Sport, Representation, and the Commemoration of the 1916 Rising: ‘A New Ireland Rises’?

Abstract

Gaelic games have repeatedly provided a resonant motif through which (perceived) aspects of Irish identity have been encapsulated and represented in film. This process extends to the contemporary context wherein Ireland has experienced huge changes, economically and socially. While Gaelic games are less a prominent feature of contemporary fiction film (with notable exceptions), the cinematic has now been incorporated and integrated into major sporting occasions themselves, including the Laochra pageant, one of the largest and most viewed commemorative events held in Ireland in 2016. Laochra was organised by the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA), and broadcast live by the Irish medium broadcaster TG4 on Sunday April 24th, exactly one hundred years to the day after the first shots were fired in the Easter Rising. The GAA was a key force in defining Irish identity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and it was one of the most active organisations in 2016 in evoking that period and commemorating events surrounding the Rising. I have included a question mark, however, in the title of this paper – taken from the title of the penultimate scene in the Laochra pageant – as I want to raise questions in this article as to the new Ireland that was configured in Laochra, both in terms of how ‘new’ this configuration actually was (given its indebtedness to older Irish iconography) and the problematic manner in which Irishness was depicted, particularly in terms of gender and militarism.