Blarney by Page and Screen: CofC Professors Explain Why the Irish Make Great Lit and Film

On this episode of Speaking Of…College of Charleston, we have a great conversation with Joe Kelly, director of Irish and Irish American Studies and Colleen Glenn, director of film studies at the College about Irish books and movies. The colleagues first met playing softball with faculty from the English department and quickly became friends. They put their heads together and took a group of students to Ireland for a study abroad program, traveling from Dublin to Galway.

“When we do those visits, the students follow our discussions of films, like In The Name of the Father and they're really able to see the landscape and the culture that inspired the movie they they saw on the big screen,” says Glenn.

They recount trips around Ireland, emphasizing locations featured in Irish films such as Dublin, Galway, Connemara, and Belfast. Films discussed include The Quiet Man, Michael Collins and Banshees of Inisherin among others, illustrating the socio-political history and cultural identity of Ireland. The episode also touches on significant Irish cinematic movements and celebrates the storytelling legacy and literary richness of Irish culture.

The way Kelly’s describes the landscape, and the novels are a clear indicator of his knowledge and love for the country. He’s an in-demand professor for a reason.

“John Huston did a film version of The Dead, which is a very quiet story,” says Kelly. “And it ends with this beautiful scene where Gabriel Conroy is looking out the window at the snow falling onto the streets of Dublin and he imagines it falling across the mutinous Shannon waves and the bog of Allen and out onto the crooked crosses in the graveyard where Michael Furey lay buried. It's the most beautiful prose I've ever read and it's a absolutely beautiful 10 minutes of cinematography too.”

Featured on this Episode:

Joe Kelly, director of Irish and Irish American Studies at the College of Charleston, has been studying and writing about Irish literature since the 1990s, and in the last fifteen years he’s been writing narrative histories about American democracy. His next book, The Biggest Lie: A Hundred Years of American Fascism, 1818-1918, will be out this time next year.

Colleen Glenn, director of film studies at the College, teaches courses on film history and American Cinema as well as special topics courses on topics like Irish Cinema & Hollywood Auteurs. In addition to co-editing an anthology on stardom, she has published on Frank Sinatra, Jimmy Stewart, and other film stars.

Irish movies mentioned
The Quiet Man (John Ford, 1952)
The Crying Game (Neil Jordan, 1992)
In the Name of the Father  (Jim Sheridan, 1993)
Michael Collins (Neil Jordan, 1996). 
The Wind That Shakes the Barley (Ken Loach, 2006
’71 (Yann Demange, 2014). 
Hunger (Steve McQueen, 2008). 
The Field. (Jim Sheridan, 1990)
**Banshees of Inisherin. (writ and dir by Martin McDonagh, 2022) 
Philomena (Stephen Frears, 2013)
The Magdalene Sisters (Peter Mullen, 2002)
Small Things Like These (Tim Mielants, 2024) (Claire Keegan wrote the book).
Waking Ned Divine (Kirk Jones, 1998)-
The Commitments (Alan Parker (ENGL), 1991). 
Once. Glen Hansard (John Carney, 2007). 
My Left Foot (Jim Sheridan, 1989). 

