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Irish Travellers, the Cinema and (Anti-)Traveller Racism

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Irish Travellers, the Cinema and (Anti-)Traveller Racism GRUNERT FILM JOURNAL 1 (2010) Between discrimination and glorification: Irish Travellers, the cinema and (anti-)Traveller racism Andrea GRUNERT University of Applied Sciences, Bochum, Germany “There’s a bit of a Traveller in everybody of us,” says John Riley, the male protagonist in Mike Newell’s Into the West (UK/IRL, 1992), to his twelve-year-old son Tito, who has asked him whether the Travellers are Cowboys or Indians. This evasive answer is matched by the film’s happy ending, which masks the fact that the film presents the Travellers as Ireland’s Indians: an excluded and forgotten minority living on the social margins. Today an estimated 23,000 Travellers live in the Republic of Ireland, 15,000 in Great Britain and 7,000 in the United States of America. Their Irish origins have been the object of speculation. Some writers trace them back to landowners made homeless during Cromwell’s campaign in Ireland or during the Great Famine of the mid-nineteenth century; others argue that Travellers have dwelt in Ireland since the Middle Ages. These nomads have their roots in Ireland and must be distinguished from Gypsies, even if they share many similar customs. In the past, they played an important role as messengers in isolated rural areas. The term “tinker,” which today has negative connotations, refers to one of their main occupations, tinkering. Industrialisation and modern technology have destroyed this economic basis of their life. Having been forced to adapt to new social Page 1 GRUNERT FILM JOURNAL 1 (2010) and economic conditions, Irish Travellers or Pavee1, as they now call themselves, have found new occupations such as collecting scrap. However, many of them have been forced to abandon their traditional life on the road. They quite often lead a life of poverty in some of the most deprived areas of the country: in the slums on the outskirts of Dublin or in temporary camps with poor hygienic conditions provided for them by local authorities. In recent times, increasing government pressure has been put on them in an attempt to assimilate these nomads into the settled majority of the population. “The very openness of the Irish economy since the 1960s,” observes Jim McLaughlin, “is in sharp contrast to the closed nature of Irish society. This has had serious implications for the survival of Traveller culture and indeed Traveller communities. As Ireland developed into an exceptionally open economy, it developed many of the characteristics of an extremely closed society. This is nowhere more noticeable than in contemporary attitudes towards Irish Travellers. It is also reflected in the status of Traveller issues in Irish political discourse. Thus the very terms that we use in addressing Traveller issues effectively close them out of respectable political discourse.”2 Literary works have developed a number of different views of this nomadic community as mistrusted outsiders of Irish society, a rejected minority, the idealised guardians of Irish traditions or the heroes of romantic love stories.3 However, it is not only playwrights and novelists who have become interested in the community but also film-makers in Ireland, England, and the United States. Paul Rotha (No Resting Place, UK, 1951) and 1 The term means "trader" in the language of the Traveller and refers to one of their traditional preoccupations, horse trading. 2 Jim McLaughlin, Travellers and Ireland: Whose Country?, Whose History? (Cork: Cork University Press, 1995), 69. 3 For literature in which Irish Travellers are depicted see Paul Delanay, “Representations of the Travellers in the 1880s and 1900s,” Irish Studies Review, vol. 9, n° 1 (2001): 53-68. Page 2 GRUNERT FILM JOURNAL 1 (2010) Perry Ogden (Pavee Lackeen [The Traveller Girl], Ireland, 2005) have depicted the harsh conditions in which the Pavee live. But Travellers have also been represented as the heroes of romantic love stories (Chocolat, UK/USA, 2000, Lasse Hallström), road movies (Traveller, USA, 1997, Jack N. Green) and black comedy (Snatch, UK, 2000, Guy Ritchie). They also appear in episodes of various Irish and American television series such as The Riordans (IRL, 1965-1979), Glenroe (1983-2001), Star Trek: The Next Generation (USA, season 2, episode 18, 19894), Criminal Intent (USA, season 2, episode 21) and, without being clearly identified as a specific community, in The Riches (USA, 2007). According to Robbie McVeigh, anti-Traveller racism is “endogenous” Irish racism. As he puts it: “A mixture of mistrust and envy of their supposed 'freedom' ensured that Travelling people come to occupy a central position within the sedentary Irish culture as a symbolic ‘other.’”5 The use of the term “racism” in relation to Travellers is rejected in Traveller-related public discussion and political discourse, which denies Travellers status as members of an ethnic group.6 “Much more common,” notes Jane Helleiner, “has been a dominant construction of Travellers as a population distinguished not by 'race' but rather by a negatively evaluated 'way of life' exemplified by specific features including itinerancy, trailer- life, particular occupations and poverty.” “Inferiority” is based less on “racial” difference – 4 In the episode called “Up the Long Ladder,“ the crew of the Enterprise encounters a society, the Bringloidis (a term referring to brionglóid, the Irish word for “dream”) whose accented form of the English language and whose culture is very similar to the way of life of the Travellers. 