{"id":35389,"date":"2014-01-13T20:08:38","date_gmt":"2014-01-13T20:08:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=35389"},"modified":"2021-11-23T02:25:28","modified_gmt":"2021-11-23T02:25:28","slug":"the-black-irish-onscreen-representing-black-and-mixed-race-identities-on-irish-film-and-television-galvin-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=35389","title":{"rendered":"The Black Irish Onscreen: Representing Black and Mixed-Race Identities on Irish Film and Television [Galvin Review]"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Black Irish Onscreen: Representing Black and Mixed-Race Identities on Irish Film and Television [Galvin Review]<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Film Ireland<\/a>
\nTemple Bar, Dublin, Ireland
\n2014-01-13<\/p>\n

Steven Galvin<\/strong>, Editor<\/p>\n

Dr Z\u00e9lie Asava<\/a> introduces her book <\/em>The Black Irish Onscreen: Representing Black and Mixed-Race Identities on Irish Film and Television<\/a>, a critical investigation of race in contemporary Irish visual culture which explores concepts of Irish identity, history and nation in relation to screen representations of those who have become known as the \u2018new Irish\u2019.<\/em><\/p>\n

In 2009, Ireland had the highest birth rate in Europe, with almost 24 per cent of births attributed to the \u2018new Irish\u2019. By 2013, 17 per cent of the nation was foreign-born. 2013 has seen a plethora of Irish films exploring the interstices of identity, borderlands and cross-cultural communications in the Irish space: Steve McQueen\u2019s<\/a> 12 Years a Slave<\/em> features Irish-German actor Michael Fassbender<\/a> and Irish-Ethiopian actress Ruth Negga<\/a> in a slavery-era narrative; Neil Jordan\u2019s<\/a> Byzantium<\/em> features Saoirse Ronan<\/a> as an English vampire who falls in love with an all-too human Irish-American in Britain and brings him to Ireland to become immortal; Paula Kehoe\u2019s An Dubh ina Gheal<\/em> [Assimilation<\/em>] looks at the Irish-Aborigines\u2019 of Australia, Joe Lawlor and Christine Molloy positions the Irishman within a transnational, interracial context in Mister John<\/em>; the Boorsma brothers\u2019 Milo<\/em> utilizes the racial narrative of \u2018passing<\/a>\u2019 to illuminate issues of disability and discrimination, centralising an Irish family who are also Dutch-Romanian; and Ama\u2019s storyline on Fair City<\/em> examines the position of illegals in Ireland and the challenges of blending distinctly different cultural values.<\/p>\n

As Fintan O\u2019Toole<\/a> notes, there is no genuine newness in the \u2018new Irish\u2019, as Ireland has a history of cultural and ethnic heterogeneity, but \u2018understanding globalization in the Irish context is as much a task of remembrance as it is of encountering the new\u2019 (2009: viii). Following O\u2019Toole, my book aims to connect the \u2018dislocated continuity\u2019 of racial discourses which have been circulating for many hundreds of years in Ireland and highlights the need to break down essentialist conceptualisations of Irishness by asserting its diversity, nonfixity and instability.\u00a0 As racial representations tend to be focused on black\/white issues, the book reflects this by looking at dominant screen representations of the \u2018new Irish\u2019 as non-white. However, it does also examine other marginalised identities in Ireland by referencing Jewish, Romanian, Traveller and a variety of Eastern European characters in brief. There is still much more work to be done on this subject and it is my hope that this book will serve as a contribution to that dialogue. The book asks how and why black and mixed-race characters are represented in Irish screen culture, and how this fits into broader shifts in the visual industries, in national politics and in the international landscape…<\/p>\n

Read the entire review here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Black Irish Onscreen: Representing Black and Mixed-Race Identities on Irish Film and Television [Galvin Review] Film Ireland Temple Bar, Dublin, Ireland 2014-01-13 Steven Galvin, Editor Dr Z\u00e9lie Asava introduces her book The Black Irish Onscreen: Representing Black and Mixed-Race Identities on Irish Film and Television, a critical investigation of race in contemporary Irish visual […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,5,8413,28,8],"tags":[16468,246,16746,245],"class_list":["post-35389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-book-reviews","category-communications","category-europe","category-media-archive","tag-film-ireland","tag-ireland","tag-steven-galvin","tag-zelie-asava"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35389"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35389\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62353,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35389\/revisions\/62353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}