Transcript

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On this episode of speaking of college of Charleston, we talked to faculty members, Joe Kelly. and Colleen Glenn about Irish literature and film. Joe Kelly is a director of Irish and Irish American studies at the college and has been studying and writing about Irish literature since the 1990s. And in the last 15 years, he's been writing narrative histories about American democracy. His next book, The Biggest Lie, 100 Years of American Fascism, 1818 to 1918, will be out this time next year. Colleen Glenn, Director of Film Studies at the College, teaches courses on film history and American cinema, as well as special topics courses on topics like Irish cinema and Hollywood auteurs. In addition to co editing an anthology on stardom, she has published on Frank Sinatra, Jimmy Stewart, and other film stars. We're so grateful to both of them for coming into the studio today. to talk to us about Irish literature and Irish films in the month of March in honor of St. Patrick's Day. Let's get started. Joe, you teach Irish literature and Colleen, you teach film studies. So how did the two of you end up, um, teaching a study abroad class in Ireland? I know that was a couple of years ago, but, but please tell us about that experience. You want me to take that? Sure. Colleen? Uh, well, my version of the story begins on the softball field. Colleen and I, uh, were, were both players on a, on a softball team dominated by English department folks, but, uh, other, other people in humanities too. So we've known each other for a very long time since before there was an Irish studies program. And, you know, when we put Irish studies together, what I did is I cobbled together faculty from various departments who were all doing Irish things. But had not been coordinated together in under, you know, one umbrella. So when we put it together, we had somebody in history, we had somebody in music, uh, we had a medievalist in the English department, myself, who's a modernist. Colleen, film studies, uh, anthropologist, someone in political science, et cetera. And we just sort of pooled our forces together. And I've been taking students to Ireland since I think 2004, 2005 maybe was the first time. And, you know, somewhere in the teens, we decided to try to expand that program. yeah, so that, that was a wonderful trip. And that was the first time I expanded it beyond two people. Up to that point, it'd be, it had been myself and a medievalist, uh, in the English department. And we tried to start making it larger. And it was, it became much more robust. We had more, more students involved. Different kinds of students. Where would you go? Uh, we were based in Dublin, in Drumcondra, which is, uh, you know, on the north side of Dublin, but pretty close, just outside the tourist area, I would say. So we were in, we were staying in dorms from Dublin City University, DCU, their St. Patrick's campus. Um, faculty were staying in all hollows, you know, it's kind of Hogwarts y, you know, the facilities. Um, but we were outside the city center. So the students were having Uh, you know, an experience that was like they were Dubliners, you know, when they went to the pub, it was not filled with Americans. They were the only Americans there. Um, which is exactly what they want, right? That's what you want for a study abroad program. And it was, it was far enough away to, we're about a mile and a half from Trinity College, I guess, if you want, if you know Dublin, that's kind of in the center of the city. And which meant, It encourages students to take public transportation, they have wonderful double decker buses in Dublin. So they all had metro cards where they could use, use on any of the trains or, or the buses. So it encourages students to, to really kind of branch out and, and, and become Dubliners. But then, so we're based in Dublin and, and there, and not to go too far away from film, let me bring it back to you. There's a lot of Irish film set in Dublin and, you know, it's typical. European metropolitan cop capital, like half the people in the country live in Dublin. Um, but then we went out West and, and that's, you know, territory for a lot of films that Colleen was, uh, teaching are, are set out in the rural West. So Ireland is kind of interesting. It's got that very urban cosmopolitan place, but it's also got more rural than you can really imagine you're going to find in Europe. I'm here in some remote places sometimes. Yes. Yeah. So just to stay on that for a minute, when you were, went to the more rural areas, what kind of movies just. Yeah. So, um, yeah, we, we took a trip, a week long trip and we went, um, west to Galway and then up through Connemara, which is really the rugged, very scenic part of Ireland that, you know, when most of us think of Ireland, we're thinking of those lush green hills and the, you know, the, the mountains kind of rising up from these, uh, lakes. And. both, uh, the quiet man, and the field were, were filmed, in the West, the quiet man. We actually took a trip, um, to visit the town where it was filmed. It's a little town called Kong C O N G and County Mayo, which is just North of Connemara. It's actually, my family is from near that area, Fallon Road. Yeah. I think they're from a small, even a smaller place in Ballinrow, but that's the closest place on the map. the field was actually filmed, uh, right in and around Lenan, which is a beautiful tiny village where we stayed both in 2017 and 2018 with our students. And it's, just a gorgeous, place, the Bantees of Ennishirin, though it's set