Irish Accents, Foreign Voices: Mediated Agency and Authenticity in In the Name of the Father and Fifty Dead Men Walking

Nicole D Ives-Allison

doi:10.15664/jtr.622

Abstract

<div class="page" title="Page 1"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"> <span>Given the intensity of narrative contestation over the public history of and discourse around the modern period </span><span>of Northern Irish civil conflict known locally as ‘the Troubles’, for filmmakers from outside of Northern Ireland to be seen as making a legitimate contribution to existing debates, there is a pressure for their film texts to be read as ‘authentic’. This desire for authenticity fundamentally shapes the narrative approach taken by these filmmakers. Various filmmaking strategies have been employed in the pursuit of authenticity, but both Jim Sheridan’s </span><span>In the Name of the Father </span><span>(1993) and Kari Skogland’s </span><span>Fifty Dead Men Walking </span><span>(2008) have taken a distinctly narrative approach, relying upon local written autobiographical material. However, the way in which Sheridan and Skogland have sought to deploy the authenticity embedded in locally grounded source material flirts with self-defeatism as both films problematically obscure<br /> the limitations on agency imposed by the filmmakers on the<br /> local voices upon who claims of authenticity, and thus the films’ legitimacy, depend. </span> </div></div></div>

Highlights

Given the intensity of narrative contestation over the public history of and discourse around the modern period of Northern Irish civil conflict known locally as ‘the Troubles’, for filmmakers from outside of Northern Ireland to be seen as making a legitimate contribution to existing debates, there is a pressure for their film texts to be read as ‘authentic’
Further Conlon and his father were very rarely in the same prison and never enjoyed the privilege of sharing a cell, a detail which in itself poses a serious challenge to the film’s claims of truthfulness and realism. (Conlon, 1993: 160; Barton, 2004: 169) in spite of the surface level appearance of events and conditions as ‘naturally occurring’, the circumstances by which the audience comes to learn of Conlon’s early life are both artificial and deliberately manufactured. They reflect the spatio-temporal constraints around the diegesis set by Sheridan in accordance with his individual narrative focus, one which privileges the exploration of a melodramatic father-son relationship at the expense of historical accuracy, fidelity to the source material or a serious exploration of the broader social and political issues at play. (Barton, 2004: 170-171; Farley, 2001: 205-206) This in turn serves to highlight the way in which the perceptual diminishment of the role of the filmmaker can serve to undermine the film’s claims to authenticity and, by extension, truthfulness and realism
There are numerous similarities between Irish filmmaker Jim Sheridan’s In the Name of the Father and Fifty Dead Men Walking by Canadian filmmaker Kari Skogland

Summary

Framing and Fidelity in In the Name of the Father

Turning to the case studies at hand, in addition to rooting their claims to authenticity in their autobiographical source material, In the Name of the Father and Fifty Dead Men Walking are examples of critically and commercially successful Troubles films directed by filmmakers from outside of Northern Ireland. Of the narrative inconsistencies between autobiography and film, perhaps the most glaring is that where In the Name of the Father uses the months immediately preceding the Guildford pub bombing as its temporal origin point, the first several chapters of Proved Innocent, which amount to approximately 10% of the total book, are dedicated to exploring Conlon’s early life in West Belfast It is in Conlon’s description of his childhood and adolescence where key aspects of his character and disposition are openly explored, from his street hustler attitude to work to his penchant for drug-taking, his distrust of violent politics and his strong but troubled commitment to his family. They reflect the spatio-temporal constraints around the diegesis set by Sheridan in accordance with his individual narrative focus, one which privileges the exploration of a melodramatic father-son relationship at the expense of historical accuracy, fidelity to the source material or a serious exploration of the broader social and political issues at play. (Barton, 2004: 170-171; Farley, 2001: 205-206) This in turn serves to highlight the way in which the perceptual diminishment of the role of the filmmaker can serve to undermine the film’s claims to authenticity and, by extension, truthfulness and realism

Questions of Truth and Authenticity in Fifty Dead Men Walking

Findings

Conclusion