Prosperity and depictions of Irish working class September 11, 2007
Posted by franklittle in Culture, Film and Television, Ireland, Media and Journalism, Society, Television Shows, media.trackback
Some time ago we had a very good discussion on depictions of urban working class culture in Ireland. A number of contributors argued that depiction of class and culture issues were largely absent from home produced dramas and certainly nothing had appeared in some time that dealt with the issues facing people who were severely disadvantaged in their day to day lives.
So, along comes Prosperity, a series of four one hour dramas for RTE from the writer Mark O’Halloran, who wrote Adam & Paul, the second of which aired last night on RTE 2.
Each of the programmes follows a separate character that relates to a commonly perceived section of Irish society. So we have the unemployed teenage single mother. The young boy from a broken home who is the target of bullies. Next week, the main character is long-term unemployed with alcohol problems and the last deals with an asylum seeker separated from her child and struggling to get by. Many of the background characters appear in more than one episode and there are links to one degree or another between the families involved.
So, is it any good? Well, when I say it is one of the best home produced drama series I have seen on RTE in a long time, it is more than possible I could be damning it with faint praise, but in reality the two first episodes have been extremely powerful, brilliantly acted and shot. The first conveys the hopelessness and boredom of the single mother cast out of the B&B in the morning to wander the streets. Alienated from family and the state. Someone once described another RTE drama, On Home Ground, as ‘a show where nothing happened, twice’. But while accused of being tedious by some watchers, the very point of the show was to demonstrate just how tedious such a life is, with the days blending pointlessly into each other. The fact that nothing happens is not poor writing or shoddy direction, it’s the entire point of the show.
The episode last night dealt with two young boys wandering around Dublin, dealing with local bullies and family break-up. All I’ll say is the conclusion to the programme was one of the hardest hitting end scenes I have seen on RTE in a long time and I was still numbed by it a couple of hours later when going to bed. That, and the calibre of acting from the numerous young actors involved, and the dialogue, was outstanding.
The series could arguably be criticised from a socialist perspective. Unlike many a Ken Loach film the characters portrayed are essentially passive. Things happen to them. Their interactions with the state, as seen in the first episode and previewed in the next, consists of them accepting, however grudgingly, the decisions made about their lives by the people who are in control. Those who are in control are not challenged and the aggression of their hopelessness is turned on each other.
There’s no trade union militant, community activist, campaigning politician or charity worker organising the people. The programmes are unremittingly bleak, the people seemingly devoid of hope and opportunity. The deliberate choice of unknowns as the lead actors, some of whom were making their television debuts, helps in the depiction of these characters as standing in for a certain section of society. Depressing is too small a word.
And depressingly realistic at that. Most people who are active, or have been active, in politics will acknowledge that working class political activism, especially from those people who are worst off as the main characters in this series are, is notably absent. There’s no hero on a white horse coming for these people. There’s no hope from the political class. There’s simply the continuing quiet nightmare of a daily life that sits uneasily with Ireland’s newly self-confident depiction of itself as a land of espresso macchiatos and holiday homes in Bratislava.
In a neat touch for the internet age, the first two programmes are available in their entirety with director’s commentary on the RTE website, and Monday night’s programme is repeated at the weekend. Highly recommended.
Saw last nights and it was powerful stuff. Agree that it was depressing, but I get depressed myself wondering how there could be a viable political strategy to mobilise people who are outside any sort of trade union, community and certainly left wing structure. My criticism of Ken Loach’s work for example would be that while at his best (Cathy Come Home, Kes) he offers outstanding protrayals of certain working class lives, when he gets on his soap box he often makes a balls of it. Hence ‘Hidden Agenda’ shite in my view, ‘Bread and Roses’ not great, ‘Land and Freedom’ ok in parts, ‘the Wind that Shakes the Barley’ a bit preachey. ‘Ladybird, Ladybird’ made me want to kill myself while ‘Riff Raff’ wasn’t too bad actually I suppose; a few laughs anyway.