in a fictional Island is also set, you know, out West. So, That movie came out after our trips, but I just mean, if you've seen that film and you'll have an idea of what the West, uh, part of Ireland looks like. And then we actually, went up North to Belfast and did the Giant's Causeway and also toured Belfast and had a really interesting talk with a historian about the, the murals and just the, the conflict, um, between. Ireland and Northern Ireland, um, and how that's represented in the, various, monuments and memorials and murals. And films. I mean, a good third of the films that you would know, you know, are all about the Troubles. And, and Say Nothing. Patrick Redden Keefe. That was such a good book. Yeah. And so just to give listeners a little bit of idea, you are together with your students about the Troubles. English students, film students. And, and as you're traveling along, you're te are you teaching them about like, the history of Irish literature and um, or are you teaching about specific films and like, this was filmed here and that was filmed there? how do you make that, that hands-on experience meaningful for them? Yeah, I would say, uh. It's a mix of what you were saying, the way I teach literature and my area of expertise is the 20th century, uh, and so I teach literature, especially as it interacts culturally and politically with Irish society. So. In the beginning of the 20th century, really beginning in the 1890s, is a movement called Irish Revival, Irish Renaissance, Celtic Revival. It goes by various names. WB Yeats is one of the more famous people associated with it. But that group, as they were Uh, reestablishing an Irish national literature. They were also creating the nation. And then after Ireland gets its independence, its identity is based on the work, the cultural work that those folks did. And that gets translated by the time we get into the making of film. That, that begins to get translated. Into film. So they all go together. You know, I think it'd be pretty hard to teach Irish film without any kind of reference to, you know, these, these great social movements that are going on in the country. 20th century is a very eventful century for the Irish. Yeah. I also think it's just a powerful experience to You know, to visit the sites where some of these films are shot, particularly films that are based, on, on real facts and history. So, you know, if I teach a film like Michael Collins and then we go to the post office on, uh, it's O'Connell street, right. And you can see the bullet holes in the, in the building. I mean, it, it makes an impact on students and, uh, you know, with Kong, it was a little bit more lighthearted as if we, if we talk about the quiet man, I can get into that, but still it's still, I think, A big kick, you know, to kind of see, various and see what inspired John Ford, when he made that film. And, I would also say it's particularly in Belfast. I think it's, it's powerful, you know, and these, when we do those visits, they follow our discussions of films, like in the name of the father and such. So they're really able. kind of seeing, I guess you could say, uh, the landscape that, and the culture that inspired the movie that they saw on the big screen. and Joe, you've been teaching students about Irish literature and culture for years. Um, for listeners who might not be as well versed in the subject, why is Irish literature so celebrated? And I mean, I've only been there once, but to me, it's such a culture of storytellers. And when I was there, everywhere I went had these amazing bookstores that I just, oh, these, all these amazing local bookstores that were packed with people and is that just a myth or are they truly a culture of storytellers? And then why is it because, why? Yeah, they're very, it's not a myth at all. They're very literary. And your experience of bookstores, I think, is, is. not unusual at all. They love their bookstores. They're everywhere, you know, um, and they, and they're, you know, they celebrate their writers. The statues, when you go through Dublin, they're statues of poets and writers, you know, they're, you have the occasional general or something like that, but really it's mostly people, you know, people who produce culture, who are the, the celebrated figures. Um, if you think, Ireland is about the size of South Carolina. Population is about the same as South Carolina. Ireland has had four Nobel laureates in literature. So it's a place kind of like our home, and it's definitely punching above its weight. Um, there's a lot of speculation about why that is. I think one of the more persuasive arguments is that Ireland emerged out of a colonial experience, and when you are a colonized people, your relationship to languages is very complex, very subtle, so it fosters a cleverness, a, um, you know, you use a lot of double entendres, you speak about things that are literally not really what you're talking about, you know, you're used to creating a symbolic language, Because the people who are calling out, you have, you have to be talking about things without the people knowing what you're talking about. usually you can code switch, you know, to use a term that comes out of the, the American experience. so that's, and, and in addition to that, so that's one thing I think your relationship to language is. Very complex and more complex, uh, than somebody who is on the other end and the English would, who are, who are colonizing Ireland. And on top of that, they have a lot to talk about because, because it's a very traumatic experience. And I think a lot of art comes out