Anticipating a postnationalist Ireland: representing Gaelic Games in Rocky Road to Dublin (1968) and Clash of the Ash (1987)

Abstract

This article charts the movement towards what might be called, following from Richard Kearney’s 1995 book, a post-nationalist approach to representing gaelic games in film, particularly since the late 1960s through an examination of two films, Rocky Road to Dublin (1968) and Clash of the Ash (1987). However much gaelic games were part of the construction of Irish identity before and immediately after independence, the depiction of these games in films such as Rocky Road and Clash of the Ash, films which reflected the emergence of a critically engaged indigenous cinema in Ireland since the late 1960s, would also be part of the deconstruction of such an identity and critique of the failures of the state. Significantly, both these films use gaelic games as a means to interrogate and critically engage with certain mythologised and narrow-minded understandings of Irishness associated with the promotion of these games, including the issues of nationalism and masculinity.