Sorry, I know this was supposed to be about ‘Prosperity’ but my point is sometimes grim protrayals of life should be grim without the heroic shop steward riding in to mobilise the downtrodden. Because most of the time (certainly for school mitching sub teens in outer Dublin) that doesn’t happen.
“my point is sometimes grim protrayals of life should be grim without the heroic shop steward riding in to mobilise the downtrodden. Because most of the time (certainly for school mitching sub teens in outer Dublin) that doesn’t happen.”
I agree 100%, but I made reference to such criticism because it is the kind of thing I could see being put forward from a radical/socialist/revolutionary point of view. One awaits the judgment of the TV Critic of the Socialist Worker.
Have to disagree with you on the Loach films. Think Land and Freedom and Wind That Shakes the Barley are superb films. Bread and Roses is a bit disappointing admittedly.
I actually didn’t like it so much, although I’ll immediately agree that it is head and shoulders above the rest of recent RTE drama. The quality of the acting was clearly apparent from the opening scene, the slow and steady pace as you followed the two young characters around the edge of a prosperous society (huge numbers of cranes dotting the impeccably shot skyline) was clearly there, not because of a sluggish narrative or slowness of pace, but to illustrate the tediousness of relative poverty. The dialogue was also refreshingly sharp. Clearly this was good writing.
But it’s that very passivity that I have a problem with, and as you say, left wing film makers often try to avoid such passivity. But in this case it seemed as if the characters were on a conveyer belt of poverty, denied the ability to actively engage to try and change their situation.
Now I agree that there is a certain realism in this. Having lived for a number of years on a council estate I know that there’s always bunches of kids knocking about with nothing to do. I know they start drinking and smoking hash from an early age, but they don’t all do that. Some of them actually try and do something different.
There was an opportunity here to show struggle. To show how some people don’t automatically accept the situation they’ve been born into. Its interesting that you say that “There’s no hero on a white horse coming for these people. There’s no hope from the political class.”
This hits the nail on the head for me. Why must such drama rely on someone coming from the outside to help those who are in the dire situation? The drama looked to me to be created by well meaning liberals who were patronizing the people it was trying to represent. It was depressing for a reason. They wanted to make it depressing because that’s how they feel when they think of all those people stuck in the poverty trap. Now I’m not trying to say that these conditions don’t exist. They do, but its not the whole story, nor is it the most interesting aspect of it. It is often depressing to live in these places, but it’s not depressing all the time, nor are the people in these situations entirely passive. This series conflates passivity with poverty.
Kes is a good example of how someone tries to focus on something to help them escape, even temporarily the environment in which they find themselves. Another good example, and the one I thought of when watching this was Boyz in the Hood. Perhaps the parallel doesn’t seem obvious, but bear with me. Boyz in the Hood showed an active character. He was trying to get the fuck out of Compton by making it into college, but the film showed how easily that person can get dragged back into the violence and mayhem of the poverty trap he was born into. It didn’t feature anyone (middle class liberal, trade unionist, or whatever) on a white horse. He wasn’t saved, nor did he save himself. But you could see his struggle.
I watched the whole first episode and caught the last half of the second. I agree that they’re very well made, the casting is excellent, the dialogue unmistakably authentic. Artistically, then, a huge success.
I’m a little more concerned about them politically. I presume (and maybe I shouldn’t) their creator had some purpose in mind, other than simply reminding us that people like this exist in modern Ireland. Which, of course, we all know. If the idea was to spur viewers (and by implication the Government) into doing something about it, though, I’m not sure it’s gone about the right way. The show is so bleak that at the end I can see viewers just feeling that there’s no hope for these people, and switching off.