of trauma. And even if it's not coming out of trauma, you're surrounded by other people who are using language in this wonderful way, this, this innovative, artistic way. And that becomes the milieu that you grow up in. So even if you're not experiencing trauma yourself, you've, you've grown up in a place where it's normal to have five bookstores in the town of 3000 people, you know. And don't you think the, the, this just popped into my head, so I could be totally wrong, but the landscape too, like it's the size of South Carolina, but it's, it's surrounded by these massive. Cliffs and cold, you know, wild oceans and so, and weather is not great for a lot of the year. So you're, I would imagine that that has a little something to do with. Yeah. I think I was just thinking of like pub culture, for example, of like gathering together in places and, you know, and culture. Yeah, I thought you said pop culture. Yeah, pop culture. And I was, I guess I was thinking of, uh, uh, to Amy's point about these, um, more maybe dramatic or even tough. Conditions, but this is true in urban areas too, but where people gather together and tell stories and, and preserve culture through, uh, through stories and music, um, poetry. what's a movie that is a good example of that. Oh, there's so many. Of that pub, pub culture. Oh, the, the, the Inashirin. Actually, the Banshees of Inashirin. Yeah. I mean, that takes place half the movies in a pub, right? Yeah. And just the one pub, you know, that you would go to. And in fact, and we've been to Lenan a couple of times and there's, this is kind of a one horse town. There's one pub and that would, would be the center of, of nightlife, so to speak, if you can call it that. You know, you go and get your pint and. And people are singing and telling stories in their songs. There's, there's a line in James Joyce's Ulysses. The, the unfilmable. novel of the 20th century, which has been filmed twice, but it was very good. Um, that, characters thinking his own head. Oh, wonder, wonderful puzzle, uh, cross Dublin without passing a pub, you know, this, this, this is like, you know, doing, doing your wordle or something like that, you know, you figure it out. Uh, so even in, in. These films that are, that are in the city, the Barrytown Trilogy, the Roddy Doyle films, The Commitments, The Snapper, The Van, the pub is central to society, you know, and you're going to see, I think it'd be a puzzle to, to go through this, our list of movies and find one that doesn't have a pub in it. We should look and and we for listeners to what will include a list in the show notes of of all of the pubs and maybe they can create a puzzle and send it in to us like I found a route I wrote a paper once on did you on pubs on I was. fascinated by traveling around, you know, and going to conferences in, in Europe that there's, there's James Joyce pubs in many different cities. And so I did a, I did a paper on James Joyce pubs versus William Butler Yates pubs, which is kind of link to that in the show notes. I'm sure that's a very good dredge that out, out of the bottom of my computer. Uh, ironically you found out. the really posh sort of upscale. You name your pub James Joyce Pub to try to get a higher clientele. Even though Joyce was very much de classe, while William Butler Yates was pretty close to the aristocracy. So it's the reverse of what you would think, but, but it's interesting. then this is, I'm jumping around a tiny bit here, but, but I'm interested to know how you got into this. I mean, you said you're Irish American yourself, but when you were in college, how did you decide that this was your focus? It was in college, actually, yeah. But, I mean, I grew up the typical Irish American listening to Clancy Brothers albums. My folks are from the Bronx. They grew up in Irish neighborhoods. But we grew up in the suburbs, so we didn't, that kind of ethnicity was listening to records and thinking, Oh, I'm Irish. Isn't that cool? You know, um, but it was in, in college. My, my parents gave me, My sophomore year of college, a bound set of James Joyce's His work, his fiction in, in kind of a handsome, you know, old, old fashioned looking kind of thing. And I read Dubliners, which is his collection of 15 short stories. And there's a, there is a film made from one of those stories. And it blew me away. I knew right away, I fell in love with it. I thought this is head and shoulders, the best writing I've ever seen. It's an opinion I still have. I wrote my dissertation on James Joyce. The first book I wrote was on James Joyce. I teach Joyce. I've been teaching Joyce for 35 years. Uh, and you're still not sick of him. I'm not sick of him. I don't, I don't write as much about him anymore. I've gone on to other things, but no, uh, I, I often run a Ulysses reading group. And when we opened that first page, you know, and we're in the morning of June 16th, I can, I can smell the, the sea salt on the Irish sea coming across the pages. It's wonderful. Yeah. And we. In Dublin, we go to where that scene takes place in the, in the Joyce Tower, south of town. I don't know if you would agree with me, Colleen, about this or not, but, uh, John Huston did a film version of The Dead, which is the novella at the end of that collection I was talking about called Dubliners. Okay. It's a very quiet story. I mean, it's a, it's about a Christmas party. So, I mean, it's festive, but it's not, we're, we're in, inside the same house, almost through the whole thing, then we go, then we go to a hotel. And that's, that's basically the whole thing. This is not about trauma. There, there are