misrepresentation of celtic national identity in film

[celtfilm]

Hi

I am looking for information on the misrepresentation of celtic national identity to begin with. I will then be relating that information to film and how the information is still relevant.

I was wondering if anyone had information on this or could suggest books for me to read.

Whether this is on celtic misrepresentation or misrepresentation of national identity to do with any culture?



Thanks

[Steve Crook]

name='celtfilm']Hi

I am looking for information on the misrepresentation of celtic national identity to begin with. I will then be relating that information to film and how the information is still relevant.

I was wondering if anyone had information on this or could suggest books for me to read.

Whether this is on celtic misrepresentation or misrepresentation of national identity to do with any culture?



Thanks

Just about every portrayal of a Welshman. They are nearly always given an "indeed to goodness, boyo" sing-song accent regardless of which part of the principality they are meant to have come from. That accent is only ever found in "The Valleys" which is a small fraction of South Wales, and even then it's usually only used when someone is playing the fool



Steve

[GRAEME]

name='celtfilm']Hi

I am looking for information on the misrepresentation of to begin with. I will then be relating that information to film and how the information is still relevant.

I was wondering if anyone had information on this or could suggest books for me to read.

Whether this is on celtic misrepresentation or misrepresentation of national identity to do with any culture?



Thanks

Please define "celtic national identity".



Do you mean dissin' the fringe?

[A Pemberton]

Misrepresentation abounds in cinema(especially American),it likes its stereotypical(as it sees it) Celt and its almost always, as Steve says a wrong portrayal,British wartime cinema is guilty too with a cast of many a film that usually contained a character called "Jock "or "Taff" as a lowly private or rating.

Perhaps one of the worst/quaint though it must be said entertaining films was John Ford/John Waynes "The Quiet Man"

[oxfam1uk]

"The Quiet Man" is misrepresentation ?



Surely not ! I have loads of relatives in County Galway, and they are just like that! (Alright, they may not have hour-long fistfights that roam all over the fields, but otherwise it's an accurate film)



It just goes to show: one person's "negative stereotype" is another person's humour.

[penfold]

I can recommend - and do, often - 'From Dickens to Dad's Army - Films and British national Identity', by Jeffrey Richards....chapters on Scotland, Ireland and Wales, and Lancashire, which he feels is a separate cultural identity. It should be very available in the usual online shops, and a decent library should have a copy or would obtain one for you through the inter-library loan scheme. If you're serious about the subject, buy it, it's a cracker, academically rigourous, but not written in academic language.

[Moor Larkin]

name='GRAEME']Please define "celtic national identity".

My thought exactly. Whilst I can quite see it might be a reasonable wish to pull a historic Celtic identity out of some semi-mythical past, I cannot quite see that any such identity exists in practice, to be mis-represented.

[Steve Crook]

name='GRAEME']Please define "celtic national identity"

What about "British but not English"?



Steve

[Harleybloke]

Mis-representation?



Surely it has to be 'Braveheart'.

[GRAEME]

name='Harleybloke']Mis-representation?



Surely it has to be 'Braveheart'.

The Scots LOVE Braveheart! I saw it at a pre-release midnight screening in Leith and the audience went beserk. As the end credits rolled a wild-haired biker ran the full length of the auditorium screaming "A Wallace" and the audience roared!



I think it would be the English who might feel a wee bit mirepresented - although God knows Edward Longshanks was a murdering SOB.

[Steve Crook]

name='GRAEME']The Scots LOVE Braveheart! I saw it at a pre-release midnight screening in Leith and the audience went beserk. As the end credits rolled a wild-haired biker ran the full length of the auditorium screaming "A Wallace" and the audience roared!

Roared with laughter if they know anything of their history. The biker was probably taking the piss



Check the list of goofs



But when did the Scots let their real history get in the way of their bearing a grudge for their perceived years of oppression? Scottish Nationalists are very well balanced, they've got a chip on each shoulder



Steve

[GRAEME]

name='Steve Crook']Roared with laughter if they know anything of their history. The biker was probably taking the piss



Check the list of goofs



But when did the Scots let their real history get in the way of their bearing a grudge for their perceived years of oppression? Scottish Nationalists are very well balanced, they've got a chip on each shoulder



Steve

Well, quite. But you can say the same about "patriots" everywhere. "Englishness" is as much a concoction of myth, half-truth and distortion. Robin Hood anybody?



What my Scottish co-nationalists were roaring with was the pure spirit of national pride. Facts don't matter. The biker wasn't taking the piss - he was as high as a kite on a heady brew of jingoism and romance.



Anti-Englishness is an important factor here too.



My point was that the film DID misrepresent "Celtic national identity" - by suggesting that it exists in the first place and peddling the myths such a concept feeds off.



Is there any harm?



Do films have to be historically accurate? What about Bridge on the River Kwai - most of it is pure fabrication. Great film. The English only get upset when the lies are painting an unfavourable picture - and I guess that's the same for the "Celts".

[penfold]

name='GRAEME']

Is there any harm?



Do films have to be historically accurate? What about Bridge on the River Kwai - most of it is pure fabrication. Great film. The English only get upset when the lies are painting an unfavourable picture - and I guess that's the same for the "Celts".

The real CO of the British troops in that labour camp, who died relatively recently, his family and his colleagues would say...Yes. He, in reality, went through hell, behaved heroically and with great concern for his men, lived to see a sarcastic novel written by a Frenchman taken up by a film company and his real-life role turned intoa travesty for mass ridicule. How would you feel ???

[penfold]

PS GRAEME....seeing your Iain Cuthbertson Avatar...did you know Sutherland's Law is about to get a release??

