Docsity
Docsity

Prepare for your exams
Prepare for your exams

Study with the several resources on Docsity


Earn points to download
Earn points to download

Earn points by helping other students or get them with a premium plan


Guidelines and tips
Guidelines and tips

Authenticity & Agency in Filmmaking on Northern Ireland's Troubles: A Case Study, Exercises of History

Film StudiesAgencyNorthern Irish HistoryAuthenticity

How filmmakers from outside Northern Ireland negotiate authenticity and agency in their films about the region's troubled past, using 'In the Name of the Father' and 'Fifty Dead Men Walking' as case studies. The author discusses the challenges of creating legitimate narratives in the face of conflicting community and official narratives, and how these films use local autobiographical source material to imbue authenticity. The document also examines the role of mediation and the limitations of local voices' agency in these films.

What you will learn

  • How do filmmakers from outside Northern Ireland negotiate authenticity in their films about the region's troubled past?
  • How does mediation impact the agency of local voices in films about Northern Ireland's Troubles?
  • How do conflicting community and official narratives impact filmmakers dealing with Northern Ireland's Troubles?

Typology: Exercises

2021/2022

Uploaded on 08/05/2022

aichlinn
aichlinn 🇮🇪

4.4

(45)

1.9K documents

1 / 21

Toggle sidebar

Related documents


Partial preview of the text

Download Authenticity & Agency in Filmmaking on Northern Ireland's Troubles: A Case Study and more Exercises History in PDF only on Docsity! Irish Accents, Foreign Voices: Mediated Agency and Authenticity in In the Name of the Father and Fifty Dead Men Walking Nicole Ives-Allison* * Nicole Ives-Allison is a second-year PhD Candidate in International Relations with the Handa Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St Andrews. Her research focuses on interdisciplinary undrstandings of political violence, from the role of inequality in its mitigation to its filmic representations. Abstract: Given the intensity of narrative contestation over the public history of and discourse around the modern period of Northern Irish civil conflict known locally as ‘the Troubles’, for filmmakers from outside of Northern Ireland to be seen as making a legitimate contribution to existing debates, there is a pressure for their film texts to be read as ‘authentic’. This desire for authenticity fundamentally shapes the narrative approach taken by these filmmakers. Various filmmaking strategies have been employed in the pursuit of authenticity, but both Jim Sheridan’s In the Name of the Father (1993) and Kari Skogland’s Fifty Dead Men Walking (2008) have taken a distinctly narrative approach, relying upon local written autobiographical material. However, the way in which Sheridan and Skogland have sought to deploy the authenticity embedded in locally grounded source material flirts with self-defeatism as both films problematically obscure the limitations on agency imposed by the filmmakers on the local voices upon who claims of authenticity, and thus the films’ legitimacy, depend. Both In the Name of the Father (Jim Sheridan, 1993), based on Gerry Conlon’s 1991 autobiography Proved Innocent: The Story of Gerry Conlon, and the Guildford Four and Fifty Dead Men Walking (Kari Skogland, 2008), based on Martin McGartland’s 1997 eponymous memoir, provide interesting case studies for how authenticity and agency are negotiated and managed in the creation of films dealing with Northern Ireland’s recent troubled past.1 The central argument of this paper is that by grounding their films in the autobiographies of individuals directly involved in the Troubles-related events depicted on screen, both Sheridan and Skogland effectively tap into the 1 Over the course of thirty years, between 1968 and 1998, Northern Ireland experienced a period of low-intensity civil conflict with political violence, specifically that committed by the Provisional IRA (an illegal paramilitary organisation which was committed to pursuing the reunification of Ireland through violent means), emanating outwards and affecting the British mainland and the Republic of Ireland. A strong selection of some of the most concise and comprehensive overviews of the conflict include: Bew, Gibbon, and Patterson, 2002; Bew and Gillespie, 1999; McKittrick and McVea, 2012; Mulholland, 2003; Tonge, 2006; Whyte, 1991. 44 Journal of Terrorism Research Vol. 4 No. 1 proximiity-based authenticity of the local written narratives as a means of strengthening the perceived authenticity of their respective films. However, in doing so these two films problematically obscure the process of mediation all written material undergoes as it is translated from page to screen, whether it be a book as source material or even the final version of a film script. With the filmmaker as chief mediator, this process necessarily limits the exercise of agency by those local voices who underpin each film’s claims of authenticity. Though the mediation process which is common of, if not essential to, narrative filmmaking is not problematic in and of itself, that In the Name of the Father and Fifty Dead Men Walking, render its presence largely invisible is quite worrisome. In