heritageatplay

Posts Tagged ‘context’

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Bloody Sunday Revisited

In History, Politics on June 15, 2010 at 3:48 pm

Marchers remember the victims of Bloody Sunday as they walk to David Cameron's presentation in Derry

Today in Derrry, Northern Ireland, British PM David Cameron apologized for the “Bloody Sunday” attacks of British Paratroopers on January 30, 1972. The attacks killed 13 civilians who had been marching in a civil rights demonstration, and were among the primary catalysts in the subsequent decardes of violence in Northern Ireland often called “the Troubles.”

Cameron’s apology comes with the completion and publication of the Saville Inquiry, a 12 year investigation into the 1972 confrontation that cost the UK £190.3 million and involved over 2500 individuals giving testimony. The document was released today simultaneously in Dublin and London.

As the BBC reports,

Mr Cameron also apologised for the events of January 30th, 1972, which left 14 people dead. “The Government is ultimately responsible for the conduct of the armed forces,” he said. “And for that, on behalf of the Government, indeed on behalf of our country, I am deeply sorry.”

Mr. Cameron’s unequivocal apology marks a major milestone in the struggle for peace in Northern Ireland. For many Ulster Nationalists, such a move from the PM marks a major shift in the British Government’s approach to issues in Northern Ireland. Moreover, the Saville Inquiry’s completion overturns a former inquiry (led by Lord Widgery) that largely exonerated the Paratroopers and angered/alienated many Irish Catholics in Ulster whose 1972 march was motivated by concerns of inequal treatment in the governance of Northern Ireland.

But, even as this new inquiry heals rifts in the communal memory of the Bogside and Derry, it has also alienated some Unionists for re-writing the history of the Troubles and highlighting some victims over others.

As the Irish Times reports,

Unionists have claimed that the inquiry was responsible for creating a hierarchy of victims.  “Saville addresses one set of victims, those who lost loved ones on 30th January 1972. The pain and grief of other families will wrongly be largely ignored,” Ulster Unionist leader Sir Reg Empey said.

And yet, even the act of reopening and re-examining this controversial event represents new hope that reconsidering history can help heal a fragile present.

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At-Swim-Two-Birds

In Culture on June 9, 2010 at 2:42 am

Flann O'Brien, born Brian O'Nolan, was a Irish Civil Servant with a penchant for fiction.

It appeared as an innocuous bit of Irish culture. It was quoted in The GAA: An Oral History. It simply kept showing up. So I went ahead and checked At-Swim-Two-Birds out of the library with the intention of reading it. And only then did I begin to understand the complexities involved with such a task.

At-Swim-Two-Birds is by convention (or lack of a more appropriate designation) a novel. Yet, in it’s fierce desire to consume its own mission as a novel by layering narrative realities upon one another, it is more aptly a work of “meta-fiction.” Which is to say the novel is more concerned with fiction becoming aware of itself than telling any certain story.

Of the stories that At-Swim-Two-Birds does manage to tell, quite a few of them required some further contextualization. Drawing unannounced and frequently on Irish  Mythology, Flann O’Brien’s book (re) tells the stories of Finn Mac Cool and Mad King Sweeney. These characters are drawn against their will into a the construction of a novel by an author called Trellis, who is actually the creation of the story’s protagonist, a lazy college student second-guessing his own attempts to write a modern novel. Put simply, At-Swim-Two-Birds is what happened to Irish literature once it was firmly accepted by the population that James Joyce’s Ulysses was a work of genius. Which is to say, this is the child of the insanity after the insanity.

Despite its complexities, or perhaps because of them, I adored reading through this book, and thought secretly throughout the process what a wonderfully insane movie it could make. My personal hopes were that a man like Terry Gilliam might try an adaptation for I think its zany humor and meta-aspirations would suit him. But I recently learned, with equal joy, that Brendan Gleeson of my all-time favorite In Bruges and Gangs of New York (and Harry Potter as Mad-Eye Moody) is currently finishing a script of film adaptation and hopes to begin shooting his adaptation this fall. I, for one, look forward to seeing the results of that effort.

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