Viewpoints: Theoretical Perspectives on Irish Visual Texts

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION Claire Bracken and Emma Radley 1 In 2010, Discover Ireland launched a new campaign aimed at the home market, focused on repackaging and remarketing Ireland as an attractive destination for those forced (by economic necessity or by Icelandic ash cloud) to partake in a so-called ‘staycation’.1 Set to the tune of Heathers’ Remember When, the advertisement visualises an Ireland very different from the gloomy, humourless and disheartening recessionary Ireland of the newspapers and current affairs programmes. In this bright, multicultural, family-friendly, seductive and fun-filled visual space, Ireland is overwhelmingly active, no longer passively accepting its decreasing capital on the global stage. Here you can surf with blondes in barely-there bikinis in Donegal, second-honeymoon in gourmet Waterford, golf by a Mediterraneanlooking beach in the west, indulge in spa treatments dispensed by handsome men in Kerry, and play the didgeridoo in artsy Galway. The visual register is bright, glamorous, uptempo and sexy, using quick cuts, panning shots and Dutch angles to indicate a space in transition, dynamic and changing. The traditional aesthetic, ‘old’ Ireland, is present – sweeping shots of beautiful, pastoral scenes, oldeworlde cobbled streets and pubs – but is insistently juxtaposed with ‘new’ Ireland, with luxury hotels and golf courses, cookery schools and activity centres, and is always presented as a backdrop for subjects in motion (kayaking, hiking, surfing), subjects taking charge of and rearticulating its representational space (Fig. 0.1). Image matters in this image-saturated world. It is significant that this is a local campaign rather than an international one – while the 2 Claire Bracken and Emma Radley space may be familiar as the picturesque, traditional ‘Éire Álainn’ from film and television, it is a skewed perspective. Despite the troubling and commodified versions of neo-liberalism that the ad presents, it is significant for the manner in which it persistently represents Ireland as a culture in flux. Citizens of the new Ireland are being urged to take another look at their cultural landscape, to see it differently. Over the last twenty years, Ireland has experienced transition into, as well as away from, the Celtic Tiger phenomenon and, as a consequence, notions of Irish identity and nationality have been in constant flux. For this reason, it is a timely moment to consider visual representations, both past and present, of Irish cultural life, and contribute to conversations about questions such as: What kind of iconic currencies does Ireland have? How should we see them? Are there specific ideological frameworks operating when we imagine Ireland? Can we imagine Irishness differently? Viewpoints: Theoretical Perspectives on Irish Visual Texts seeks to build on and contribute to the rich and significant tradition of Irish scholarly work on image-based texts in the fields of art history and film studies,2 as well as the burgeoning inter-disciplinary work on Irish visual culture (evident in the recent publication of two edited Fig. 0.1 ‘The Fun Starts Here’: Fáilte Ireland, 2010. Introduction 3 collections: Ireland, Design and Visual Culture and Ireland in Focus: Film, Photography and Popular Culture).3 This collection shares an interest in inter-disciplinarity, bringing together scholars working in a variety of areas in Irish studies, using the visual as a focal point to demonstrate the importance and vitality of this register in Irish culture. The essays collected here are primarily concerned with cultural narratives that are visual, examining images as generative of different meanings in and of Ireland, both contemporary and historical. Given the focus on cultural narrative, many of the pieces are concerned with film; however, by definition, the image operates across a variety of media, and for this reason we also include essays on television , photographic art and advertising. While many of the essays consider the aesthetic qualities and functions of the visual in and of itself, at the heart of the authors’ concern here is the ways in which image-based texts engage with questions of Irish culture, and the manner in which those texts are received, circulated and consumed in Irish culture. The essays create new perspectives and new frameworks from which to examine visual texts and the ideological and critical discourses in which they are produced. Discourse In order to intervene in the traditional frameworks that are used to analyse image-based texts, new paradigms must be established, new perspectives adopted, new lenses fashioned. The first section of the collection attempts to do just that: it constructs and...