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Contemporary Irish Popular Culture:
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Contemporary Irish
Popular Culture:
Transnationalism,
Regionality, and Diaspora
Anthony P. McIntyre
Contemporary Irish Popular Culture
“This is a beautifully written, wide-ranging, carefully historicised and theorised

book that will be of great significance to anyone interested in contemporary Irish
culture.”
—Sinéad Moynihan, Associate Professor in American and
Atlantic Literatures, University of Exeter, UK
Anthony P. McIntyre
Contemporary Irish
Popular Culture
Transnationalism, Regionality, and Diaspora
Anthony P. McIntyre
Film
University College Dublin
Dublin, Ireland
ISBN 978-3-030-94254-0 ISBN 978-3-030-94255-7 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94255-7
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2022
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
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The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
For Maria and Annie
Acknowledgements
I’d like to thank all those who helped in producing this book. First, thank
you to Camille Davies, Jack Heeney and Imogen Higgins at Palgrave
Macmillan for all their support. Two anonymous reviewers provided excel-
lent suggestions that have improved the final work considerably. Valuable
feedback was also provided by audiences at several academic conferences
and seminars where I presented papers that would eventually find their
way in modified form into this book. I’d like to thank audiences and
speakers at the L’Irlande en series conference at Université Paris Ouest,
Nanterre in 2014; the Post Celtic-Tiger Irishness Symposium at Trinity
College Dublin in 2016; the Global Irish Diaspora Congress at University
College Dublin in 2017; the Sports, Media and the Cultural Industries in
Ireland Symposium at Dublin City University in 2018; and the European
Popular Culture Association Conference 2019 at the University of
Limerick.
I am sincerely grateful to Diane Negra who, throughout my time at
UCD has been an exemplary colleague and friend and who provided gen-
erous feedback throughout the development of this book. My research
with Diane and Eleanor O’Leary on aspects of Irish contemporary culture
has taken place alongside my work on this book and has informed it con-
siderably. David McKinney, Marcus Free and Colin Coulter read work in
progress at different points and offered valuable advice. Any errors within
the book are, of course, my own.
Portions of the present work have appeared in earlier publications.
Several sections in Chap. 2 develop ideas that appeared in a version origi-
nally published as McIntyre, Anthony P., “Moone Boy and the Elision of
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Celtic Tiger Aspirationalism,” in New Perspectives on Irish TV Series:

Identity and Nostalgia on the Small Screen (2016), ed. Flore Colouma,
Oxford: Peter Lang (Reinventing Ireland Series). Chapter 4 includes
material published as “Remembrance and Resistance: James McClean’s
Poppy Protest and the Politics of Diasporic Non-Assimilation,” in Sport
and Media in Ireland: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (2020), eds. Marcus
Free and Niall O’Boyle, Cork: Cork University Press. I’d like to thank the
editors of both books for the feedback and assistance provided in prepar-
ing these chapters, which are reproduced with permission of Peter Lang
and Cork University Press.
I’m thankful to friends who have acted as sounding boards or provided
welcome distraction during the writing of this book: Vincent Foley, David
McKinney, Emmet Smyth, Eugene Ryan, Jack Carolan, John McDaid,
Anna Glazier and James Aitken. For providing help or inspiration at an
earlier point in my learning, I’m very grateful to Noreen Carolan, Patricia
Hughes, and Willy Maley. I am always thankful for my family, parents Rose
and Tony and my two brothers, Jason and Connor, for their love and
encouragement, good humour and support. My final and greatest debt of
gratitude, not least for patience and support as I finished the manuscript,
is to Maria and Annie (and Max), to whom this book is lovingly dedicated.
Contents
1 Introduction—“Fractured Movement”: Transnationalism,

Regionality, and Diaspora in Contemporary Irish
Popular Culture 1
2 Star Leverage, Local Matters, and Transnational Media:

Chris O’Dowd, Moone Boy and Puffin Rock 23
3 Derry Girls and Cork Boys: Second Cities, Regional

Identities and (Trans)National Tensions in the
Contemporary Irish Sitcom 65
4 Transnationalism, Masculinity, and Diasporic

