The Representation of Celtic Tiger Irish Masculinity in Hollywood Cinema: 1994-2008
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The Representation of Celtic Tiger Irish Masculinity in Hollywood Cinema: 1994-2008 Elizabeth Carville A major thesis presented in fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of English, Maynooth University, Department of English. August 2018 Head of Department: Prof. Colin Graham Research Supervisors: Prof. Luke Gibbons and Dr Denis Condon. Contents Introduction 1 Chapter One “Tiger Celts”: Irishness, Whiteness, and Masculinity 33 Chapter Two “Gael Gore”: Hollywood Representations of Irish Violence 86 Chapter Three Fathers, Sons, and Irish Masculinity 144 Chapter Four Sexuality and the City: The Irish Metrosexual 204 Conclusion 271 Bibliography 281 Filmography 304 SUMMARY By analysing the careers of three Irish actors in the U.S. during the Celtic Tiger period— Colin Farrell, Cillian Murphy, and Jonathan Rhys Meyers—this thesis explores the representation of Celtic Tiger Irish masculinity in Hollywood cinema. It considers the “Celtic Tiger” as an economic phenomenon that had cultural ramifications and affected the meanings attached to Irishness at a local and global level. Each chapter takes a trope or stereotype connected to the representation of Irish masculinity in cinema. Chapter One, “Tiger Celts”: Irishness, Whiteness, and Masculinity, considers the way that Irishness registers as a form of enriched whiteness in popular culture while still laying claim to a victim status that has extended from Ireland’s former colonization. It argues that as both film stars and characters, Farrell, Murphy, and Meyers avail of the cultural currency of whiteness, but remain inseparable from their ethnicity. They are seldom cast as actors but as Irish actors in Hollywood, and the contention that the Irishness of Farrell, Murphy, and Meyers lingers as a watermark that remains present regardless of the accent or ethnicity of the characters they play underlies the arguments made throughout the thesis as a whole. Chapter Two, “Gael Gore”: Hollywood Representations of Irish Violence, considers the extent to which the stereotype of Irish violence continues to guide discourses of Irish masculinity in Hollywood. Chapter Three, Fathers, Sons, and Irish Masculinity, looks comparatively at Irish masculinity by considering the characters played by two successive generations of Irish actors. Finally, Chapter Four, Sexuality and the City: The Irish Metrosexual, looks retrospectively at the careers of Farrell, Murphy, and Meyers to argue that the type of metrosexual characters they have represented can be traced to the shifting emphasis between rural and urban Ireland that formed the bedrock of discourses pertaining to the Celtic Tiger. INTRODUCTION In Joel Schumacher’s Phone Booth (2002), New York publicist Stu Shepherd experiences the worst day of his life when he becomes the target for a sniper with a God complex. After ringing an actress he hopes to have an affair with from a telephone box off Times Square, Stu answers an impromptu phone call from an anonymous “caller” who proceeds to terrorize him for his sins by revealing detailed information about Stu’s life and threatening to kill him, those he loves, as well as innocent by-standers, if Stu hangs up or tries to leave the booth. As described by Daniel Orlandi, the Costume Designer for the film, Stu is “young and hip and a little aggressive” “kind of vain,” “very upscale … and kind of a dandy” (“The Making of ‘Phone Booth’ Featurette”), but, as a result of the extreme pressure placed on him by the caller, where Stu is broken down and reduced to a pitiful state, he is ultimately redeemed. To this extent, for Ruth Barton “the film is most interesting for its dialogue with opposing models of masculinity” (Acting Irish 214). Barton makes a cogent point here, but the film becomes of further interest when viewed in tandem with Schumacher’s audio commentary, insofar as it also raises an unforeseen question that is of particular relevance for the thesis to follow, specifically, why, in an independent Hollywood movie about a “smug [and American] advertising executive,” brought “to a symbolic point of rebirth” (Acting Irish 214), is Ireland, or Irishness referenced four times within the first seventeen minutes? To be sure, one of these occasions is a manoeuvre on the part of Stu within the movie to placate a flu- ridden gossip columnist by sending her a bottle of Jameson whiskey with a note attached saying “Irish chicken soup. Love Stu.” But on two other occasions before Schumacher has been talking for twenty minutes about the film, Ireland is mentioned specifically in relation to the—later to be—star who plays Stu: Irish actor Colin Farrell. We will return to the final reference below, but with Schumacher’s recurring allusion to Farrell as “from Ireland” Phone 1 Booth encapsulates several of the main arguments developed throughout this thesis, namely, that Irishness is as fundamental to Farrell’s identity as a