Unionist Screws: Depictions of Northern Irish Unionists in British and Irish Cinema

Abstract

This article explores the representation of Northern Irish unionists in British and Irish cinema by investigating a dominant way that the community has been portrayed in fiction films: as prison officers and orderlies. Specifically, Northern Irish unionists have been portrayed as prison officers and orderlies employed in the Maze and Armagh prisons during the period of republican unrest which culminated in hunger strikes in 1981, and a mass prison escape in 1983. The films that depict, to varying degrees, these characters as belonging to the Northern Irish unionist community include Some Mother’s Son (1996), H3 (2001), Silent Grace (2001), Hunger (2008) and Maze (2017). In these films, the typical representation of Northern Irish unionists reflects both the community’s general ‘othering’ in cinema and the film-makers’ primary interest in Irish nationalism when depicting Northern Ireland. Thus, unionist characters are usually depicted abjectly and feature only as adjuncts to narratives that are principally about Irish nationalists. This study aims to build upon a range of critical work in this area and to add to broader debates that have identified this cinematic deficit whereby Northern Irish unionists are depicted more critically and less frequently than Irish nationalists.