Performativity in Irish Sport: Conor McGregor and
James McClean109
5 Irish Female Comedic Voices, Diasporic Melancholy, and

Productive Irritation: Sharon Horgan, Aisling Bea and
Maeve Higgins153
ix
x CONTENTS
6 Mammies and Sons: Mobilising Maternal and Filial

Affect in Mrs Brown’s Boys, 50 Ways to Kill Your Mammy,
and Philomena203
7 Coda: The COVID-19 Pandemic and Irish Screen Media239
Index251
List of Figures
Fig. 2.1 O’Dowd’s “ordinary guy” persona is commonly foregrounded

in media depictions of the comedy actor 30
Fig. 2.2 Baba, Oona and Mossy demonstrate the cute aesthetics that
enable global legibility 57
Fig. 3.1 The People’s Republic of Cork image of Dónal Óg Cusack
signifies a combination of progressive liberalism and commercial
branding of the civic space 75
Fig. 3.2 The opening scene of The Young Offenders utilizes shallow
focus to effect a spatial differentiation between Conor and Jock
and the centre of the city 80
Fig. 3.3 The finale of Derry Girls’ first season contrasts political violence
with the elation of youth, as the girls and James take to the
stage in an exuberant act of solidarity and friendship 91
Figs. 3.4 “The Death of Innocence” and Derry Girls murals show the
and 3.5 discursive construction of the Derry schoolgirl spanning both
comedy and tragedy. (Photographs: Anthony P. McIntyre) 95
Fig. 4.1 McGregor’s “Dream Big” advertisement effects a conquering of
space as the fighter seamlessly transitions from Crumlin to
California121
Fig. 4.2 McClean’s controversial Instagram posting of March 2020
constitutes a further example of his, at times, provocative
references to Irish history 139
Fig. 5.1 Sharon Horgan and Aisling Bea comedically referencing the
repressive patriarchal regime in The Handmaid’s Tale in their
“Be Our Yes” campaign video for Together for Yes, part of the
campaign to legalise abortion in Ireland 173
xi
xii LIST OF FIGURES
Fig. 6.1 The Fricker Irish mammy memes utilise Brenda Fricker’s role
as Mrs. Brown in My Left Foot, and in particular her stern
expression, connoting both the domesticity associated with
previous eras and the unglamorous ‘common sense’
of the figure 211
Fig. 6.2 Posters for the cinematic release of Philomena conflate the
Irish mammy with mobility through a white doodle on a
plain yellow background that summarises the journey taken
in the movie 229
Fig. 7.1 In “Strangers on a (Dublin) Train” emerging interpersonal
protocols of the pandemic era are recast as novel and romantic 242
CHAPTER 1
Introduction—“Fractured Movement”:
Transnationalism, Regionality, and Diaspora
in Contemporary Irish Popular Culture
An ad for Three Business—a branch of the Irish telecommunications

company Three—that was first broadcast in May 2019 presents a vivid
picture of the global/local dynamics that animate the analyses within
this book. Opening with picturesque images of the island in question—
Arranmore, situated off the Donegal coast on the north west coast of
Ireland—we hear a local man emotionally declare: “the greatest silence I
hear on Arranmore, is the sound of children. It’s only when you don’t
have it; The silence is deafening.” The ad goes on to detail how the island
has been “decimated by emigration” with many of Arranmore’s people
forced to leave to find work, rendering the island potentially moribund.
Clearly on one level the small community in this ad functions as a micro-
cosm of the Irish nation, that in the years following the banking crash of
2008, saw the return of economic migration, a phenomenon that dispro-
portionately impacted younger generations. That the ad goes on to show
the island is, in effect, being rescued by private business also bespeaks an
Irish media culture ideologically aligned with the pro-business, neoliberal
contours of the contemporary Irish state.
Capitalising upon the resonance of the return of economic migration as
a scar on the national psyche, Three details through this ad how it is
reinvigorating the island by providing fibre broadband technology infra-
structure, enabling displaced workers to come home and ensuring the
children of the island benefit educationally from state-of-the-art digital
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2022
A. P. McIntyre, Contemporary Irish Popular Culture,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94255-7_1
2 A. P. MCINTYRE
communications access. Images of a “digital hub” set up on the island,