no IRA members shooting out in the streets or anything like that. It's a very quiet. Cerebral or, or psychological novel, I should say, or novella, but it's beautifully filmed, absolutely beautifully filmed. And unless I'm mistaken, uh, I think it was John Houston's last film. That sounds right. Yeah. And Angelica Houston starred in it and the final scene. Is this revelatory what, what the term epiphany as a literary critical term was invented by Joyce to talk about what he was doing at the end of the dead. And it, and it ends with this beautiful scene where Gabriel Conroy is looking out the window at the snow falling onto the streets of Dublin and he imagines it falling across. The mutinous Shannon waves and the bog of Alan and out onto the crooked crosses in the graveyard where Michael Fury lay buried. It's the most beautiful prose I've ever read and it's a absolutely beautiful 10 minutes of cinematography too. Painting a wonderful picture just by describing it, um, just to continue on that theme of films. Colleen, what would you, as a film studies professor, what would you recommend for listeners to watch other than we're all going to watch this one now, um, to, to better understand the culture? We've mentioned a few so far, but we're, well, I mean, I think. We're really sort of having two conversations when we talk about Irish films, so that would, you know, one would be how Ireland and how Irish people are represented on film, and the other would be how Irish filmmakers or Irish writers portray Ireland, you know, in literature and film. And while those are connected, it gets rather complicated to sort those out. And sometimes a little contested, I guess. Yes, yeah. And the Irish sometimes rebel against how they're Represented in American. I can imagine for sure. And actually, I'm just to jump off to piggyback off of that comment. And we mentioned the quiet man earlier. And while I don't want to spend too much time on that film, I do think it kind of makes sense to start there. You know, It's probably the most famous film about Ireland to this day, released in 1952. It starred John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara. And It's really the reversal of the typical Irish immigrant story. It's set in the 1920s. And you have the American coming back to Ireland, you know, seeking a better life and his ancestral home, the place where he grew up as a boy. And, it's very much, idealized version of, of Ireland, you know, it's full of humor and charm, but it's also full of stereotypes. So it's very, you know, problematic in that way. Okay. Um, but I think for as problematic as it is, I think it tells us a lot about how Americans view Ireland. Uh, at the very least, it tells us a lot about how John Ford viewed Ireland. And so in that sense, it's really a kind of love letter to Ireland, you know, it's this nostalgic field. A memory of a mythical place that never really existed. Um, but I do think the movie holds a special place in some Irish American's hearts because I think it, it does, I think powerfully represent a, like a homesickness for a place our great grandparents or great great grandparents lived in and left. Um, so I think that's kind of a good starting point. You know, by contrast, I think there's kind of a bit of a leg before you start to see Irish filmmakers, not Irish writers, but Irish filmmakers really start producing films, you know, about Ireland or set in Ireland. Um, but we, we have a whole bunch of those particularly coming out in the nineties. Um, so when you have like Irish screenwriters and filmmakers representing Ireland, it's in a different way. And I would say it's You know, depicting a much more realistic view of Ireland, kind of speaking back against that mythical view of Ireland, often depicted in American popular culture. there's a whole grouping of these films that I would say are historical and political, right? Films like, The Crying Game, In the Name of the Father, Michael Collins, The Cillian Murphy, for those who know him. 71, Hunger, The Field, Banshees of Innishirin. There are more, but a lot of these films deal with either the Irish War of Independence or the subsequent Irish Civil War or the Troubles coming later in the 20th century. Of all of those, if I had to direct viewers, you know, to one of those, I would probably recommend in the name of the father, It's an extremely powerful film directed by Jim Sheridan, um, came out, I want to say in 1993 and it, stars. Daniel Day Lewis as he plays Jerry Conlin, who was in real life, falsely accused of being an IRA terrorist. He was kind of wrong place, wrong time. And he was in prison for many, many years along with his dad, along with his dad and his father died in prison. Oh, wow. But it's, you know, Daniel Day Lewis. So it's just a tremendous performance. Um, and Yeah, it's, it's hard not to get emotional talking about the film because it's so powerful. The, the Irish imagine their, uh, civil rights movement that began in the late 1960s, out of which a lot of these films come, I think they're commenting on that struggle. Which, which ends up becoming violent and becoming the troubles very quickly, but they imagined this struggle in, in the terms of the American civil rights movement and the early marches they were singing. We shall overcome, uh, which is wonderful to hear an Irish accents. Uh, they were inspired by MLK. Uh, it was a nonviolent movement when it began and it was. A movement that was demanding equal rights within the British Empire. So Northern Ireland, or listeners who might not realize this, uh, six counties in Northern Ireland