know how much of a claim he actually has? For all I know it could be a fairly good claim, but there are tons of Americans who'll make the same claim due to a single ancestor a good few generations back.

 

[shakahislop]

there's something going on with the american harking back to and association with their european roots which is also about people identifying with the world of their grandparents and great-grandparents i think. something like biden's irishness i think is more about identifying with irish-americans and that community in like 1930, more than with people in ireland now. might be different elsewhere in the country but like nyc / new jersey italian-americans are still a distinct 'thing', still have some distinctive cultural traits that carry down in these long echoes to people with those backgrounds today.

 

[shakahislop]

some of it is also about an association with a working class identity as well i think, for peope with italian, irish, maybe polish roots. placing yourself as coming from this hard-knock life