where locals can access state of the art computers are cross-cut with rug-
ged images of the Atlantic coast, the juxtaposition itself reminiscent of
many contemporary discursive constructions of Ireland as at once an
ancient Celtic nation, in which landscape indelibly shapes national iden-
tity, and simultaneously a forward-facing home to global tech investment
and innovation. Made prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, which would
reshape attitudes to homeworking, the ad posits a scenario in which island-
ers can work from Donegal as well as if they were in New York or London,
namechecking some of the hubs of global capitalism to which the island is
now connected, highlighting a putative transnational reach that has been
bestowed upon the small community by the communications company.
The narrative presentation of an island facing economic and social stagna-
tion being in effect resurrected through a significant infrastructural invest-
ment carries a powerful ideological charge resonant within the Ireland of
the late 20th and early twenty-first century.
“The Island” can be profitably considered alongside a set of Irish televi-
sion ads for EuroMillions Lottery that have been running since 2016. The
premise of the campaign is that an Irishman has become so splendidly
wealthy through a win on the lottery that he has bought (or is in the pro-
cess of buying, depending on the ad in question) a Mediterranean island.
The first advert in this series depicts a news reporter interviewing the lucky
lottery winner on a beautiful sandy beach. Upon asking how the intended
purchase and donation of an island would, in fact, work, the Irishman, in
a laid-back and droll utterance replies, “Ah, sure we’ll figure it out.” The
scrolling news text at the bottom of the faux news report signals the trans-
national spread of quintessentially Irish consumer preferences facilitated
by the acquisition, reading: “First shipment of cheese and onion crisps
leaves Ireland. Large consignment of red lemonade to follow.” The ad
ends with a shot portraying a public square in small town Ireland, with
crowds gathered to watch the news reports on the acquisition of the island
cheering loudly. Glimpsed for a few seconds at the end of the ad, this mise-
en-abyme, reminiscent of the type of public display of national identity
associated with international sporting events in the vein of the Italia ‘90
soccer World Cup, effectively sutures the viewer into the subject position
of one of the enthused spectators, cheering the acquisition of a fantasy
island as a “win” for an Irish national culture that seemingly thrives at a
global level despite its humble stature, all while its citizens maintain a calm
and laid-back demeanour.
1 INTRODUCTION—“FRACTURED MOVEMENT”: TRANSNATIONALISM… 3
The veracity of such a depiction as characteristic of Irish citizens

post-2008 contrasts significantly with the neoliberalised working cultures
and practices in place throughout Ireland. Studies showing that Irish
workers reporting stress connected to their employment more than dou-
bled between 2010 to 2015 (Russell et al. 2018) and that Irish employees
work longer hours and have fewer days of paid leave than the European
average (Eurofound 2017) undermine the sense of an easy-going national
character that is a mainstay of media representations of the Irish, whether
such depictions emanate from within or outside of Ireland. These studies,
of course, were published prior to the dramatic recalibrations of working
life effected by the COVID-19 pandemic, which have further exacerbated
work-life imbalance in Ireland, and indeed, across the globe. One of the
guiding principles of this book is that media culture is imbricated at a deep
level in the hegemonic processes of sense-making that have rendered neo-
liberal capitalism as a ubiquitous doctrine undergirding Irish life. The lot-
tery campaign emerged during years of state-imposed austerity (exacerbated
by the state’s nationalisation of banking debt), a time that laid bare some
of the more stringent and indeed cruel underpinnings of neoliberal capi-
talism. Literary scholar Sharae Deckard (2010), in a study tracing its ori-
gins in colonial discourse and widespread contemporary proliferation,
suggests that the “paradise myth” which is central to this campaign,
“sublimate(s) political resistance by offering up consoling fantasies of the
expanded consumer’s paradise enabled by globalization” (13). In the case
of the lottery campaign, which I am offering here alongside the Three ad
as examples drawn from of an expansive media culture (and to which I add
the primary case studies central to the following chapters in this book), we
see that such a consoling fantasy is aligned with the idea that Ireland has
an outsized impact beyond its own borders in relation to its modest size
and is the wellspring of an abiding and coherent identity that persists and
thrives in a contemporary era marked by intensive globalization.
In different ways each of these island-themed ads present a similar ideo-
logical proposition: that the ideal Irish subject is one who transcends
national borders while retaining an authentic sense of Irishness rooted in
and routed through the local. Both ads in their own ways correspond to
Radha S. Hegde’s (2016) contention that in the present era, “The very
idea of a better life is visualised and experienced transnationally” (6). The
notion of “fractured movement” that I see as a defining feature of so
much twenty-first century Irish screen content, registers this seemingly
paradoxical tension between the local and the global. This is, of course, a
4 A. P. MCINTYRE
trope with longstanding roots that go back to such cataclysmic events as

