Academic Journal 11 - Something About Mary

Several of the films we have watched include depictions of the Virgin Mary in a less than flattering/helpful light; I believe that these depictions are not merely symptoms of iconoclastic filmmaking, but reflect a deeper shift in the Irish attitude towards religion. We learned in lecture that religious sentiment in Ireland had been deeply shaken in recent years by scandals within the Catholic church, and this loss of faith can be seen in the way the Virgin Mary is reacted to and portrayed in Irish cinema.
In Margo Harkin’s Hush-A-Bye-Baby, after Goretti tells her friend Dinky that she is pregnant, Dinky addresses a nearby statue of the Virgin, admonishing it not to move (visions of Virgin statues moving/crying/etc. were apparently common in many areas of Ireland at the time). Rather than turning to the icon for aid or comfort, the characters shun her and make clear that the grim reality of the situation is something they intend to deal with without praying for divine intervention. Goretti’s dreams, in which she seems to see herself transposed with a statue of the Virgin, her growing belly straining at the glass window, seem to show a horror of motherhood; her shame and fear manifest in a nightmare trapped for all to see.
In Neil Jordan’s The Butcher Boy, the Virgin Mary herself begins appearing to young Francie Brady, giving him messages of hope and comfort which fail utterly to help his situation as he spirals further into nihilistic madness. In addition, her visits begin AFTER he starts claiming to have seen her, hinting that although the viewer is led to believe (by her later manifestations) that Francie does in fact see her, the visions themselves may not in fact be real or divine, but rather a hallucination. Jordan seems to suggest that religion is self-inflicted, brought on not by the will of the divine, but by the desire of the human mind. Additionally, these visions (and by extension those of scripture) aren’t helpful to us, giving vague comfort and advice that proves meaningless in the face of real life dilemmas.