Conclusion: a Masculinity of ‘Transcendent’ Defeat?

Abstract

To the extent that a cohesive narrative arc is discernable in the story of masculinities in Irish film, it is one of short-lived cohesion, in which what David Gerstner (2006: 30–1) refers to as a sense of ‘nonself-conscious selfhood’ was briefly achieved, followed by a period of intense deconstruction (the First Wave), and subsequent waves of re-construction (the second wave, the ‘Lad Wave’ and a new, more contemplative, wave evident in the work of Darragh Byrne, John Carney and Lenny Abrahamson). In the course of the ‘doldrum decades’ of filmmaking, from the 1940s to the 1970s, the non-self-conscious Gaelic Manhood that informed the early films discussed in Chapter Three effectively came to stand for an oppressive brand of state nationalism that the First Wave set about exposing and critiquing. Although they were strongly influenced by European and American film and social movements, their focus was firmly on the local, on illuminating the darker or hitherto invisible aspects of Irish history and nationalist myth-making. Speaking of his own work during this period, Bob Quinn comments:

Instead of aiming for the broad canvas I have been making notes, sketches, miniatures, documenting small places and small people; instead of dealing with eternal human verities as understood by a homogenous audience of popcorn eaters, I seem purposely to have been making my oeuvres as obscure as possible, in a language little known outside Ireland, in a community equally rather despised by progressive Irish people (Quinn, 2000: 27).