Northern Irish unionist representation in cinema has been the topic of discussion in some circles for a long time now. When I first moved to Belfast, it was a conversation I found fascinating. Republicans had all sorts of disadvantages to deal with, yet they have emerged with a canon of cinematic depictions they can point to proudly. Ascendancy, The Long Good Friday, Hidden Agenda, The Devil’s Own, The Jackal, An Everlasting Piece, H3, Silent Grace, Hunger and Maze are just some of these films. Unionism had every advantage that came with having a state built in its image, yet, what can it point to?
Shipbuilding in Belfast once represented pro-union Protestant power and influence. It’s a cruel irony that these jobs are gone and that the former shipyards are now a post-industrial hub for American film and television production companies. An industry that will seemingly never have any interest in telling the types of stories belonging to the people and community who used to work there.
I found it interesting how unionists had so much in common with practitioners of Third Cinema – a film movement that gave a semblance of agency to developing world countries in the face of neo-colonialism - yet how any association with the ideology would be laughable given the historical context.
In my mind at the time, it was a phenomenon that had the potential to make me reassess just about all I knew about the media and power dynamics. Yet, somewhat paradoxically, it also spoke to culture wars happening not just in Ireland but around the world.
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With the protracted Brexit fallout and a renewing of the discussion of how unionists would fit in a future united Ireland, I felt that an attempt to understand unionist concerns regarding their representation in the media was more important than ever.
A proper assessment of the community’s representation in film was particularly difficult due to the fact that at the core of the unionist identity is an imbricated British identity – this is an identity that, unlike Northern Irish unionism, has been well catered for in cinema. Think of all those war films and period dramas. All those stiff upper lips and well-mannered heartthrobs.
Screening Ulster: Cinema and the Unionists marks the first time such an extensive study has been undertaken into the unionist community’s representation on the big screen. It traces the history of unionists in cinema from the emergence of depictions of both nationalist and unionist communities in social-realist dramas in 1980s British and Irish cinema to today and Branagh’s Belfast, through periods such as those focused on violent paramilitaries in the 1990s and irreverent comedy after the peace agreement.
The book also explores many of the possible explanations for nationalists being depicted more frequently and more favourably. Is it the result of an Irish nationalist bias in Hollywood? Is it because there are no unionist directors? Is it because of the Shankill Butchers? Is it Ken Loach’s republicanism, or perhaps John Ford’s? Is it because of DUP intransigence? Is it because of the empire-rebellion dynamic in Star Wars?
What it is about the medium of film – rather than literature, theatre, or television – that produces such portrayals is also analysed.
What is confirmed is that an abject portrayal of unionists has dominated portrayals and that the orthodoxy in such films is of a soft nationalist kind. Loyalist violence is also seldom presented as being politically motivated and this can be seen to contrast significantly with depictions of republican violence which is almost always presented within a context of injustice or oppression.
The complexity that has come to characterise Northern Irish unionism is also found to be largely absent in cinema. Think a community that is both pro-state and pro-paramilitary, Irish yet British, six-county Ulstermen but not nine-county Ulstermen and made up of a range of Protestant denominations. Therefore, this research looks for this complexity but finds that representations offer a much narrower definition of the unionist identity that rarely escapes a polarised relationship with Irish nationalism.
Many unionists have claimed that this deficit in the film world is reflective of how the unionist community is generally treated by the media or, given the influence of Screen Ireland in so many films set in the north of Ireland, how unionism will be treated by the media in any future amalgamation with the south.
Conversely, some have pointed out that the absence of unionists in cinema is not altogether a good thing for nationalists. The absence does imply that the paramilitary violence carried out was entirely of the green variety and unionism and the British state could be seen to get a pass as a result.
What this absence says about politics, society, the medium of film, the film industry and, indeed, identity in a possible united Ireland has thrown up some fascinating findings.
I also argue that there is not just one cause of unionism’s abject representation on screen but a plethora, some so systemic in nature that eliminating them would be a hugely difficult thing to do and that the ethics of engaging in any process to rectify the community’s representation is even something that needs to be thought about carefully.
Screening Ulster: Cinema and the Unionists by Dr Richard Gallagher is published by Palgrave MacMillan and can be purchased here