[sippog]

This thread reminds me of that old anecdote about Richard Burton.



Apparently Burton was working on a shoot where an over-familiar American kept going on about his Celtic roots: "Hey,Richard, you know, you and me, we're both selts(sic) and it's in our seltic blood . . . blah, blah"



Buton stood it as long as he could until finally he snapped and said: "I am a Celt but you, sir, are a sunt."

[GRAEME]

name='penfold']The real CO of the British troops in that labour camp, who died relatively recently, his family and his colleagues would say...Yes. He, in reality, went through hell, behaved heroically and with great concern for his men, lived to see a sarcastic novel written by a Frenchman taken up by a film company and . How would you feel ???

It was a fictionalised story about duty and humanity - I would reject the claim that it was "sarcastic" - "his real-life role turned intoa travesty for mass ridicule". That's certainly not my experience as a viewer! it was not meant as a tribute to real life individuals - I guess that's why the names were changed?



That being said it is a question of who and what films, novels etc are for. Do artists have the right to say what they want to say and play around with facts in order to do so? I think they do. Or does the CO of that camp OWN the entire right to that story and anything vaguely based on it? Do writers have a duty to honour the real-life individuals? And for how long? Just while they still live? A hundred years? I don't know. It is debatable.



All I can say is that if that attitude were taken there would be very few films made based on true events - apart from strict drama-documentaries.



My point was that an artisticly excellent movie can be made out of histroically inaccurate details - sometimes the real story just doesn't work as well - in artistic terms. It depends how pedantic you want to be.



A film like Bridge - or Braveheart - should not purport to be "history" when it is not. But enjoyable and artistic films should continue to be made as the makers see fit - leave the histroy book at the door!

[GRAEME]

name='penfold']PS GRAEME....seeing your Iain Cuthbertson Avatar...did you know Sutherland's Law is about to get a release??

Great! As my surname is Sutherland - and my nickname at school was, for a time, "Sutherland's-Law" - I'll look forward to that.



(Sutherland's-Law was better than the inaccurate "Sunderland-United" and the far worse and inevitable "Lah-di-dah Gunner Graeme". Graybags a la the Goodies was all right though...)

[Moor Larkin]

Where's celtfilm gone?................



If I was Scottish and watching Braveheart and bothered about it's historical accuracy....... I'd be fuming that my ancestors were shown as like Highland cattle living in Highland shit, all my Nobles were conniving, murdering thugs and the only decent bloke for miles: one William Wallace, was betrayed to the English king by a true hero of Scottish independence: Robert-The-Bruce............ who was displayed as a weak-minded, dithering coward!



How dare they so distort my celtic roots..........



Fortunately my celtic roots are Irish........ One of the reasons my ancestors came to England was probably because the Scottish came to Ulster...... What a tangled web has been woven by the spiders of history.



As Graeme says........ it's just a movie!

[penfold]

name='GRAEME']It was a fictionalised story about duty and humanity - I would reject the claim that it was "sarcastic" - "his real-life role turned intoa travesty for mass ridicule". That's certainly not my experience as a viewer! it was not meant as a tribute to real life individuals - I guess that's why the names were changed?





All I can say is that if that attitude were taken there would be very few films made based on true events - apart from strict drama-documentaries.





A film like Bridge - or Braveheart - should not purport to be "history" when it is not. But enjoyable and artistic films should continue to be made as the makers see fit - leave the histroy book at the door!

I've split your reply so as to comment on these bits individually. Hope that's OK.



Para 1...Alec Guinness's role...if you were his real-life counterpart (name changed or not) how would you feel if your struggle for survival of you and your men was reduced to a character who borders on collaboration, when the reverse was true? I simply cannot imagine how the poor man must have felt.



Para 2....Not necessarily....The Dam Busters is riddled with inaccuracies for various reasons, but it stayed within the spirit of the truth so people forgive it more. Gibson isn't portrayed as a collaborator or sex fiend or anything else other than what he was in real life...a bit of a martinet given a near-impossible task,trying to get as many of his crew back at the end of it.



Para 3...I agree absolutely....if the film had been Bridge over the River XYZ, or The Dam across the River XYZ, then I would not have a problem with it whatsoever...but putting it at a specific time and place negated the point of changing the names (although Saito's wasn't)..it wasn't obviously a work of pure fiction. It should have been placed somewhere else, preferably fictional, or at a different time, if the filmmakers wanted a filmic psychological study of the military mind cracking under strain, it would not have mattered a jot. It did matter a lot to the people who worked on the Kwai crossing of the Burma Railway. I would leave the History book at the door....if the filmmakers had.



The Man Behind the Bridge: Colonel ... - Google Book Search

[Steve Crook]

name='GRAEME']Well, quite. But you can say the same about "patriots" everywhere. "Englishness" is as much a concoction of myth, half-truth and distortion. Robin Hood anybody?



What my Scottish co-nationalists were roaring with was the pure spirit of national pride. Facts don't matter. The biker wasn't taking the piss - he was as high as a kite on a heady brew of jingoism and romance.



Anti-Englishness is an important factor here too.



My point was that the film DID misrepresent "Celtic national identity" - by suggesting that it exists in the first place and peddling the myths such a concept feeds off.



Is there any harm?



Do films have to be historically accurate? What about Bridge on the River Kwai - most of it is pure fabrication. Great film. The English only get upset when the lies are painting an unfavourable picture - and I guess that's the same for the "Celts".

There's no harm, as long as nobody takes them seriously.

But they've now got a parliament and the ability to raise additional taxes from anyone north of the border. That'll make them popular



But surely there's enough for Celts (and even the English) to be truly proud of in their history without making things up or grossly distorting things?



Steve