the Irish famine in the nineteenth century and the various recessionary
eras since that have undergirded the Irish diaspora. Such conditions caused
citizens to depart their native land in hope of finding work; or indeed we
can also add the many Irish subjects who fled a country which was, until
very recently, in thrall to a Catholic orthodoxy that was openly homopho-
bic and hostile to women’s reproductive rights and labour freedoms.
However, whereas in previous eras the rupture between subject and home
could be more emphatic, advances in consumer mobility and communica-
tions technologies have rendered the border between home and away, the
local and the transnational more porous in a manner that generates “new
modalities of belonging” (Morley 2010, 3).
This sense of fractured movement that I read as a key element of these
new modalities of belonging, of being simultaneously drawn away and
pulled back—which we might understand through the common experi-
ence of families who are spread across the world, often due to the necessity
of economic migration—persistently manifests in often indirect forms in
Irish popular culture. We can detect such tensions in many media con-
texts, including: the discursive construction of twenty-first century Irish
celebrities and stars from both sports as well as film and television; differ-
ent genres of screen content such as drama and horror films; comedies
both cinematic and televisual; as well as in multiple instances of advertis-
ing, as demonstrated by the two “island” ads that I have considered above.
Such pronounced tropes of the local/global interdependency and confla-
tion mirror on an ideological level the economic positioning of the Irish
state in the twenty-first century, on account of its reliance on non-domestic
industry due to years of aggressive pursual of foreign direct investment.
This has led to Ireland being a nation exposed to the vagaries of the global
economic system, another way in which the depiction of a small island at
the mercy of tumultuous elements outside of its control is a resonant and
apt metaphor.
Neoliberal Ireland: Mapping the Contemporary

Conjuncture North and South
As some scholars have suggested, the metaphorical trope of the small
island serves to attenuate divisions within the nation, one which “takes
particular charge in countries that have experienced the long receding
wave of empire as violence, partition and the fragmentation of place as a