are still attached to, to the UK. Still to this day. So, so the UK is actually four nations, England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. Uh, and the 26 southern counties of the Republic of Ireland, which is a, um, you know, an independent So those six counties, the Catholic population in those six counties were second class citizens, and they looked at their position as analogous to black Americans here in the United States and took their inspiration from that movement. what happened in Ireland that didn't happen here was that in the face of the violence with which these, Nonviolent protesters, uh, you know, when they met that violence, the IRA revived itself and then became, you know, fashioned themselves as the defenders of the Catholic, um, And were quite violent, right? At that point. Yeah, I mean, there were, there were terrorists and they, and, and there were Protestant terrorist groups and the IRA was a secret terrorist group that, that TV show that we just referenced, Say Nothing, uh, based on the book, Say Nothing, which is based on oral histories that were collected at Boston College. Uh, Bloody Sunday is about the event that happened in, in 19th, January of 1972. It was, it was a peaceful protest against the practice of internment where the British would just break into your house and they would arrest the men and take them off to prison camps. And you, you had no right to stand before, uh, a judge. Habeas corpus had been suspended. So it was a protest against this, uh, this practice. And British army troops opened fire. And so if you've heard the term Bloody Sunday, it's probably referring to that event. And U2's song is referring to it. But there's also, Colleen mentioned the film Michael Collins, which came out in 1996. Depicts the original Bloody Sunday, which was during the original War of Independence back in 1918 through 1921. So, the Bloody Sunday in 1972 was actually It was called Bloody Sunday in reference to the War of Independence. Wow. So it's not a surprise that that film about the War of Independence came out in the mid nineties as people are debating, you know, what is going to end up becoming the Good Friday Agreement. Shall we lay down our arms? Should we? Stop fighting and take the gun out of Irish politics, as the phrase goes. So a lot of these films, and I think this is Colleen, why the 1990s is such, I mean, it's a golden age of films made by Irish folks. but I think probably, and, and I'll have to defer to Colleen on this, but I think by that time, now you've got a generation of people who have been involved in the film industry in the United States and, or, or in England. Some of the directors of these films are actually Englishmen. That's right. Um, but now you, you've got a body of people Who are professionals in the film industry, so they can start making their own stuff, um, telling their own stories. And so you get, um, Jim Sheridan is all over Irish film. Some of the films I mentioned, several were directed by him. He also directed My Left Foot. Um, yes. So you might recognize his name from that, but Neil Jordan directs The Crying Game. Were they both, those two directors, are they both Irish or Jim Sheridan is Irish. Yeah, Neil Jordan is too. Neil Jordan's Irish. In any case, yeah, I think Joe's point, we have this generation of Irish filmmakers who've Who are sort of kind of come into their own and, come onto the world kind of stage in the, in the 80s and 90s. Neil Jordan is part of a cultural movement that's called Ireland's Field Day. Uh, Seamus Heaney, who was one of those Nobel prize winners, the poet, he was a member of Field Day. Um, and what, what that group did is, um, they kind of modeled themselves after that movement. Celtic revival that I mentioned at the beginning of the 20th century that helped create the Irish nation. In a way, what Ireland's field day had to do was sort of uncreate the image of Ireland. That had been bequeathed to them by the, by the revival. Uh, so they, they really imagine themselves as, as working collaboratively. Poets, literary critics, playwrights. Brian Friel is a playwright that's associated with it. And the actor Stephen Ray is the most famous actor that comes out of it. And he's, he's in Michael Collins. He's in The Crying Game. Uh, he is a character. And say nothing because he marries Dolores Price, the IRA woman. they do you think that they still I'm just thinking about the differences between here and there. Do you do you think they, Do something unique to encourage, like to keep the next generation just thinking about college students, like continuing to have faith that these are valuable fields of study, you know, like we're here in the United States, we don't need to get into it, but humanities are taking a hit. I think we can go ahead and say out loud that humanities are under attack. Yeah. But I wonder with such a rich culture of film and literature and music. If it's, if they're doing something different, and to continue the next generation and getting involved in telling these stories. Yeah, the government is involved and they, they have, and I think it's called the Irish Film Institute. The Irish Film Institute is right, yeah. Uh, and so they have money that, you know, can concede projects. They definitely, they're, they're very conscious about trying to make sure that they have a new generation of filmmakers coming up. I mean, just in general, the Irish are very invested in their arts and in protecting their arts. We could learn something from them. We, we, we absolutely could. Yeah. That's what you, that's exactly what you guys are