Latest news with #DearErin
Irish Times
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Dear Erin: Why do Irish people love to get annoyed about ‘Oirish' films?
The most popular defence when you have failed to recognise, say, a broad pastiche of Donald Trump on social media is that the reality is now so extreme no parody is possible. Almost exactly 20 years ago, one Nathan Poe made such an argument about people who deny evolution. 'Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humour, it is utterly impossible to parody a creationist in such a way that someone won't mistake for the genuine article,' he wrote. This is known as Poe's Law. Anyway, all this is by way of explaining how I – along with others who should know better – briefly fell for a recent jape that didn't quite include a 'winking smiley'. A few weeks ago, ads began appearing on buses for an upcoming feature called Dear Erin. 'She was the Irish goodbye he never forgot,' the tagline read. Peter Coonan , in cloth cap and collarless shirt, writes a letter at a table that also holds a pint of stout and a glass of whiskey. One hand is bloodied. Shamrock spills from a breast pocket. Somehow a rainbow makes it into the collage. A moment's digging unearthed a trailer for the ghastly thing. 'My greatest love? A simple Irish boy from a simple Irish town,' a female American voice trills over glissando strings. Maybe he has now forgotten her? Of course not. Coonan, sitting in his booze-stacked snug, begins a letter with 'Dear Erin' before continuing: 'I've played that night over more times than the Finnegans fought the O'Malleys.' After a bit more shameless blarney, a shadow falls over our hero and we hear, in that same American accent, an uncertain 'Paddy?' READ MORE You might reasonably conclude that only a fierce eejit – no cuter than a donkey's behind – would fall for such a load of aul' cow's muck. But context is all. What was the advertisement doing on the side of a bus? What would Peter Coonan, a Love/Hate alumnus of some distinction, be doing in something that didn't quite exist? This wasn't a post on XformerlyTwitter. There was real money behind it. Moreover, this is surely a case where Poe's Law applies. The deluge of Micksploitation never stops: Far and Away, PS I Love You, Leap Year, Laws of Attraction, Wild Mountain Thyme. No stereotype is too insulting for visiting Americans to exploit. So, for an hour or two, I, and a few other film boffins on the social, could be forgiven (give us a break) for falling into the trap. The parody was a fair one. The clues were right there. What trailer for an apparently imminent title – 'coming this summer' – fails to include a precise release date? Squint and you will see that Paddy's letter is addressed to 'ERIN, AMERICA' – too broad for even the dimmest begorrah aesthetic. I cannot claim to be the first to spot that 'Hugh Forbes', the film's alleged director, shares his name with the character played by Maureen O'Hara's brother in The Quiet Man. We soon all decided that it was a stealth advertisement for something or other. Would Erin soups do such a thing? Not on this occasion. It transpired that the campaign was financed by Epic The Irish Emigration Museum . A longer video, released later, has Coonan break character and snort: 'I'm sorry but who f**king writes this s**t? How are we letting people away with this?' The museum's website , going in big, offers essays on 'the impact of Hollywood stereotypes of Ireland' and 'how to de-stereotype … 'Oirish' films'. This follows (another clue) a campaign from the same organisation that, with predictably hideous results, asked AI to create images of a typical Irishman. Fair enough. The strategy worked. At least one column in at least one national newspaper has now mentioned the prank. The worthwhile question is less why Americans (sometimes still the British) keep doing this – lazy sentimentality? – than why the nation remains so eager to get annoyed about it. It is a little over a year since we all went ballistic over a harmless Netflix title called Irish Wish . Yes, as I then wrote in this place , the Lindsay Lohan vehicle was silly. But was there any need to publish all those 12,000-word treatises on its supposed crimes against the national psyche? [ Planning to hate-watch Lindsay Lohan's Irish Wish? Micksploitation addicts should prepare for disappointment Opens in new window ] There is no easier way of attracting Irish attention than releasing something that shamelessly ploughs the Micksploitation groove. The Epic campaign is correct to bemoan the more egregious tropes. But let us not pretend we wouldn't miss these things if they went away. Baloney such as Wild Mountain Thyme and Irish Wish make us feel noticed. They make us feel righteous. They allow our hearts to beat a little faster. If Americans didn't do this to us we would have to do it to ourselves. As we have just done.