subject of narrative” (Allen 2021, 3). In Ireland, of course, one major
schism is the border that has separated the Republic of Ireland from
Northern Ireland since 1921. This book takes what might be considered
an all-island approach, while acknowledging the different affiliations peo-
ple hold (whether to Britain or to Ireland) in the still-contested six coun-
ties in Northern Ireland. While including Northern Ireland in the present
study presents some challenges at the level of word choice, particularly
usage of the adjective “Irish” or the noun “Ireland,” the experiences of
people from that part of Ireland, are central to some of the most salient
aspects of Irish diasporic experience, not least being victims of persistent
anti-Irish sentiment in mainland Britain, during, but not limited to the
years of The Troubles. Indeed, the fractured sense of identity that mani-
fests in texts emanating from, or symbolically rooted in, Northern Ireland
highlight in an overt way some of the broader facets of home/away dis-
juncture that I track across this book.
My focus on the sitcom Derry Girls (2018–) and the footballer James
McClean in Chaps. 3 and 4, texts centred on the city of
Derry/Londonderry—the obligatory dual-naming indexing the contesta-
tion over and the symbolic centrality of the city to both Nationalist and
Unionist communities in the North—allows for a consideration of trans-
national production cultures within media industries, as well as flows of
labour and capital; and a regional identity that troubles monolithic notions
of national affiliation and belonging at a time when the stability of such
constructs is under considerable duress. To return to word choice, I use
the term “Ireland” for the most part to refer to the 26 counties, or what
is otherwise known as the Republic of Ireland (though acknowledging
that Ireland is the official name of the state), occasionally using the latter
term to differentiate between Northern Ireland and the 26 counties; when
referring to the entire 32 counties, I use phrases such as “the island of
Ireland,” or “Ireland, North and South”; similarly the term “Irish” is usu-
ally used to refer to the Republic of Ireland, except in instances where it
denotes an apt affiliation such as “Irish footballer James McClean.” I trust
that the context of the writing will provide enough information to clarify
the sense in which these words are being used.
Uniting Ireland, both North and South is the dominant mode of capi-
talism in the late 20th and early 21st centuries: neoliberalism. Cultural
studies scholar Julie Wilson (2018) pithily characterises neoliberalism as “a
set of social, cultural, and political-economic forces that put competition
6 A. P. MCINTYRE
at the center of social life” (3). It is this influence across multiple spheres,
as well as the adaptability of this variant of capitalism that is key to its per-
sistence, despite the notable social and financial catastrophes with which it
has come to be associated, not least the “Great Recession” of 2007–2009
and the austerity policies that swiftly followed in its wake. Jamie Peck and
Nik Theodore (2019) suggest the necessity of “confront[ing] neoliberal-
ism as an emergent mode of regulation, one that has become cumulatively
embedded across multiple sites and spaces such that it increasingly defines
the rules of the game and the terrain of struggle, even if never acting alone
or monopolizing that terrain.” (Peck and Theodore 2019, 246). The pur-
pose of this book is to contribute to a growing body of Irish cultural stud-
ies scholarship that seeks to interrogate the role of popular culture in
installing neoliberal values as common sense (see, for instance, Kiersey
2014; Brick and Davidson 2017; Free and Scully 2018; Negra and
McIntyre 2020; McIntyre 2021).
For scholars such as Peck and Theodore, neoliberalism is never a mono-
lithic construct, but one that is variegated. This plasticity, in their account,
should act as “an invitation to conjunctural analysis, sensitive to variable
(local) projects, formations, struggles, and contestations, and at the same
time recognizing the openness of emergent pathways and future hori-
zons” (246). This approach aligns with scholarship on Irish manifestations
of this economic model. Geographers Rob Kitchin et al. (2012) in an
influential article tracing the economic and spatial impacts of neoliberal-
ism suggest that Ireland differed from the UK and the US, where neolib-
eralism was “an ideologically informed project” instigated under the
premierships of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. For Kitchin et al.,
“Irish neoliberalism was produced through a set of short-term (intermit-
tently reformed) deals brokered by the state with various companies, indi-
viduals, and representative bodies, which cumulatively restructured Ireland
in unsustainable and geographically ‘uneven’ ways” (1306). Nevertheless,
while neoliberalism may not have been imposed upon the Irish in the top-
down manner of the US and the UK, the role of media figures and the
culture industries more broadly was also crucial to the shifting ideological
consensus that helped broker neoliberalism’s acceptance in a newly secula-
rised Ireland and a post-conflict Northern Ireland.
Irish studies scholar Joe Cleary (2018) suggests Ireland’s reputation for
“creativity”—a notable neoliberal buzzword, and one which, as I detail in
Chap. 5 has been seized upon with gusto by the Irish state—combined
with several other factors (a mobile, educated workforce; lack of
employment opportunities in heavy industries; a historic diaspora stretch-

