Posted by Ruth Dudley Edwards (@RuthDE) posted at 11:53 pm on Fri, Nov 22, 2024:
Brilliant dissection of Kneecap.
“In the film Kneecap, the trio revel in the notoriety of the term ‘kneecap’ – but they end up trivialising forms of repression within Catholic nationalist areas under the brutal discipline of the Provisional IRA, writes Liam Kennedy News Letter
Brilliant dissection of Kneecap.
“In the film Kneecap, the trio revel in the notoriety of the term ‘kneecap’ – but they end up trivialising forms of repression within Catholic nationalist areas under the brutal discipline of the Provisional IRA, writes Liam Kennedy News Letter 22nd Nov 2024.
Dark alleyways, some caricature paramilitaries, and, inevitably, a brutal Protestant detective (with the twist that she is female and has to be restrained by male colleagues) dominate the screen. There are wisps of homage (or borrowings) from Monty Phyton’s Life of Brian and ITV’s Spitting Image, and most obviously from the Commitments and Trainspotting. In that sense the production is rather derivative but the high tempo sound track will have rap enthusiasts dancing in their heads, whatever language they speak.
Reviews have varied between the favourable and the ecstatic. Writing in the Irish Times, Una Mullally was starry-eyed and gushing: ‘It’s an intimidatingly brilliant, novelistic tribute to hedonism, creativity, language, identity and the pure joy of living fast.’ Maybe, but in the Kneecap biopic there is more than a touch of shock for the sake of shocking. On serious issues such as drug-taking, Kneecap is at best ambivalent or at worst celebratory. It runs the risk of being exploitative of a younger, alienated demographic. The truth is that Northern Ireland has a shockingly high rate of drug-related deaths, more than five times the EU average. A recent report from Queen’s University Belfast revealed that the number of deaths due to illicit drugs almost trebled in ten years (the decade 2011-2021). Not much to celebrate there unless addicted to funeral-going (usually four per week to choose from).
An angry concern with the abandonment of Irish, and other disappearing languages, is like red-hot lava streaming through the biopic, and gives Kneecap a wider appeal. But beneath the cinematic sheen, the contradictions coagulate. An Ghaeilge is wrapped in the nationalist tricolour, accompanied later by a bare backsided call for ‘Brits Out’. The IRA chant, Tiocfaidh ár Lá, is worked in, as is a mishmash of images of Celtic tops (‘Rangers are sh*te’), GAA jerseys, hurley sticks, Troubles’ murals, and our very own Mr Adams. All that was missing was an apparition of the Wolfe Tones.
There are questions as to how serious the trio take the fate of the language they are insistent on speaking. Take this as a possible marketing slogan to encourage wider support for An Ghaeilge: ‘Every word of Irish spoken is a bullet for Irish freedom.’ The trouble is unionists, and many nationalists, know all about bullets and Irish freedom. I support Irish and I’m appalled by the self-defeating hostility of some loyalist groups to the language. But slapping on ethnic war-paint, as in Kneecap, associates the language with extremist nationalism and the IRA.
One of the trio, DJ Próvaí, appears on stage with a paramilitary-style balaclava tastefully partitioned in stripes of green, white and orange. Did it ever occur to the trio that might be a bit off-putting, not only for unionists but for nationalists as well, most of whom rejected the squalid sectarianism of the ‘armed struggle’? It is true the film presents some dissident republicans as poltroons but the mainstream republicans, the Provisional IRA, are beyond serious scrutiny. The Provo father of Móglaí Bap, one of the trio, while not a great family man, is portrayed as an unbending upholder of the tradition of physical force nationalism. Admirable in a way, if one forgets that the ‘armed struggle’ had no democratic legitimacy, it divided worker against worker, and left close on four thousand dead. Don’t expect to find any of that by watching Kneecap.