doing. So, um, Colleen, we've talked a lot about films telling the kind of male story in Ireland. Are there any that you would mention that That tell the female side of things for sure. And I think there's been a few really important films that have come out that some of you may know, um, that deal with the Magdalene laundries. These were, uh, convents that young unmarried women who became pregnant were sent to. And this practice went on for a very long time. Um, and so films like the Magdalene sisters, Um, Philomena, which was a very popular film and featured Judi Dench. If you remember that movie that came out in 2013. And recently a film was released on the same topic called small things like these based on the book by Claire key. That's correct. Yeah. And I haven't seen it yet, but again, starting the popular killing and it's hard to watch in all of those films, to be honest, are hard to watch. Philomena is by far the one that has the most, comedy in it. But even that is. And this was young pregnant women who were taken into the nunnery. Not necessarily even pregnant. Oh. They might just. Be, you know, hard to handle. I'm sorry. Yes, that's correct. Sometimes just difficult women, right? So women deemed difficult by their families. This, went on from like the 1750s through 1960s. Um, the last one closed in the nineties. Okay. There you go. No, I don't, I don't think people were still 1990s, but these were essentially like work houses, um, abused and where women were kept, um, against their will. If they escape, the police would bring them back. I mean, they were, they were de facto prisons. So this is, you know, a dark chapter of Irish, uh, history. And it wasn't just Ireland who had these, convent homes, by the way. Other countries in Europe did as well and other places, I think. Um, but, but I mean, it's definitely one of the dark chapters of Irish history that I think is finally getting more attention. but we also have some light hearted films that you talk about. Everything's not shown. Some happy things in our own. Yeah, there's actually a lot of really funny, um, movies. Yeah, I think that Barrytown Trilogy is The Roddy Doyle The Roddy Doyle, uh, films beginning with The Commitments. Which is just a really fun film to watch. If anybody has not seen The Commitments, go watch it tonight. I love that movie. Such a great movie. So, the accents, I mean, the characters, it's all about music and uh, uh. And talk about an answer to like the, you know, the more kind of mythical view of the Pastoral Ireland Island that we think of. This is, you know, it's urban, it's the working class Dublin, uh, and it's, you know, just very gritty. Um, and again, they're, they're modeling themselves after black America, you know, that's, that's where they're taking their inspiration. That's right. Yeah. And it's young, like high school kids forming a band and they're all incredibly talented. And for this. Brief period, they create this amazing music together until it falls apart. Right. They, they start feuding. Right. As they're on the brink of success. Right. That's right. Right. Wait a minute. Wait. We just, did we spoil the movie? No, no, no. One of my favorite scenes of that movie is when they do the tryouts. Do you remember? Yes. Door after door. They're all horrible. They just. Shut the door. Yeah. One guy lines up and he thinks, uh, he's like, he has no instrument and he's like, what are you doing? And he goes, I saw a line. I thought everyone was buying drugs. Such a good movie. And romance. There's some romance movies and books and plenty of romantic novels, but for sure. Well, we, I think we mentioned Brooklyn earlier. I don't know. I thought it was a really good film. Based on the novel by, um, Colm Toybien. Colm Toybien. Yes. Yeah. It's an immigrant story, but it's unusual because it's, About immigration in the 1950s, and there were very few Irish coming to the United States relative to Numbers that they came in before which is one of the reasons why that the quiet man is so interesting is that's the 1950s by the time that gets made Most Irish Americans are two three four generations removed from the old country, which is why you have this mythical Edenic version of it But it's interesting to see that film next to, to Brooklyn, see someone coming over in the 1950s and her experience of America. And it's, you know, it's a, it's a powerful film. I think it's a, it is about homesickness and heartbreak and also in a way, kind of about how you can't really go home again, no matter where home is, there's. Which that's such a universal theme of, of home and what is home life and can you go home again? You can't go back. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's told in so many different genres. I thought we started talking about, I know lighthearted movies we're, we're back to, to crying our eyes out. I always bring it back to the, well, once they're good at sadness, they're good at melancholy, that's for sure. Um, we're getting close to time, but I want to make sure we had a couple more questions. Joe, you had mentioned before two films that were, are particularly noteworthy. and maybe mention them and why they're significant for people who are interested in this. Yeah. I will very briefly. The first one is, uh, man of Aaron, Yeah. It's set on the Aaron Islands out in the West. you know, the, the far West of the West coast of Ireland, uh, next stop, New York kind of place. And these are barren, rocky, very difficult living islands. And for the Irish symbolically, these are really important. This is like the Iowa or the Nebraska. When you