concealing the hand of the filmmaker these films risk seriously undermining the authenticity that gives their narratives legitimacy within a contested narrative terrain. Furthermore, it is only through an understanding of how agency is mediated in the creation of each filmic narrative that it becomes possible to discern how the filmmaker’s understanding of (1) the events on screen, (2) the film’s social and political context, and (3) broader aesthetic and/ or philosophical concerns, shape what is seen by audiences as the finished product. Narratives are first and foremost battlegrounds. From esteemed historical tombs to contemporary romantic comedies, it is in narratives that our individual and collective perceptions of reality are forced to confront events as they may have materially occurred. Along narrative front lines various versions of the truth compete for the dominance that lies in the sheer act of being recorded and presented to the world, with the dissemination of one’s own version of events reinforcing the perceived legitimacy of that particular understanding. In “The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality,” Hayden White argues, ‘If we view narration as the instrument by which the conflicting claims of the imaginary and the real are mediated, arbitrated, or resolved in a discourse, we begin to comprehend both the appeal of the narrative and the grounds for refusing it.” (White, 1980: 8-9) For those narrative forms aspiring to realism, as is the case with both films under study here, the battle becomes even more intense as notions of ‘authenticity’ are bound up with ideas about ‘truth’ and ‘reality’. More intense still are the battles around those narratives surrounding ‘contested’ or ‘controversial’ events where internal struggles for self-consistency take place within a full-scale war for legitimacy among competing, and frequently irreconcilable overarching narratives. Where the rewards for being the ‘prevailing truth’ among a range of divergent narratives are particularly high, it is the links between narrative consistency, 47Irish Accents, Foreign Voices 35) However, the proximity privilege that underlies this understanding of authenticity presents a problem for those filmmakers seeking to engage with the Troubles who, coming from outside Northern Ireland, lack first-hand experience of the events they are representing. Some filmmakers have actively sought to overcome this barrier by peopling their cast with local and/or ‘non-professional’ actors, as has been the case with Sunday (Charles McDougall, 2002), Bloody Sunday (Paul Greengrass, 2002), and Omagh (Pete Travis, 2004). (Sutherland, 2010: 267-281) In Bloody Sunday, Greengrass also employed a documentary aesthetic and hand-held camera techniques in his pursuit of realism and authenticity. (Blaney, 2007: 113-138) However, with In the Name of the Father and Fifty Dead Men Walking, Jim Sheridan and Kari Skogland instead work to imbue their films with authenticity through their use of local autobiography as source material. Mediated Agency: The Limits of Representational Self-Control Before it is possible to illustrate how exactly these two films work to conceal the mediation of agency, it is worth outlining ‘mediated agency’ as a concept in its own right.8 For our purposes mediated agency can be defined as the process in which a dominant author grants (or gives the impression of granting) the represented negotiating power over their representation, with the actual expression of this power constrained and limited by the dependence of the represented on the author as the intermediary between their narrative voice and the audience. The dominance of the filmmaker referred to in this definition is not in related to his/her broader social, political or economic positioning and applies only to the limited confines of the production of the film text. The filmmaker, or director, is in a position of dominance vis-à-vis the represented in a fictional narrative film because, to use a rather auteurist idea of authorship,9 it is the filmmaker who bears ultimate responsibility for the finished film and, by extension, the construction and dissemination of a ‘final’ representation. Mediated agency operates whether or not the filmmaker is consciously aware of its existence, and while its effects may be more or less keenly felt, 8 Which should not be confused with the concept of mediated agency put forth for use in developmental psychology by James V Wertsch and Leslie J Rupert. (Wertsch and Rupert, 1993). 