ing across the globe) made the nation ripe for neoliberalization. For Cleary
“the country offered not only an attractive clean slate for a neoliberal
experiment in post-industrial services and new technologies sectors, but
also a range of “cultural assets” useful to such experiment” (165). The
neoliberal ethos was taken up wholeheartedly by home-grown companies
such as Glanbia and Ryanair, the corporate values within Ireland coming
to mimic those of the multinational companies attracted to Ireland. Since
then, corporatism has been installed at the heart of Irish life, evident in
such telling details as former Taoiseach (prime minister) Leo Varadkar’s
assertion on popular talk show The Late Late Show (1962–) while in that
office that he was “chairman and CEO of the organization,” or the fact
that former “wolf of Wall Street” Jordan Belfort, can draw large audiences
to a speaking event in the Convention Centre in Dublin (Negra and
McIntyre 2020, 75). Similarly, as Cleary (2018) suggests, within the Irish
cultural sector, successful acts such as U2 and Riverdance that flourished
spectacularly during the Celtic Tiger era bespoke a changed entrepreneur-
ial ethos that “brooked no distinction between symbolic and economic
capital” (165) a shift further manifest in prominent cultural figures of the
time such as boy band impresario Louis Walsh, Riverdance producer Moya
Doherty and U2 manager Paul McGuinness.
Such acts and individuals reinforced the nascent sense within Ireland
that true success was only fully realised on a transnational scale. In some
ways this functioned as a symbolic reciprocal corollary to all of the multi-
national corporations drawn to Ireland and its 12.5% corporate tax rate
and highly educated and, to begin with, low paid workers (Coulter 2019,
130), bolstering a heady sense in the pre-crash years that Ireland was com-
ing to the world, and the world to Ireland. While the Celtic Tiger era
constitutes a cultural high-water mark for Irishness as a commercialised
and appealing identity with global legibility (Negra 2006), conceptions of
success as predicated upon a transnational entrepreneurialism have since
become axiomatic. For many of the individuals analysed in the chapters to
follow, such as actor-writers Chris O’Dowd (Hot Cod Productions),
Sharon Horgan (Merman Productions) and Brendan O’Carroll (BOC-
PIX; BOC Productions), as well as MMA fighter Conor McGregor
(McGregor Sports and Entertainment)—considered in Chaps. 2, 5, 6 and
4 respectively—having a production company that operates internation-
ally is an essential and somewhat unremarkable component of a profes-
sional identity within the cultural industries. As success stories with a
8 A. P. MCINTYRE
heightened level of recognition through their high-profile stature, these

performers model the entrepreneurialism that has become a common-
sense aspect of neoliberal culture (Szeman 2015) while the heightened
risk that attends such modes of labour usually goes unacknowledged.
In Northern Ireland, the advent of neoliberalism took a different route,
tied as it was to the peace process in the 1990s that eventually resulted in
the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement that came into effect in 1999 and
marked a symbolic end to The Troubles, the years of sectarian violence
that constituted an open sore within the UK and Ireland from the late
1960s. For media scholars Stephen Baker and Greg McLaughlin (2015),
two frameworks underscored the peace process: “an explicit narrative of
peace and reconciliation and an implicit narrative that set about imagining
Northern Ireland in terms conducive to its entry into the global free mar-
ket” (108). Baker and McLaughlin posit two images as encapsulating
these narratives. In one, Irish rock star and frontman of U2 Bono stands
between John Hume of the Social and Democratic Labour Party and
David Trimble of the Ulster Unionist Party holding their hands aloft in a
picture taken just days before the referendum in 1998 to ratify the Belfast
(Good Friday) agreement. The picture was seen by many as pivotal in
ensuring a “yes” vote for peace. The two politicians who supplanted the
moderates Hume and Trimble post-agreement are the subjects of the sec-
ond picture. Taken after the installation of the new power-sharing devolved
government in Northern Ireland, the picture shows two formerly hard-
line figures Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness and the Democratic Unionist
Party’s Rev. Ian Paisley seated together in multinational furniture com-
pany Ikea’s first store in the province in December 2007. The image is
inadvertently captioned by Ikea’s motto of the time, “Home is the most
important place in the world” in a statement that serves as ironic comment
on the global and regional processes in play that the image indexes: a pic-
ture that was showing Northern Ireland as “open for business” as two
erstwhile opponents in a bitter ethno-nationalist conflict smiled together
on a Scandinavian sofa.
The promised “peace dividend” that politicians had promised would
come to Northern Ireland, the most persistently economically deprived
part of the UK, as a means of sealing the Good Friday agreement, never
materialised. As Colin Coulter (2019) details, while successive Conservative
governments in the UK had considered Northern Ireland “a place apart,”
and withheld enforcing some of the austerity measured imposed on the
rest of the UK, it took a party ostensibly of the Left, Tony Blair’s Labour,
to bring neoliberalism to Northern Ireland in earnest (127–128). The

