Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T15:12:42.510Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

12 - Projecting the nation: cinema and culture

from Part II - Cultural practices and cultural forms

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2006

Joe Cleary
Affiliation:
National University of Ireland, Maynooth
Claire Connolly
Affiliation:
Cardiff University
Get access

Summary

From the earliest period, cinema in Ireland has contended with two apparently conflicting forces: the 'esperanto of the eye' promulgated by the globalising drive of Hollywood, and the localising lens adopted by the Irish Literary Revival. Part of the cultural power of Hollywood in its formative decades lay in its appeal, as a cheap form of entertainment, to the working class and immigrant populations rapidly expanding in American cities at the turn of the century. To facilitate cross-cultural markets, story-lines, narrative forms and visual styles were devised that addressed spectators not as 'Irish', 'Italians' or 'Jews' but at the most general, human interest level - shorthand for the individualism and universal aspirations of the American way of life. Notwithstanding its crass commercialism, the movie industry also performed a powerful civic function: by divesting viewers of their ethnicity or inherited loyalties, or at least making them redundant on entering a film theatre, it promoted the assimilation of widely divergent cultural minorities into the white American mainstream. It was not entirely coincidental that D.W. Griffith called his landmark film The Birth of a Nation (1915) - though its white supremacist vision and replaying of the civil war also betrayed some of the underlying narratives of that nation.

But while cinema was establishing a commodified public sphere in the United States – what Robert Sklar refers to as ‘movie-made America’ – theatre and literature were spearheading a national renaissance of a different kind in Ireland. As if emphasising the very cultural ties endangered by Hollywood, the Irish literary movement looked to the past, the vernacular and the local to stage its version of the nation. It would be a mistake, however, to see this solely in terms of the backward look of romanticism.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2005

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×