9 Underpinning auteur theory is the idea that it is the filmmaker, generally defined as the director in the case of narrative fiction filmmaking, who is the author of a film text and who bears both responsibility for and control over the film production. Though the applicability of auteur theory to a Hollywood filmmaking context requires substantial adaptation due to the prominence of the studio system, as both films under examination here were produced outside of Hollywood, applying auteur theory to a reading of these film texts does not carry the same difficulties. (Caughie, 1981; Corrigan, 2003; Hess, 1974) 48 Journal of Terrorism Research Vol. 4 No. 1 its presence can be seen even in those works which attempt to grant the represented a high degree of control over their representation. Because of its subtlety it can often go unrecognised by the filmmaker and its existence is independent of any aesthetic or political ideology or agenda. In and of itself mediated agency is benign, but where its existence is concealed the power dynamics between filmmaker and represented are denied, undermining the voice of the represented and rendering ‘agency’ largely illusory, though not destroying it entirely. Where agency is a but an illusion, the validity of the author’s claims of authenticity, and in turn truthfulness and realism, are eroded. Thus, it is not the existence of mediated agency, but how it is handled by each individual filmmaker within the context of each individual film text that can present problems for a film’s ability to present itself as authentic, truthful and real. It is tempting to argue that where the mediation process is effectively concealed, the viewer could perceive the voices of the represented as carrying something near total legitimacy, but such a counter-argument would depend on an understanding of the audience as passive and uncritical audience, accepting each image, sound and movement as undeniably true. However, this conception of the passive audience is so extreme that it is unlikely to find much favour beyond the most radical advocates of the work of Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, interpretations of these writings themselves dismissed for their simplicity and inherent elitism. (Hills, 2002: 31; Hollows, 1995: 221-222; Moore 2010: 203-204) More tenable a view is that put forth by Jeffrey Richards who argues that, “the relationship between film and audience is reciprocal. An audience does not passively accept every message that is put across in a film. For one thing, it can choose which films to see and which to avoid. Even within films it can accept elements that it likes and reject unpalatable ones.” (Richards, 1996: 399) So much as an audience may enter into agreement with the filmmaker to cede the inclination to immediately scrutinize every trace of presented reality for the sake of full immersion into the narrative, even the willing suspension of disbelief has its limits. (Ferri, 2007: 35- 46) With the audience fully cognizant that what they are consuming is a film as opposed to unfiltered reality, regardless of whether this is a fact explicitly discussed within the filmic text, reflexivity (including self-reflexivity) and realism need not be mutually exclusive. Indeed, “Rather than strictly opposed polarities, realism and reflexivity as interpenetrating tendencies are quite capable of coexisting within the 49Irish Accents, Foreign Voices same text.” (Stam, Burgoyne and Flitterman-Lewis, 1992: 206) In this light it becomes possible to argue that the obfuscation of mediated agency is not necessary for a film to succeed on an immersive level. Furthermore, given the problems for authenticity created by such concealment, acknowledgement of the mediation which occurs in bringing ‘authentic’ voices to the screen can be seen as a key to enduring narrative legitimacy. Framing and Fidelity in In the Name of the Father Turning to the case studies at hand, in addition to rooting their claims to authenticity in their autobiographical source material, In the Name of the Father and Fifty Dead Men Walking are examples of critically and commercially successful Troubles films directed by filmmakers from outside of Northern Ireland. Rare among those dealing with the Troubles, both films were able to secure a strong international audience, though of the two it is the multiple Academy Award-nominated In the Name of the Father that stands alongside Neil Jordan’s The Crying Game (1992) as the most globally successful film treatment of the conflict in Northern Ireland. The work of Dublin filmmaker Jim Sheridan, In the Name the Father is a compelling melodrama which explores the wrongful convictions of the Guildford Four and Maguire Seven in relation to the bombings of two pubs in Guildford, Surrey, England by the Provisional Irish Republican Army in October 1974. In the Name of the Father foregrounds its claim to authenticity through its explicit expression in the form of a title card in the film’s opening credits reading, “Based on the Autobiographical Book PROVED INNOCENT by Gerry Conlon.” Yet, it is the implicit claim to authenticity embedded in the framing of the film which proves to be most powerful. Utilising a frame story in which the fictional Conlon serves as the film’s narrator, the events of In the Name of the Father span fifteen years from the summer of 1974 leading up to the Guildford bombings until the 19th of October 1989 when the convictions of the Guildford Four were overturned. The use of a frame story, sometimes referred to as a ‘frame narrative’ is significant for, as argued by Winifred Morgan, “The frame’s primary purpose is to vouch for the veracity of the events or narrator of the inner story.” (Morgan, 2002: 282) Given the complexities in directly transposing literary narrative modes with filmic ones, it is possible to argue that in the case of In the Name of the Father, the use of a frame story means that Conlon is both outer and inner narrator. This leaves the diegetic Conlon responsible for establishing the credibility of his own 52 Journal of Terrorism Research Vol. 4 No. 1 also held