star in Hollywood, as vanity and superficiality are to Stu’s identity in the film, and that Farrell, along with some other Irish actors of his generation, have repeatedly been upheld as representative of a particular type of metrosexual masculinity within Hollywood cinema. This thesis considers the careers of three Irish actors, Colin Farrell, Cillian Murphy, and Jonathan Rhys Meyers, who, during an unparalleled phase in Irish history referred to as the “Celtic Tiger” period, came to embody a kind of masculinity notable for its volatile combination of hedonism, narcissism, and traditional and cosmopolitan Irishness. Farrell, Meyers, and Murphy have been chosen for the way that the development of their careers— their transition from indigenous film actor to Hollywood star—corresponds with the arc of Ireland’s Celtic Tiger “boom period,” approximately 1994-2008. More significantly, it argues these three actors came to personify a particular kind of Irish masculinity that reconciled certain narratives of Irishness, both old and new, in response to the phenomenon of Celtic Tiger Ireland. Emerging at an unprecedented period in Irish history, Farrell, Meyers, and Murphy made assimilable a globalized formation of Irishness by embodying a mode of metrosexual masculinity that dips into countercultural lifestyles, but draws on well- established “traditional” versions of Irishness. Choice of Actors An immediate question to address then, is, why these three actors? Or perhaps more to the point, why not others? In addition to Farrell, Meyers, and Murphy, it would seem equally possible to include some recognisable Irish actors such as Liam Neeson, Colm Meaney, Gabriel Byrne, Brendan Gleeson, or indeed Daniel Day-Lewis, Pierce Brosnan, Michael Fassbender, and Stuart Townsend. Structurally, it was apparent that the inclusion of a large 2 number of actors would ultimately detract from the thematic element of the inquiry. But more to the point, certain actors, specifically Gleeson, Meaney, Neeson, Byrne, Day-Lewis or Brosnan, belong to an earlier generation and, as an older age group their careers date to the decades prior to the Celtic Tiger. The opposite is the case with Michael Fassbender. Fassbender’s career did not register in American popular media until after his appearance in U.S. blockbusters such as Zack Snyder’s graphically violent epic 300 (2006), or the later Quentin Tarantino war-film Inglorious Basterds (2009), nor did he fully acquire local stardom within the cinemas of Ireland or Britain until his outstanding performance in Hunger (2008), the Steve McQueen film on the Republican hunger-striker, Bobby Sands. Stuart Townsend’s career is slightly different, insofar as Townsend can be said to have exemplified certain aspects of the Celtic Tiger in Irish cinema, specifically with his role in Gerry Stembridge’s About Adam. But Townsend’s move to Hollywood was not as successful as that of Farrell, Meyers, and Murphy. Unlike them, Townsend’s career in Hollywood, with the exception of Queen of the Damned in 2002 and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen in 2003, neither of which was successful, was mostly limited to minor roles. When he was cast as the male lead in the supernatural detective series Night Stalker (2005-2006), the programme was cancelled after six episodes due to poor ratings. Townsend was predominantly associated with his long-term girlfriend Charlize Theron, an Australian actress who was highly successful in her own right, and by the time their relationship came to an end in 2010, Theron had starred in several highly successful movies, while Townsend, had faded into Hollywood obscurity. Indeed, if Hollywood likes to promote the idea that there is a certain “charisma” or “x-factor” that makes one actor a star while another remains unemployed, the critical remarks Townsend did receive during his career offer some possible insight as to why he, though in many ways placed, ethnically framed, and as physically attractive as Farrell, Meyers, and 3 Murphy, did not make it as an Irish actor in Hollywood during the period in question. To be sure “Irish-born” (Handelman E6) and an “Irish actor” (Harvey, “Battle in Seattle” 28) who “grew up in a small fishing village outside of Dublin” (Neumaier 47) were just some of the ways that Townsend, like Farrell, Meyers, and Murphy, was marked as Irish in reviews of his films. Similarly, like Farrell, Townsend was noted for a “cockiness” (D. Kimmel), while in About Adam, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Queen of the Damned he seemed to project a campness that critics found pleasing, and a metrosexuality that, as we shall see, has been a crucial factor in the star personae of Farrell, Meyers, and Murphy. If critics did find fault with Townsend’s acting skills —his character was described on one occasion as a “bloodless lump”(Clark 14B)—, a far more fatal flaw appeared to be that, unlike the three actors of this study, Townsend’s metrosexuality was not balanced by more traditional traits of masculinity.