I think Donagh’s response is instructive, too, and probably widely shared by a lot of viewers. The Stacy character in particular would be fairly easy to dismiss as bearing some responsibility for her own predicament: why did she get pregnant at 17? Why does she hang around the mall all day instead of finding something useful that she can do – albeit with baby in tow – with her time? Why doesn’t she dump that scumbag?). Of course in real life these questions all have complicated answers; but the programme doesn’t explore them, and consequently people who can’t even imagine what it’s like to be a teenage girl from a council estate can just think to themselves that she could do all of these things if she really wanted to, and that lets the Government off the hook completely. That’s not to deny Donagh’s argument, btw, but people have a tendency to want to see difficult issues in black and white and I worry that the lack of proper context of these issues in this programme just encourages that.
Writing Stacy a personality might have helped, too.
I was curious about the motivation too, and I was suppose that is what disappointed me most. It painted a picture so bleak that it seemed as if there was nothing anybody could do, and the audience could only feel sad and move on. I suppose my mentioning that there are people who try to deal with their situation suggested that those who didn’t were being dismissed as layabouts. Rather I was arguing that in such circumstances the situation is more complicated than the drama would suggest. Dealing with that complexity would have made it more interesting, and indeed more realistic. Also, it was almost completely without a political context. Of course you can’t have everything, and its still streets ahead of the guff that’s been served up in the recent past.
“other than simply reminding us that people like this exist in modern Ireland. Which, of course, we all know.”
It’s rare that a post on Cedar Lounge actually physically causes my jaw to drop but that’s one. The anti-poverty groups isn’t my area of work in the community & voluntary sector but you ask them the biggest problem they face and most of them will tell you, without prompting, that it’s the belief poverty in Ireland has been eliminated or solved. I’ve spoken to broadsheet journalists who’ve told me there is no poverty in Ireland. Not ‘real’ poverty. Not ’serious’ poverty.
I fully accept that most of our readers here know this for the nonsense that it is, but equally I am positive that there were tens of thousands of people watching Prosperity on the successive Monday nights for whom the issue of poverty was something they thought had been dealt with. Look at the recent election campaign. Where did poverty and anti-poverty measures come into the debate?
To me, the aim of the programme was to let people know that these kinds of people, problems and circumstances still exist despite our ‘prosperity’. Accomplishing that in itself would be a major feat considering the media blackout of poverty issues. A good example of this is the statement from CPA last week that there are 300,000 people living in poverty in Ireland. Judging by the media reaction in next days papers it either wasn’t a story worth commenting on; the numbers were wrong; or simple shock.
“There was an opportunity here to show struggle. To show how some people don’t automatically accept the situation they’ve been born into.”
Yes, there was. And maybe in the two remaining shows we’ll see some of that. But there was also an opportunity to show that things really are that grim. That these people have been completely abandoned and frankly, that they need help and assistance to challenge the powers that be. In hour long episodes I think it was a bit much to try and show the individual stories and then a substantial, believable, secondary character who is involved in ’struggle’.
I’m not saying the show was perfect. I’m simply saying that I thought it was more realistic in its depictions, didn’t shy away from portraying just how bad the situation is, did a good job in the time available to it and was well acted and produced.
Worse than the sheer ignorance of the continued existence of poverty in our society is the belief that to continue being poor in a society such as ours must be somehow culpable; if you’re poor while all around are prospering then it’s your own fault.
I thought it was more realistic in its depictions, didn’t shy away from portraying just how bad the situation is
Well, this is true, most RTE drama’s of late have been pretty poor and in their desperate effort to get with the zietgeist, have avoided this topic completely. Certainly poverty is not understood at all and the widening gap between rich and poor suggests that Irish people are happy to cut people like these adrift. I suppose I was thinking that if the characters were more engaged or at least came into conflict with the forces that are keeping them down or casting them off, then at least the audience would be forced to think about why this sort of poverty exists. The Finglas Pony Club isn’t perhaps the best example, but it comes to mind. The council shut it down without any regard for those who have used it for years. They didn’t give a shit. Similarly it would have been interesting to see how these kids are treated at an institutional level, in school or by the Gardai. Perhaps though that would have been too polemical (although easily doable in an hour long episode).
the belief that to continue being poor in a society such as ours must be somehow culpable
I think that belief is widespread unfortunately.