responsible for the Woolwich bombing and the wrongful convictions of six men for the Birmingham bombings representing an additional gross miscarriage of justice, such complete detachment is quite worrisome given the power that Sheridan’s film text has wielded in public discourse around the Guildford pub bombings. While it has been argued that this series of attacks was, in some ways, the Provisional IRA’s response to being put on the defensive by Operation Mortarman and the strong military response to Bloody Friday, (Oppenheimer, 2009: 76) the timing of the bombings means that it is perhaps more appropriate to see them as part of a strategic offensive with the goal of arousing English public opinion. (English, 2003: 169; Oppenheimer, 2009: 75-76) While the simplicity with which Sheridan depicts the planning process is not entirely surprising given the larger inconsistencies between the film and the historical record, it does serve as an example of how mediated agency is able to manipulate, consciously or unconsciously, the public history of events by embedding shaky claims to truth and authenticity within broader more palatable ones. Because of the inaccuracy and, arguably, misrepresentation here, one must wonder whether it is possible to place any trust at all in those details which lie outside of the experiential scope of ‘Conlon’ as inner, outer and external narrator, despite the reality that it is Sheridan, who lacks proximity to any of the events depicted, who holds ultimate control over the film text. Where the planning scenes deviate from historical record, there are also major discrepancies between the narratives of In the Name of the Father and Proved Innocent. In the Name of the Father’s framing and authenticity claims hinge on the film narrative being perceived as authentic to the experiences of Gerry Conlon the real man who has had to live with the enduring trauma of being caught up in one of the greatest miscarriages of British justice in the twentieth century. Yet it can not be readily forgotten that the Gerry Conlon on screen is in all actuality a fictional character, a creation of Sheridan’s cinematic imagination and expressed through the body of Daniel Day- Lewis. Any traces of reality that the film contains have been filtered not only through this fictional Conlon, but also through Conlon as he perceives and expresses himself through his written autobiography. Despite the way in which the film’s claims of authenticity suppress the acknowledgement of these multiple versions of Conlon, each has lived a rather different experience. Of the narrative inconsistencies between autobiography and film, perhaps the most glaring is that where In the Name of the Father uses the months immediately preceding the Guildford pub bombing as its temporal origin point, the first several 53Irish Accents, Foreign Voices chapters of Proved Innocent, which amount to approximately 10% of the total book, are dedicated to exploring Conlon’s early life in West Belfast. It is in Conlon’s description of his childhood and adolescence where key aspects of his character and disposition are openly explored, from his street hustler attitude to work to his penchant for drug-taking, his distrust of violent politics and his strong but troubled commitment to his family. It is the book’s early passages which detail Conlon’s relationship with the local Provisional IRA that reveal the true preposterousness of the idea that he would be accepted as a Volunteer at any level of the organisation, let alone as part of a group entrusted with carrying out a high-profile and strategically important attack. Though the opening scenes of In the Name of the Father do touch on this relationship, the film seriously underplays its acrimoniousness. Conlon’s appetite for mischief meant that from early adolescence he faced numerous run-ins with the group, including close calls with the punishment squads who considered themselves responsible for meting out the ‘tough justice’ of the Provisional IRA’s ‘community policing’ programme. (McGartland, 2009: 49-52) It even got to the point that Conlon was compelled to join the movement’s youth wing in the hopes that it would instil some discipline, but his continued anti-social behaviour meant that he was quickly expelled. (Conlon, 1993: 37) By eliminating Conlon’s early years, In the Name of the Father neglects one of the most captivating, even if not entirely legally sound, arguments in support of his innocence: If when the stakes were high he had a proven track record of being less than co- operative with the organization, it is highly unlikely that in relatively low- stakes England the largely apolitical Conlon would be willing to plant bombs on behalf of the organisation which had caused him nothing but bother. This being said, the film does make attempts to discuss Conlon’s childhood through the lens of his relationship with his father Guiseppe while in prison. The strongest and most emotional of these scenes is that following Guiseppe’s placement in the same remand cell as Conlon, itself a factual inaccuracy. In this scene Conlon releases his pent- up childhood frustrations and chastises his father for following him to England in an expression of his guilt over what has become a shared tribulation. However, by constraining this discussion within the theme