Academic Journal 4 - 'Translations'

I was confused at first when reading this play as to why these characters were studying classical languages – not that it isn’t a worthy pursuit, but the utility of this kind of knowledge in a largely agrarian setting eluded me. What I came to realize though is that it is all a part of Friel’s take on language as a tool of conquest. The languages they study are the languages of empires, classical Greek from the Hellenistic period and Latin from the Romans. Both were spread through conquest, and thus became critical to communication among the conquered. This is paralleled by the British military surveyors who are working to make a detailed map of Ireland (surely a helpful tool to retain control of the island), and to translate the Irish place names into English. Although they claim that their aim is to help the Irish join the world community, it is clearly the imposing of a conqueror’s language on the conquered. As Lancey and Owen work to translate local names, Owen muses on the strange way they came about (while marveling at the bewildering variety of recorded names for a single feature) and debates whether it is better to translate the sounds or the meaning. In either case, the translation doesn’t really mean what the original does.
This struggle carries over into the issue of the incoming national school, which is expected to replace the local hedge school almost entirely, providing a modern curriculum with study of the modern world in place of the hedge school’s emphasis on classical and historic learning. Of course, this instruction will include learning the English language at the expense of Irish. In this way, the British seem to be trying to rob Ireland of her history, renaming landmarks and reeducating the people in a calculated effort to bring the Irish firmly under control. Loosing their language will make it much harder for the folklore and history of the people to survive, allowing them to (in theory) rewrite not only the map, but the entire history of a people.

Academic Journal 3 - 'My Left Foot'

I thought that the director’s decision to jump in time from the “present” of Christy’s recognition dinner and the past events of his life, all framed within the story of an attendant (who would later become his wife) reading the book he was being recognized for, to be intriguing and very successful. The vignettes between Christy and the nurse broke up some of the harsher sequences of his life story, and the change in their relationship over the course of the film seemed to mirror the viewer’s own in many ways, moving from a pitying detachment to, frankly, near-outright dislike, and finally a warming respect as his accomplishments rack up. The scenes presented are often not very complimentary towards Christy, and I think the director very much risked alienating viewers and turning them against him, but the inclusion of these interspersed moments of human interaction in the present helped keep us grounded in his humanity.
An especially interesting moment came after the suicide attempt sequence when the camera snapped back to the present focused on Christy himself, as if he had been reliving the events in his mind and was coming back to reality. What made this powerful for me was that until that point, every time that such a snap to the present had occurred it had focused around the nurse character as she read his autobiography, letting the audience see and identify with her growing admiration and fascination. I felt that it humanized Christy, who had increasingly been a notably drunk and depressed jackass, reminding the viewer that he would to some extent overcome what we were being shown. I think that it also helped to develop the relationship between the two characters as they begin to share in the story – it is no longer an artifact handed from writer to reader, but a reality that each is experiencing simultaneously (relatively speaking). Without this moment, I would have had a much harder time accepting the later relationship and future marriage, but this tiny moment of sharing and connecting made it far more plausible to me as a viewer.

Academic Journal 2 - 'The Butcher Boy'

I noticed that American culture cropped up almost incidentally in this film, primarily in media clips on the television and wireless sets. Footage of nuclear testing is shown, reports on the Cuban Missile Crisis and the voice of JFK are heard, and bits of the famous “Duck and Cover’ instructional film are played during Francie’s rampage at the Nugent house. The most relatable instances I saw were in his viewing of American television shows and films on the family television.
Before his father breaks the TV, Francie is seen watching two American shows – The Lone Ranger and The Fugitive. I wonder if these specific shows are used to highlight his developing personal reality. The relationship between the Ranger and Tonto seems to parallel Francie’s perception of his relationship with Joe, and the idea of a secret crusader putting wrongs right seems to fit right in with his actions towards his perceived enemies. Francies claims of persecution and of being framed could easily match to the premise of The Prisoner, who was wrongly accused of his wife’s murder and escaped police custody to find the real perpetrator. Francie’s attempts to escape and reunite with Joe, even after Joe has pretty clearly moved on, seem almost a mish-mash of the two characters, and his turning to the visions of Mary (initially implied to be lies) a parallel for the higher calling both the Prisoner and Ranger share.
Francie is also shown watching the film The Brain from Planet Arous, an American gem about a brain-shaped alien that takes control of a human body to wreak havoc on the Earth (a second brain later arrives to reveal that the first is a wanted criminal). I think that this too connects to Francie’s development (or degeneration), not because he was in some way possessed, but because he perceives himself as a promising young man who is driven to increasingly horrific acts by forces beyond his control. Perhaps it was just me, but I really got a strong sense of inevitability form the story arc, as if what happened couldn’t have gone differently given the situation – Francie’s father, mother, friends and enemies all coming together to push him in a pre-set direction.

Academic Journal 1 - 'Dancing at Lughnasa'

I found the narrative style of this play to be very interesting; the narrating character (Michael as an adult) fills us in on the setting and history of the other characters before the narrative begins, and tells us of the fates of the other characters after it ends, and in-between speaks the lines of his own younger self without actually playing the part (Friel dictates that dialogue I addressed to the imaginary “Boy,” while Michael speaks in his narratorial, adult voice). There is no actor playing the part of young Michael, and all physical interactions with him are pantomimed; his presence is referred to by other characters and implied by his ability to present this story in flashback as an adult, but his physical absence leads the reader to forget that he is there, only “feeling” present when attention is directly called to him.

In reading, it feels as though Friel has taken an external narrator and a focal character and rolled them into one part, moving freely in time and story-space. This technique allows Friel to set up the story and give us a glimpse of the future via a narrator without having an awkward, unexplained “extra” character wandering around observing things (or clumsily written into the background). Using the actor playing adult Michael to voice the young Michael as well creates a connection between the past and present, forging a strong and explicit link between the focal character and external narrator which would have been weakened by having a child play the part.

At the same time, I feel that this technique risks casting Michael as a particularly unreliable narrator. The entire narrative is presented as the memory of a child as recounted by him as an adult, putting a particularly lengthy gap for memory to overcome and implying that it is subject to forgotten details, shuffled timelines and mental editing. The child who becomes our focal character often appears to be absent, even when he is implicitly present (and then, only rarely in the same room as the adult characters), and moreover is presented as preoccupied with building kites, hiding and bushes, writing to Santa and so on. The idea that a child with such a busy schedule would have paid any attention to the goings-on of the house, much less committed them all to memory, seems questionable.

I suspect that reading the play rather than watching it performed weakens these effects; although I knew that Boy and Michael are the same actor using the same voice, in my mind Boy always sounded like a child, and Michael like an adult. Conversely, this tendency to forget the link between them also seemed to reduce the sense of unreliability; it was only when I forced myself to picture the play as performed that these things occurred to me.