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Chapter Eleven - POST-FEMINISM AND THE CELTIC TIGER: DEIRDRE O’KANE’S TELEVISION ROLES
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Created by Ian Fitzgibbon and Michael McElhatton, the television series Paths to Freedom and Fergus’s Wedding were screened by Irish state broadcaster RTÉ in 2000 and 2002 respectively. Produced in the Celtic Tiger period (circa 1996–2008), which was a time of unprecedented economic growth in Ireland, these shows – both comic dramas of six episodes – take an ironic and sardonic look at turn-of-the-twenty-first-century Dublin. Paths to Freedom is a mockdocumentary that tells the story of Raymond (‘Rats’) and Jeremy, two recently released convicts from Mountjoy Prison in Dublin. The series is set over a year period, following the men as they readjust to their lives on ‘the outside’. A polarised class division is set up between Rats and Jeremy, in that the former, convicted of burglary, is from a working-class community, while the latter, a consultant gynaecologist convicted of a drink driving hit and run, lives in the middle-class suburb of Blackrock and operates in the upper echelons of Celtic Tiger wealth and privilege. It is Rats, however, who emerges as the stronger character at the end of the series: he successfully launches a rap band, while Jeremy suffers a nervous breakdown and is re-incarcerated, this time in hospital.1 Less ‘naturalistic ’ and more ‘heightened drama’,2 Fergus’s Wedding is, as its title suggests, about a wedding: Fergus Walsh, proprietor of ‘Ferguccinos ’ coffee shop, is marrying Penny, an English woman who lives and works in Ireland. The series takes us through the trials and tribulations of their wedding planning, which include the death of the best man, the loss of €90,000, disputes with a headstrong and Chapter Eleven POST-FEMINISM AND THE CELTIC TIGER: DEIRDRE O’KANE’S TELEVISION ROLES Claire Bracken 169 determined wedding planner, and repeated family in-fighting. Thrown into the mix is the fact that Penny and Fergus are members of a Dublin swinging club, which is mockingly constructed in the show as both uninteresting and unerotic.3 Ultimately, the series presents a satirical take on Celtic Tiger excess, represented in the hyper-consumerism that surrounds contemporary wedding productions and the exorbitant performances of supposed liberal sexuality. Deirdre O’Kane, well known for her stand-up comedy as well as acting parts in Celtic Tiger films Intermission (John Crowley, 2003) and Boy Eats Girl (Stephen Bradley, 2005), plays a role in both series,4 skilfully (and hilariously) portraying Helen, Jeremy’s wife, in Paths To Freedom and Lorraine, the wedding planner, in Fergus’s Wedding. In an interview with O’Kane, Mick Heaney identifies similarities between the two, noting: The hectoring tone, the power dressing, the disdain for the lower orders: when Deirdre O’Kane turned on the catty attitude as Lorraine, the snobbish wedding planner in Fergus’s Wedding, it seemed a tad familiar. The Drogheda comic had sealed her already formidable reputation with her bitchy turn as Helen, the ghastly bourgeois harpy in RTÉ’s Paths to Freedom, now here she was doing a bitchy turn as the ghastly harpy in the follow-up series.5 Both characters epitomise post-feminist womanhood in late capitalism , a cultural construction which, as Angela McRobbie notes, exercises supposed female agency and independence through consumerism , particularly relating to women’s grooming and self-fashioning.6 Lorraine owns and manages a wedding-planning business, and her role in Fergus’s Wedding is entirely concerned with consumption, while in Paths to Freedom Helen’s energies are spent on spending, in a paradoxical attempt to undercut a passive position as upper-middle-class wife. O’Kane’s performances, lauded by audiences for both shows, capture a caricature of middle-class Irish womanhood in the contemporary period as materialistic, self-absorbed and shallow. Tapping into popular constructions such as the ‘yummy mummy’ and ‘Celtic kitten’, popular feminine tags to characterise a nation perceived to be trivial and overly consumptive, the post-feminist characters of Lorraine and Helen function with respect to the series’ more general critique of late capitalist Celtic Tiger Ireland. 170 Claire Bracken [18.232.188.122] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 11:36 GMT) An analysis of O’Kane’s roles facilitates reflection on two important gender issues relevant to contemporary Irish culture: the deployment of post-feminist identity categories in the service of capitalist ideology, and the cultural tendency in Ireland to use the figure of woman as symbol of national meaning. Drawing on the theories of psychoanalyst and philosopher Luce Irigaray, I chart the identification of...