of parental sacrifice, (Farley, 2001: 203-211) In the Name of the Father does not give itself the narrative space to explore Conlon’s roots in any more broadly meaningful way. By largely focusing on Conlon’s time spent in the hands of the British ‘justice’ system, the film severely limits its ability to explore his relationship with other significant figures in his 54 Journal of Terrorism Research Vol. 4 No. 1 life. Though he avails himself of the ‘closed’ visits offered for Category A (maximum security) prisoners, these brief opportunities to speak to his mother and sisters are very closely monitored by prison staff. (Conlon, 1993: 160-163) Even privacy with regards to his post can not be expected. Thus, within the diegetic world of In the Name of the Father, the only other person with experiential knowledge of Conlon’s early life with whom he can communicate openly is his father. Yet the conditions put forward by the film are anything but natural and represent a rather significant deviation from Conlon’s own account of events as provided in Proved Innocent. Firstly, the diegetic Gerry Conlon enjoys far greater access to his father than that enjoyed by his real-life counterpart. As Conlon frequently reminds the reader throughout his book, nearly every movement and moment of Category A prisoners are controlled by the prison authorities. While it is possible for one to have glimpses of shreds of freedom, there are mere glimpses - barely tangible and always fleeting. Further Conlon and his father were very rarely in the same prison and indeed never enjoyed the privilege of sharing a cell, a detail which in itself poses a serious challenge to the film’s claims of truthfulness and realism. (Conlon, 1993: 160; Barton, 2004: 169) Thus, in spite of the surface level appearance of events and conditions as ‘naturally occurring’, the circumstances by which the audience comes to learn of Conlon’s early life are both artificial and deliberately manufactured. They reflect the spatio-temporal constraints around the diegesis set by Sheridan in accordance with his individual narrative focus, one which privileges the exploration of a melodramatic father-son relationship at the expense of historical accuracy, fidelity to the source material or a serious exploration of the broader social and political issues at play. (Barton, 2004: 170-171; Farley, 2001: 205-206) This in turn serves to highlight the way in which the perceptual diminishment of the role of the filmmaker can serve to undermine the film’s claims to authenticity and, by extension, truthfulness and realism. Questions of Truth and Authenticity in Fifty Dead Men Walking As complicated as the relationship between voice, agency and authenticity is in In the Name of the Father, this relationship in Fifty Dead Men Walking is even more complex. This can be seen as a result of the more intensely contestable nature of the relationship between authenticity, truth and realism within the voice of the protagonist/ narrator than is the case with the earlier film. Fifty Dead Men Walking, the work of Ottawa, Canada’s Kari Skogland, had a successful film festival run during the 2008 season which helped it to secure both 57Irish Accents, Foreign Voices to be the later part of the conflict means that much information about the period in which he was active has yet to be released. Still, when and if any significant official information about McGartland’s career were to enter the public domain, this information would only lead to a new verifiability for a very small number of the claims made by McGartland in his memoir or Skogland in her film. Because of the covert nature of his work, even if the British government were to suddenly allow unfettered access to all of its records relating to McGartland, this would still not go far enough given that much information, for the safety of all involved, likely went formally unrecorded. Given the embarrassment to the organization caused by a high-level infiltration, the Provisional IRA is even more unlikely to be forthright in providing information about McGartland, a man who must continue to live life on the run despite the organisation formally standing down in 2005. With substantial external verification of details provided by McGartland in his autobiography unlikely, the authenticity (and truthfulness in particular) of Skogland’s film text rests upon how well the ‘real’ McGartland is able to convince that his autobiography is both truthful and forthright. More abstractly put, assertions that Fifty Dead Men Walking is rooted in a ‘true story’ hinge upon the reliability of its protagonist’s real- life counterpart. This is a reliability which can, in turn, exclusively be established through this counterpart’s own autobiographical writings, creating a situation of near paradoxical self-verification. While through Proved Innocent, Gerry Conlon is responsible for the verification of a number of the claims made by In the Name of the Father, the existence of opportunities for external verification means that this film is able to escape such paradoxical exclusivity. As has already been discussed, McGartland is no ‘ordinary’ narrator (or protagonist). The authenticity of his narrative depends on experiential knowledge of largely unverifiable events, yet at the same time his involvement in the events