The Guardian
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Fiddle-laden fake trailer reignites debate about Hollywood's Irish stereotypes
A man in a bar with a flat cap, bloodied knuckles and a dreamy look lays down his whiskey and writes a letter. 'Dear Erin,' he begins, and a soundtrack of fiddles swells as he yearns for his lost love in the distant land of America. The trailer for the upcoming film – tagline: 'she was the Irish goodbye he never forgot' – ran in recent weeks in cinemas and online and was accompanied by a poster showing green mountains, shamrocks and a rainbow. For many, it was Hollywood's latest affront to Ireland. 'What did we Irish people ever do to you to deserve this?' said one social media post. 'Christ could they not find a leprechaun to complete cliche bingo,' said another. Some sought solace in sarcasm: 'I think they nailed it. I'm always in the pub in the 1910s writing love letters to American girls with my big dirty fingernails. Finally I feel seen.' Last week came the twist: Epic, the Irish emigration museum in Dublin, revealed it had made the trailer and that the film, titled Dear Erin, did not exist. The trailer was a stunt to lampoon the stereotyping of Ireland in Hollywood romcoms such as Wild Mountain Thyme, Irish Wish, Leap Year and PS I Love You. 'It was time to call it out,' the museum said in a statement. 'We created a trailer for a film that we hope never gets made, and filled it with all of the tired, cliched portrayals of Irish people often seen in Hollywood movies.' Colonial-era stereotypes of the Irish as fist-fighting drunks or hopeless romantics persisted in contemporary films, warping perceptions of a complex, multilayered society, Aileesh Carew, the museum's director and chief executive, said in an interview. 'If you don't know anyone from Ireland then these films may be your only reference point.' The trailer features the actor Peter Coonan sporting shamrocks on his lapel and surrounded by empty beer glasses as his voiceover reminisces about meeting Erin: 'I have played that night over in my head more times than the Finnegans fought the O'Malleys.' The goal was to mimic a studio publicity campaign while cramming in every conceivable cliche, said Carew, adding: 'Potatoes, we forgot the potatoes.' Hundreds of thousands of views on TikTok and LadBible, along with the response on Instagram, Reddit and other platforms, showed the campaign had hit a chord, said Carew. Before the reveal, some commenters guessed that the trailer was a spoof, while others begged that it be so. 'Must be a joke here somewhere,' said one. 'Sweet Jesus no please. This should be called Dear God No! not Dear Erin.' The Hollywood stereotypes dated from the 1930s when gangster films featured Irish characters who were menacing thugs or comic relief drunks, but invariably seedy, said Dr Sian Barber, a film studies lecturer at Queen's University Belfast. 'Irishness was something foreign but also comforting. It was not done with any malice but it quickly became embedded in Hollywood consciousness.' Sign up to This is Europe The most pressing stories and debates for Europeans – from identity to economics to the environment after newsletter promotion Irish people, and tourism authorities, at times colluded in this romanticisation, said Barber. 'It offers this beautiful image of unreality which is welcoming and friendly. It's playing to this tourist idea of what Ireland can offer – the landscape, the loveable rogue.' John Ford's 1952 film The Quiet Man set a template of sorts by sending John Wayne's character back to his homeland to find a wife, whom he ends up dragging through fields, but its rural setting reflected much of Irish life at that time, unlike more recent fare that suggests society still revolves around sheep, donkeys and Guinness. Irish critics howled – in mirth and agony – at the whimsy and dodgy accents in the likes of Wild Mountain Thyme, a 2020 romcom starring Jamie Dornan and Emily Blunt, and Irish Wish, a 2024 vehicle for Lindsay Lohan. The main problem was not inaccuracy but lack of context, said Paudie Holly, a storyteller at Dublin's National Leprechaun Museum. Folklore can and should be celebrated, and there was no reason to feel shame about Ireland's rural past, but modern Ireland was different, he said. 'It's ridiculous to suggest our culture has been frozen in place for a hundred years.' Lance Daly, the Dublin-based director of Black 47, said Ireland had aggravated the phenomenon by luring foreign productions for the jobs they would bring rather than the stories they would tell. 'What you have then is a director who is not Irish directing actors who are not Irish … We have a weird tolerance for it. We have to be careful that we're not sponsoring foreign film-makers to make fools of us.'