According to a CSO press release “Measuring Ireland’s Progress, 2006”
“The proportion of Irish people at risk of poverty, after pensions and social transfer payments were taken into account, was 20% in 2005. This was one of the highest rates in the EU 27. The effect of pensions and social transfers on reducing the at-risk-of-poverty rate was low in Ireland compared with other EU 27 countries.”
This is despite the fact that Ireland also has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the EU 27. I don’t need to bandy facts around here, but my concern was that the drama made the characters seem too much on the periphery and ignored the scale of the problem or how endemic it is.
Also the main characters were the victims of bad relationships, an abusive partner in the first episode and a disinterested absent father in the second. This seems to be standard fare for the representations of the working class or those who suffer from poverty. Again, I believe its good that the depictions were realistic and the dialogue authentic. I just worry that it’s too easy for it to be dismissed. Judging by the plaudits its got so far, I’m probably wrong.
‘Victims of bad relationships’
I’ve been reading a fair bit of Black American History recently, and one of the issues that comes up a lot is the chronic poverty of African- Americans compared to other ethnic groups who seem more able to ‘bootstrap’ themselves out of the ghetto. One of the reasons usually given is the relative weakness of the family unit in black society and the high number of single parent – nearly always the mother – families. The crux is deciding whether this is a) the cause of poverty or b) a consequence thereof. The right obviously prefer the first; black people are poor because of sexual indisciplne etc….
I think part of the reason that problems like this – and alcohol and drug abuse – so often enter the picture when discussing poverty is this; whereas in middle class society, marital break- up, alcoholism, and so on – may have adverse financial repercussions, they won’t be fatal; on the other hand, so many people live a week away from disaster in working class society, that separation, illness or addiction have catastrophic consequences. Therefore, really hopeless poverty often has a complicating factor that both explains the situation and works against its resolution.
What works against understanding is of course this; middle class viewer sees Stacey and thinks; well my sister/ cousin/ friend had a baby when she was young and she was able to cope, not thinking that ’she was able to cope’ only because of access to ’social capital’ (horrible phrase -reducing ties of affection and obligation to ‘capital’ -I digress) unavailable to the Staceys of this city; education, health insurance, and time….. ditto for middle class druggie able to afford John of Gods/ the Priory etc and with familynetwork intact to get him back into society when he ‘gets his act together’ compared with working class version, already cut adrift from family for their own protection, coming out of the ‘Joy with absolutely no future to look forward beyond the eternal same.
What needs to be shown is that poverty – low wages, bad housing, bad education, bad health care – is the problem, not the normal range of human problems that are greatly magnified by poverty .
Frank:
The anti-poverty groups isn’t my area of work in the community & voluntary sector but you ask them the biggest problem they face and most of them will tell you, without prompting, that it’s the belief poverty in Ireland has been eliminated or solved.
I’ve no idea why you think I was suggesting otherwise. Maybe I wasn’t clear enough, but the basic point of my post was that people tend to dismiss the Stacys of this world as being victims of their own failings, rather than recognising it for the deep-rooted, structural problem that it is.
Of course they wouldn’t see it as “poverty”, because that implies a chronic condition outside the person’s control.
[...] Ireland is rarely, if ever, analyzed. Irish blogging has, at least, begun to tackle this topic, but outside of its world and more serious academic discourse, the story is a dead parrot. Picture the almost universal [...]
Stacey’s predictament is her own fault. If she spent more time trying to better herself than lying on her back, then perhaps she could aspire to greater things?
Phil – so poor people are not allowed to have sexual relations? There was no evidence that all Stacey did was lie on her back – that is a typically ignorant stance to take. Her getting pregnant, while a mistake perhaps born out of mideducation or lack of education, is a mistake that crosses class, race and social standing and effects all walks of life. To imply that she would have invested her time more wisely by ‘bettering herself’ than finding comfort from the horror of home in the arms of a man she believed loved her is over simplifying life and human behaviour. She is human despite her situation. Babies are born as a result of sex. Sex is a natural human desire. Shit happens.