described in his memoir is precipitated by his ability to act disingenuously. As a result, the decision of whether McGarland’s autobiography can be trusted rests with each individual reader, a conundrum for Skogland’s audience as well. Difficult to make at the level of the autobiography where events and details are only filtered through McGartland who is able to exercise a level of agency which nears the unmediated, this decision becomes even more difficult when one considers the meditational role played by the filmmaker in adapting this life for screen. Fifty Dead Men Walking is thus asking its audience to put their faith in a Martin McGartland who is a representation of a Martin McGartland who is a representation of the Martin McGartland. One cannot help but be 58 Journal of Terrorism Research Vol. 4 No. 1 more than a little suspicious of how much of what is ‘true’ is stripped away from as one moves farther and farther away from the man who successfully managed a double life for years before being forced into life in hiding. It would be difficult to argue that Skogland is unaware of the challenge she faces in making strong enough claims to authenticity to lend her film legitimacy as a public narrative of the Troubles. Instead, Skogland displays a keen ability to match balance the need for her film to engage in an authentic discourse of events with avoidance of the full force of the burden of reliability that comes with the questionable truthfulness of the source narrative, by subtly claiming Fifty Dead Men Walking to be ‘inspired by’ as opposed to ‘based on’ McGartland’s memoir. Whereas In the Name of the Father’s authenticity claims take on something more akin to absolutism through the combination of Sheridan’s explicit use of ‘based upon’ and a frame story, Skogland actively minimises her claims to the bare minimum required for viable legitimacy as strong claims of authenticity and truthfulness risks the loss of the audience trust in the narrative needed for the narrative to work. With two simple words, ‘inspired by’, Skogland grants herself as director, and Fifty Dead Men Walking as film text, greater artistic license than would have been possible with the use of ‘based on’. Thus there is more acceptable room for creativity, invention, and deviation from ‘fact’ in Fifty Dead Men Walking than with a film such as In the Name of the Father where claims of authenticity are less subtle. How can such a slight semantic shift mean so much? As Stephen N Lipkin explains: To codify the issue of proximity, the industry recognizes two basic categories of material: docudramas “based on” their referents and those “inspired by” actual people and occurrences. Stories ‘based on’ true events have closer proximity to their subjects and are governed by stricter legal guidelines than stories that are ‘inspired by’ their sources. (Lipkin, 2002: 57) Where those film narratives which employ ‘based upon’ are bound by the conditions of the ‘life rights’ agreed to between the subject of a biographical film and the filmmaker, for those filmmakers who use ‘inspired by’ this adherence is looser, if not often optional. (Lipkin, 2002: 57) That in changing two words on a title card, a film’s legal standing and responsibilities can be altered is an exemplification of the ultimate power over the final film product held by the author of the film text. Skogland choice of ‘inspired by’ to cover the relationship of her film with its source text also illustrates the degree to which McGartland’s agency can be expected to be mediated within Fifty Dead Men Walking the film. 59Irish Accents, Foreign Voices Conclusion There are numerous similarities between Irish filmmaker Jim Sheridan’s In the Name of the Father and Fifty Dead Men Walking by Canadian filmmaker Kari Skogland. At a surface level, both films seek to develop an understanding of key events in the period of Northern Irish history known as the Troubles, engaging seriously with the political violence within and stemming from the region. By the standards of films dealing with the Troubles, both also achieved a considerable degree of success. At the narrative level, In the Name of the Father and Fifty Dead Men Walking also share a reliance on the written autobiographical material of their protagonists to fuel their claims of authenticity. This use of local autobiographical material is of particular importance as neither Sheridan nor Skogland, by virtue of being outsiders in the context of the Troubles, carry the proximity to events that would allow their narratives to carry an embedded (or automatic) authenticity. The authenticity claims made by these films are wrapped up in the film texts’ claims of truthfulness and the realism of their interpretations of events. Yet, with both films the local voices which underpin their claims to authenticity, truth and reality (essential to the legitimacy of narrative engagement with the Troubles) have their agency limited and controlled by the filmmakers who depend upon them. Where representation is collaborative and the represented have what they perceive as an active role in their representation, there is a recognition that in exchange for the opportunity to have their voice reach a larger audience there must be a ceding of ultimate authority over their representation to the filmmaker. with an