Dear Erin: Why do Irish people love to get annoyed about ‘Oirish' films?

Irish Times

3 days ago

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?'
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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?
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Planning to hate-watch Lindsay Lohan's Irish Wish? Micksploitation addicts should prepare for disappointment
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]
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.