think of what is the heart of Irish culture, the, uh, the Irish want to get as far away from England as possible. So they, the Aran Island symbolically are the place with the least amount of Anglicization. So the. didn't need to do a lot of de anglicizing to become Irish. Uh, so, uh, an American filmmaker, Robert Flaherty, who's the father or maybe grandfather of documentary film, um, Ken Burns, you know, is descended from, from Robert Flaherty. He went out there for a couple of years and filmed these people and he put together a narrative and, and by today's standards. This is neither anthropology nor documentary. It's really very heavy handed what he did. Um, but on the other hand, at the time, it was taken as an accurate picture of what life was like for these very subsistence level farmers and fishermen out there in the Aran Islands. And it came out in 19. And talk about remote. Yes. Very remote. Yes. And it came out in 1934. And a significant thing about it, there's no reference to England at all. This is when it came out, the Irish took it as, here is the genuine, uh, mirror image. If we look in the mirror, this is what we want to see. We wanna see the man of Aaron. Um, and. You know, Colleen was talking about those Magdalene films. This is, this is one of the consequences of getting their independence. Ireland got its independence, but it became very much, you know, what we would call Christian nationalism today. So the Catholic Church was very interwoven. It was written into the Constitution, um, and very conservative. And, uh, the government had a heavy hand in promoting a certain self image and that self image was rural. It was traditional women's places in the home. It actually says that in the Constitution. Wow. You know? So, the Magdalene, uh, laundries, I think, are, are one consequence of that too. Not, I mean, if you watch The Man of Aaron, there's nothing to do with Magdalene laundries. But it's, it's, it's of a piece, that kind of cultural. Artifact. Um, so that's one. And it's a, it's a brilliant film too. I, I would recommend people to see it. The other that I wanted to mention was Going My Way, which is the film that, uh, and this is, this is, there's a lot of lighthearted moments in this. If you, if you want to have some laughs, watch Going My Way. 1944, it's during World War II, uh, big sort of breakout for Bing Crosby. Uh, Leo McCary is the director and the writer of the story. Uh, Barry Fitzgerald, who plays a minor, I mean, a supporting role in The Quiet Man, is, uh, is in the film. And more than anything else, more than any other film, I think, Going My Way indicates the mainstreaming of Irish Catholics in American society. By 1944, You're no longer, there's no longer any harm from being an Irish Catholic. There's no penalties. There's no, no real prejudice. I mean, there may be in some places, you know, you might not be able to get into some country club or something, but, but. By and large, that film really marks the, the Irish Catholics are now right there in the heart of mainstream America. Won seven Academy Awards. Uh, you know, it was pretty much announced, We're here. And again, just to remind people, I'll put, I'll find links to these where people can watch them. And I'll put that in the show notes. So I'll leave listeners with four recommendations, two serious and two, um, maybe more lighthearted, but one I already mentioned in the name of the father, which I think is absolutely a must, uh, must see a film. I also would recommend 71, which is a great movie. That is about a British soldier who gets separated from his unit after a riot in Belfast in 1971, which was one of the worst times for the Troubles. And he has to survive the night behind enemy lines. And it's, it's a thriller and it's just really, um, terrific. It just explores the complexity of alliances and the conflicts at the heart of the Troubles and just the very confusing how interwoven, uh, they are. Um, just a great movie. But to leave us on a more lighthearted note, one of my very favorite movies, um, set in Ireland is Waking Ned Devine. Oh, I forgot about that. So that's, um, 1998 and it's just this delightful, you know, feel good comedy about a small Irish town who bands together to claim a winning lottery ticket, from a dead man. yeah, and then we already mentioned this one too, but the commitments, I think if you haven't seen it, I would definitely recommend that. And I think you mentioned once earlier, which I absolutely love people know that film because it won an Academy Award for the best original song when it came out in 2007, featuring Glenn Hansard, who's also in the commitments. He is outspan in the commitments. Yeah. So he's one of the band members in the commitments. And then he goes on to greater fame. Well, um, thank you guys so much. We are so appreciative of you coming in here and telling us all these wonderful stories and it just makes me want to book a ticket and go right back there and explore more of that beautiful country. Thanks for having us. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this episode of Speaking of College of Charleston with today's guests Colleen Glenn and Joe Kelly. If you like this episode, please help us reach more listeners by sharing it with a friend or leaving a review. For show notes and more episodes, visit the College of Charleston's official news site. The College Today at today. charleston. edu. You can find more episodes on all major podcast platforms. This episode was produced by Amy Stockwell with recording and sound engineering by Jesse Kunz from the Division of Information Technology.