‘Don’t Use Your Own Accents!’: Representations of Dublin’s Accents in Contemporary Film

Abstract

Against a history of misrepresentation in Irish film, whether it be the recurrence of the ‘stage Irishman’ in early Irish cinema, to the challenged representations and romanticization of the Irish landscape on screen, or images of violence (Rockett, Gibbons & Hill, 1988), public interest and commentary on Irish cinema is wrought with criticism of ‘false’ representations of Ireland and its people. However, more than any other of these criticized aspects of cinematic Ireland, representations and misrepresentations of the Irish accent have sparked some of the most sustained and common popular criticism. With post-Celtic Tiger Irish cinema frequently utilizing a more socio-realist aesthetic, the fact remains that both anecdotal and online evidence (to mention the broadest reference Internet sweep) shows that the words ‘Irish film accent’ generate pages of search results that all seem to follow the same theme: ‘The Worst Irish Accents in Hollywood Movies’ (Corrigan, 2015), ‘Begorrah, Sure Is That for Real? Ten Worst Irish Accents in Film’ (Phelan, 2014), ‘Top 10 Dreadful Fake Irish Accents in Films’ (Lee, 2013) and ‘The Worst Irish Accents in Film History’ (Selby, 2014) being representative examples. The sheer volume of popular criticism of portrayals of Irish accents on screen indicates both a massive popular interest, but also an area so relatively under-analysed within Irish film studies.