The Heritage of Elegy in The Crying Game (1993)

Abstract

Irish literature has a long, elegiac history. In the past hundred years, political conflict, nationalism, and behaviors of mourning have became infused in Irish artistic representation, most notably through the cultural phenomenon now known as the Irish Literary Revival. Participants in the revival mixed poetry, politics, and social movements into their art. Specifically, the Irish sensibility produced a new sort of irony and ambivalence in artistic representation. Neil Jordan's film The Crying Game (1993) is indebted to this literary heritage. His film not only portrays the complicated nature of the politics, violence, and tragedy that surrounds the Troubles and Anglo-Irish relations, it also shows us that romanticizing violence, or using nostalgia to glorify the past, no longer communicates suffering sufficiently or accurately, and does not necessarily pro vide consolation. The Crying Game constitutes a modern elegy that transforms some of the traditional conventions of elegy to represent the complexity of nationalist issues.