acknowledgement of the risk that they may be misrepresented. However, in the films examined here, the adaptation of autobiography material to the screen can be seen as an inactive representation where collaboration is much more limited than in other modes of Troubles filmmaking. While both Gerry Conlon and Marting McGartland have had the capacity to shape and define their self-representation as manifested in their written autobiographies, these works exist as ‘complete’ representations and do not represent an ongoing engagement with their representations as their autobiographical selves are translate to screen. Though the mediation of agency discussed here is not intrinsically negative, the way in which In the Name of the Father and Fifty Dead Men Walking obscure the process can be seen to weaken the overall strength of these films’ claims to authenticity, truth and reality. At the same time, this does not necessarily mean that these 62 Journal of Terrorism Research Vol. 4 No. 1 McGartland, Martin. Fifty Dead Men Walking: The Heroic True Story of a British Secret Agent Inside the IRA. London: John Blake Publishing, 2009. McIlroy, Brian. Shooting to Kill: Filmmaking and the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland. Richmond: Stevenson Press, 2001. McLoone, Martin. Irish Film: The Emergence of a Contemporary Cinema. London: British Film Institute, 2006. McKittrick, David, Seamus Kelters, Brian Feeny, Chris Thornton and David McVea. Lost Lives: The stories of the men, women and children who died as a result of the Northern Ireland troubles. Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing, 2001. McKittrick, David and David McVea. Making Sense of the Troubles. Toronto: Penguin, 2012. Metz, Christian. Film language: A semiotics of the cinema. Translated by Michael Taylor. The Hague: Mouton, 1974. Moore, Ryan. Sells Like Teen Spirit: Music, Youth Culture and Social Crisis. New York: New York University Press, 2010. Morgan, Winifred. “Frame Narrative.” In The Companion to Southern Literature: Themes, Genres, Places, People, Movements and Motifs edited by Joseph M Flora and Lucinda H MacKethan, 282-283. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002. Mulchay, Aogán. Policing Northern Ireland: Conflict, Legitimacy and Reform. Devon: Willan Publishing, 2006. Mulholland, Marc. Northern Ireland: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Nunes, Charlotte. “In the Name of National Security: Torture and Imperialist Ideology in Sheridan’s In the Name of the Father and Jordan’s Breakfast on Pluto.” Human Rights Quarterly 31, no. 4 (2009): 916-933. O’Leary, John. Reflections on Fenians and Fenianism, Volume I. London: Downey and Company, 1896. Oppenheimer, A R. IRA: The Bombs and the Bullets – A History of Deadly Ingenuity. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2009. Pettitt, Lance. Screening Ireland: Film and Television Representation. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000. Richards, Jeffrey. “Film as an historical source.” In The Contemporary History Handbook, edited by Brian Brivati, Julia Buxton and Anthony Seldon, 394-407. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Roos, J.P. “Context, Authenticity, Referentiality, Reflexivity: Back to Basics in Autobiography.” In Biographical Research in Eastern Europe: Altered Lives and Broken Biographies edited by Robin Humphrey, Robert Miller and Elena Zdravomyslova, 27-38. London: Ashgate, 2003. Rose, Peter. Making Sense of the Troubles. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001. Rosenstone, Robert A. History of Film/Film on History. Harlow: Pearson Education, 2006. Saville, Right Honourable Lord. Principal Conclusions and Overall Assessment of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry. London: Stationary Office, 2010. Smith, David A and Gerald Chambers. Inequality in Northern Ireland. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991. Smithey, Lee. “Conflict Transformation, Cultural Innovation, and Loyalist Identity in Northern Ireland.” In Culture and Belonging in Divided Societies: Contestation and Symbolic Landscapes, edited by Marc Howard Ross, 85-106. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009. Stam, Robert, Robert Burgoyne and Sandy Fitterman-Lewis. New Vocabularies in Film Semiotics: Structuralism, Post-Structuralism and Beyond. London: Routledge, 1996. Sutherland, Heather. “ ‘Embedded’ actors as markers of authenticity: Acting the real in ‘Troubles’ docudramas.” Studies in Documentary Film 4, no. 3 (2010): 267-281. 63Irish Accents, Foreign Voices Tonge, Jonathan. Northern Ireland. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006. Wertsch, James V. and Leslie J. Rupert. “The Authority of Cultural Tools in a Sociological Approach to Mediated Agency.” Cognition and Instruction 11, no. 3/4 (1993): 227-239. Whaley Eager, Paige. From Freedom Fighters to Terrorists: Women and Political Violence. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008. White, Hayden. “The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality.” Critical Inquiry 7, no. 1 (1980): 5-27. Whyte, John. Interpreting Northern Ireland. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990.
Docsity logo



Copyright © 2024 Ladybird Srl - Via Leonardo da Vinci 16, 10126, Torino, Italy - VAT 10816460017 - All rights reserved