The Guardian
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Fiddle-laden fake trailer reignites debate about Hollywood's Irish stereotypes
A man in a bar with a flat cap, bloodied knuckles and a dreamy look lays down his whiskey and writes a letter. 'Dear Erin,' he begins, and a soundtrack of fiddles swells as he yearns for his lost love in the distant land of America. The trailer for the upcoming film – tagline: 'she was the Irish goodbye he never forgot' – ran in recent weeks in cinemas and online and was accompanied by a poster showing green mountains, shamrocks and a rainbow. For many, it was Hollywood's latest affront to Ireland. 'What did we Irish people ever do to you to deserve this?' said one social media post. 'Christ could they not find a leprechaun to complete cliche bingo,' said another. Some sought solace in sarcasm: 'I think they nailed it. I'm always in the pub in the 1910s writing love letters to American girls with my big dirty fingernails. Finally I feel seen.' Last week came the twist: Epic, the Irish emigration museum in Dublin, revealed it had made the trailer and that the film, titled Dear Erin, did not exist. The trailer was a stunt to lampoon the stereotyping of Ireland in Hollywood romcoms such as Wild Mountain Thyme, Irish Wish, Leap Year and PS I Love You. 'It was time to call it out,' the museum said in a statement. 'We created a trailer for a film that we hope never gets made, and filled it with all of the tired, cliched portrayals of Irish people often seen in Hollywood movies.' Colonial-era stereotypes of the Irish as fist-fighting drunks or hopeless romantics persisted in contemporary films, warping perceptions of a complex, multilayered society, Aileesh Carew, the museum's director and chief executive, said in an interview. 'If you don't know anyone from Ireland then these films may be your only reference point.' The trailer features the actor Peter Coonan sporting shamrocks on his lapel and surrounded by empty beer glasses as his voiceover reminisces about meeting Erin: 'I have played that night over in my head more times than the Finnegans fought the O'Malleys.' The goal was to mimic a studio publicity campaign while cramming in every conceivable cliche, said Carew, adding: 'Potatoes, we forgot the potatoes.' Hundreds of thousands of views on TikTok and LadBible, along with the response on Instagram, Reddit and other platforms, showed the campaign had hit a chord, said Carew. Before the reveal, some commenters guessed that the trailer was a spoof, while others begged that it be so. 'Must be a joke here somewhere,' said one. 'Sweet Jesus no please. This should be called Dear God No! not Dear Erin.' The Hollywood stereotypes dated from the 1930s when gangster films featured Irish characters who were menacing thugs or comic relief drunks, but invariably seedy, said Dr Sian Barber, a film studies lecturer at Queen's University Belfast. 'Irishness was something foreign but also comforting. It was not done with any malice but it quickly became embedded in Hollywood consciousness.' Sign up to This is Europe The most pressing stories and debates for Europeans – from identity to economics to the environment after newsletter promotion Irish people, and tourism authorities, at times colluded in this romanticisation, said Barber. 'It offers this beautiful image of unreality which is welcoming and friendly. It's playing to this tourist idea of what Ireland can offer – the landscape, the loveable rogue.' John Ford's 1952 film The Quiet Man set a template of sorts by sending John Wayne's character back to his homeland to find a wife, whom he ends up dragging through fields, but its rural setting reflected much of Irish life at that time, unlike more recent fare that suggests society still revolves around sheep, donkeys and Guinness. Irish critics howled – in mirth and agony – at the whimsy and dodgy accents in the likes of Wild Mountain Thyme, a 2020 romcom starring Jamie Dornan and Emily Blunt, and Irish Wish, a 2024 vehicle for Lindsay Lohan. The main problem was not inaccuracy but lack of context, said Paudie Holly, a storyteller at Dublin's National Leprechaun Museum. Folklore can and should be celebrated, and there was no reason to feel shame about Ireland's rural past, but modern Ireland was different, he said. 'It's ridiculous to suggest our culture has been frozen in place for a hundred years.' Lance Daly, the Dublin-based director of Black 47, said Ireland had aggravated the phenomenon by luring foreign productions for the jobs they would bring rather than the stories they would tell. 'What you have then is a director who is not Irish directing actors who are not Irish … We have a weird tolerance for it. We have to be careful that we're not sponsoring foreign film-makers to make fools of us.'