The Troubles are referenced as a rather distant backdrop for this post-Troubles generation of young people who are into drugs, sex, and music. But in subtle ways, unlike the title of the group, Kneecap serves to validate the Provisionals’ murderous assaults on their unionist neighbours and the British state, and so fuses with a larger discourse that sees the decades of terror as inevitable and necessary, the last recourse of an historically oppressed people suffering from intergenerational trauma.
Language is in your face in this film, in more ways than one. The language theme deserves to be treated seriously, as languages are disappearing in many parts of the globe. The tragedy of the Irish language is that Irish people profess a great grá for the ancient tongue and will do anything for it – except speak it. There is as much likelihood of Irish being spoken widely on this island anytime this century as there is of hot-air ballooning replacing Ryanair for air- travel. Not that there will be any shortage of hot air.
According to the Republic’s census for 2022, only 1.5% of the population use Irish on a daily basis. In Northern Ireland the corresponding ratio appears somewhat higher at 2.4%. In both cases, we are reliant on self-reporting. Perhaps unacknowledged or unconscious anxiety in the face of these stark realities explains why some in pobal na Gaeilge in the North are dearg le fearg (red with anger), as displayed in the crowd demonstration scenes in Kneecap. Paradoxically, there is little danger of Irish going the way of other disappearing languages. This is because there is a huge infrastructure of support in the South, and increasingly in the North, including a kind of nomenklatura whose livelihoods depend on promoting Irish. These include teachers, translators, media presenters, language development officers, most of whom are to be found in the public sector.
In addition, there is the tiny Gaeltacht population and larger, possibly growing networks of Irish speakers in the Galltacht who enjoy speaking the language among family and friends. Given the richness of Gaelic culture, there will always be a scholarly and research interest. The conclusion is that the future of the language is assured but it will remain the preserve of a tiny minority that fluctuates in number over time but below a low ceiling.
Surely, all of the above is to miss the real meaning of Kneecap. The lads are not a trio of Micks on the Make. They are one of us, bro’. Shur they’re Irish. And they’re from West Belfast. Where’s your sense of humour? They’re great craic. If you don’t like it, focáil leat. And everyone knows all this talk of drugs, kneecapping, balaclavas, tricolours and Brits Out is meant to be ironic. For the rest of us, those who did not come down the Lagan in a bubble, this is the ultimate get-out-of-jail card. It can be flashed to give a veneer of respectability to drug-taking, sectarianism, racial hatred (who are the Brits in Northern Ireland anyway?), misogyny, and simple-minded history, traces of which are shot through the Kneecap narrative.
Looking beyond the film, there is the choice of the name Kneecap for the rap trio. What might some of the victims of ‘kneecapping’ make of it? Mickey and James (not their real names) come from Turf Lodge in West Belfast. Mickey had his arms and legs broken by balaclava-clad ‘freedom fighters’. James was shot in the legs four times by the local Provie ‘kneecappers’. Mickey and James were among the 10,000 or so, many of them youths, who were ‘policed’ by masked loyalists and republicans during the course of the Troubles. Mickey had some familiarity with Kneecap’s rap music. His pithy comment: ‘They’re a scumbag group, they want Brits out but have no problem with asking them for money.’ James took a different tack. ‘I have never listened to any of their music as I find their title extremely offensive. It is like a black person being called the ‘N’ word.’
Back to the biopic. Kneecap is steeped in green chauvinism, Norn-Iron style. It tries to have it both ways. In the film the trio are seen as courting danger from the so-called Radical Republicans against Drugs. They revel in the notoriety of the term ‘kneecap’. (Anyone for a rap group with the catchy title of the ‘Shankill Butchers’ and featuring DJ UVF kitted out in a Union Jack balaclava?) They are full of vitality, with a dash of nihilism and amorality. But they end up trivialising forms of repression within Catholic nationalist areas under the brutal discipline of the Provisional IRA. Bad memory, bad history, banal morality. If you don’t agree, focáil leat.”
Liam Kennedy is Emeritus Professor of History at QUB
(https://x.com/RuthDE/status/1860109447093182562?t=k6X4U1rE_bGmH7KW9S7pQA&s=03)
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