5 Robbie McVeigh, “The Specificity of Irish Racism,” Race and Class Vol. 33, n° 4 (1992): 41. 6 See Mary McCann, Séamas Ó Siocháin, and Joseph Ruane (eds.), Irish Travellers: Culture and Ethnicity. (Belfast: Institute of Irish Studies/The Queen's University of Belfast for the Anthropological Association of Ireland, reprint 1996). However, Travellers are recognised as a distinct ethnic group in the UK, which does not mean that they are not targets of racism. Page 3 GRUNERT FILM JOURNAL 1 (2010) colour, physiognomy or “blood” – and more on “notions of undesirable cultural difference.” By constructing difference in a way similar to racist discourse based on the idea of biological inferiority, this “culturalist racism” replaced other strategies of inferiorisation and exclusion.7 It is important not to forget that the filmic image is an art form, and as such part of the collective attempt to give meaning to questions of the origin and nature of a specific society. As a symbolic construction it is more than a means of communication or a denotation of reality – it helps to reveal the signification of social and cultural events. Therefore, film participates in a public discourse on mentalities and social and cultural identities, even if its impact and influence on the viewer remains a subject of discussion among scholars. Undoubtedly, movies reproduce and sometimes generate the symbolic and visual codes identities rely on. They confirm, challenge, and shape perceptions, contributing to the construction and propagation of Traveller images. This article is concerned with the cinematic representation of Travellers and the idea of ethnic difference in mainly Irish productions. The films it deals with have in common that they are all directed by film-makers who do not belong to the Traveller community. I will examine the functions the figure of the Traveller has within the cinematic discourse as established from outside this minority group. Do films confirm or subvert received ideas about Travellers and their way of life? Can they show ways to change mistaken beliefs? Or is the Traveller just another symbolic Other, utilised in a discourse on social issues such as alienation, and a symbolic matrix in a consideration of individual and collective identity 7 Jane Helleiner, Irish Travellers: Racism and the Politics of Culture (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), 8. Page 4 GRUNERT FILM JOURNAL 1 (2010) formation and national issues? To what extent is the minority used as a source in the construction and examination of Irish identity? A standard repertory Page 5 GRUNERT FILM JOURNAL 1 (2010) An old man at a campfire, beating metal or preparing his frugal breakfast: this type of picture appears in the first shots of both Into the West and Traveller (IRL, 1982) by Joe Comerford as well as in Chris Hurley’s very brief documentary Agin’ the Wall (IRL, 2003). Similar objects are associated with each of the figures: a barrel-top wagon,8 a tent, horses, old black iron kettles. They refer to the image of an ancient lifestyle which is contrasted with other shots in Into the West and Traveller showing itinerant people in modern trailers equipped with televisions and other products of our modern world. The pictures of men in harmony with nature are quintessential images of vanishing traditions. In Into the West these shots imply the longing for freedom and peace as a desirable aim, one opposed to the hectic life of the urban world. The first shots in Comerford’s film suggest the social difference between the old man in front of his tent and his neighbour, who lives in a much more comfortable modern trailer. Such repeated images fusing reality and clichés are codes for communication, allowing the viewer to identify the community the films are concerned with. By means of repetition, they identify the men as belonging to the Traveller community and echo the representational strategies that films deploy. Two keywords should be remembered: poverty and tradition. Together with a few other topics and motifs, they are central aspects of the cinematic representation of Travellers. Poverty is the reality of many Traveller families in Ireland. It is in particular Into the West and Pavee Lackeen that depict the often difficult conditions in which Traveller people live. The semi-documentary Pavee Lackeen by photographer Perry Ogden focuses on its protagonist, ten-year-old Winnie Maugham, who lives with her mother and several brothers and sisters in 8 The type of wagon shown in the film was widely used by Gypsies in continental Europe from the mid-1800s.
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