Of Blogs and Scarlett

Posted on March 2, 2008
Filed Under What's New |

Today felt like a day to respond to Kathy Foley’s ST article on Irish bloggers. They don’t matter, she says. At least not in the way established media matter. Nor in the way bloggers matter in the UK and USA.

Then I saw a photo of the beautiful Scarlett Johansson looking made up, as made up as a model. In an advert for the Other Boleyn Girl. Funny thing about that ad, it is in the same edition of the ST that also reviews Mad Men, the new US serial on 1960s ad men. Torn between Kathy and Scarlett and the call of history…. Scarlett what have you done?

Johannson is the girl you plump for rather than go through the agony of trying to land the best looking girl in class. She is a little dumpy and she has a beautiful smile, she is clued in and not afraid of men. Hallelujah. A star to admire.

Except in the ad for the Other Boleyn she’s been airbrushed to perfection. I believe Mad Men is also about brutal sexism. Scarlett you don’t need that rising chest.

We need to check-out and tick off the current trend to revert to the 1960s and 70s as good for the wrong reasons. Why are we running from the present?

The BBC follows suit soon with White - a series of films taking the point of view of white people in Britian, except for the most part it takes the viewpoint of white men who are pissed off with immigrants. Still, reaching back to the 60s before all this messy confusion began, it can’t last.

And RTE we’re told today is itself being told not to chase audience ratings. It too will have to look for more serious programmes, a little Sinn Fein how we were, perhaps? I feel more nostalgia coming on, perhaps with an edge.

So to Kathy Foley’s article. I think one corrective observation is necessary. From what I can see of UK blogs those that matter are/were largely established media and political names - not necessarily top drawer names but hardly people off the street.

And no doubt here what will happen is the Irish Times will grow a stable of bloggers that eventually matter. Eighteen months ago they were afraid of blogs and podcasts.

Still you ask, why does it have to be this way? I think Kathy’s article holds a clue particularly her deferential reference to Damien and Tom; “Despite the efforts of Irish blogging evangelists such as Damien Mulley and Tom Raftery….” Well I doubt Damien and Tom would claim for themselves to status of evangelists. Not now anyway.

And further says Kathy “…. there are no blogs from high profile business leaders, none giving the inside view from political spin doctors and few of value from academia and the visual arts.”

I’m not sure why we have to lament those absences. There was, for example, a superb blog from Sweary that I thought hit its mark pretty often but from a Galway sink estate rather than TCD. All the better for that.

My own view is there is no substantial Irish audience for blogs and deference probably has something to do with that - deference to Hook and Dunphy, Pat and Ryan. But I think Irish bloggers/readers will make a bigger mark when the subjects become less parochial.

Irish voices belong in the wider debates. New voices have little novel to add to the Mahon fiasco or the country’s recent history. It’s said. It’s out there. It’s known.

But the Irish view of Ireland’s international place I guess is less of a ploughed field or simply the visitation of Irish voices on the likes of Scarlett and her manipulation by Hollywood, Obama and the issue of first woman or first black man, why the British are now giving the white man a voice, I don’t know, these are subjects on my mind today, as is our current desire to escape the present.

I don’t read many Irish blogs because they are inward looking, technical or incestuous. There. Said it!

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