promised multinational investment in Northern Ireland though starting
strong, quickly stalled and Northern Ireland maintained its position as one
of the most deprived regions of the UK. The jobs that did come tended to
be low-paid non-skilled positions, with a marked predominance of call
centre work. Lyra McKee, the journalist whose murder at the age of 29 at
the hands of Republican dissidents during a riot in Derry served as a
reminder of the persistence of violence in the region, even during a time
of supposed peace, wrote poignantly of being part of the “Good Friday
generation, destined to never witness the horrors of war but to reap the
spoils of peace.” To which she adds, “The spoils just never seemed to
reach us” (McKee 2017). In Chap. 3, I place the death of McKee along-
side the contemporaneous success of Derry Girls, finding in the sitcom
(set at the end of the 1990s as Northern Ireland was transitioning to
peace) a nostalgia for earlier promises, which, for many in McKee’s gen-
eration, failed to be fulfilled.
Conjunctural Flash Points

The texts considered in this book emerge at a conjuncture marked by
geopolitical turbulence and a rise in populist nationalism that is commonly
seen as a by-product of decades of neoliberal policy. Media scholars Zala
Volcic and Mark Andrejevic (2016) helpfully underline the role of the
global in populist currents, stressing that “developments typically associ-
ated with the term ‘globalization’ go hand in hand with assertive and
resurgent nationalisms—both enhancing and reconfiguring national iden-
tities” (1). These elements constitute the conjunctures considered in this
book. A term often utilised in cultural studies scholarship, a conjunctural
approach, such as the one taken herein, constitutes “the analysis of con-
vergent and divergent tendencies shaping the totality of power relations
within a given social field during a particular period of time” (Gilbert
2019, 6). Culture, in such an approach is only ever one field of conten-
tion, situated among and continually intersecting and interacting with
“local, municipal, regional, national and international struggles (both
institutional and extra-institutional), with economic processes and histo-
ries of technological change.” (Gilbert 2019, 16). Utilizing knowledge
from a variety of disciplines is essential in carrying out such an analysis, and
within this book I draw from scholarship in the critical humanities and
social sciences, though the book itself is a work with a disciplinary home
10 A. P. MCINTYRE
in cultural studies, media studies and Irish studies. The conjunctures that
this book intersects with, and which are associated in some ways with the
populist currents that Volcic and Andrejevic (2016) contend are precipi-
tated by globalist and neoliberal tendencies are Trumpism in the US,
Brexit in the UK, (both of which I consider in the remainder of this sec-
tion) and a post-Celtic Tiger Ireland characterised for many years by aus-
terity and economic migration. The global COVID-19 pandemic that
swept the world in 2020 is dwelt upon in the coda of this book.
The Brexit referendum of 2016 and Britain’s subsequent departure
from the European Union demonstrates the complex interplay between
nation states. The sundering of the UK from the EU has reignited ten-
sions in Northern Ireland given the Irish border’s sudden reconfiguration
as a boundary not only between Britain and Ireland, but between Britain
and the EU. This momentous political recalibration has undermined the
1998 Good Friday Agreement that marked the putative end of The
Troubles in Northern Ireland and the beginning of a power-sharing sys-
tem underwritten by British and Irish state support. The fact that the UK
has historically been the destination to which a majority of Irish emigrants
depart contributes also to the fraught relations between the two nations.
Certain figures and texts analysed herein (footballer McClean, Derry Girls
[2018–]; Mrs Brown’s Boys [2011–] in Chap. 6; sitcoms focusing on the
Irish in Britain such as Catastrophe [2015–2019] and This Way Up [2019]
in Chap. 5) all register in complex ways the seismic shifts under way in the
second decade of the 2000s.
In particular, my examination of McClean’s refusal to wear the Earl
Haig poppy year on year, while playing in the English football leagues
demonstrates how a personal protest informed by the player’s experience
of British militarism on the streets of Derry became a cultural lightning
rod. In many ways McClean’s protest (begun in 2012) prefigured the rise
of a virulent nationalism in the UK that was tied in complex ways to
notions of remembrance and the valorisation of sacrifices made in conflict,
in particular the First World War, and which manifested in its most potent
expression in the Brexit vote to take the UK out of the European Union.
The vote has compounded uncertainties in terms of national belonging
that have emerged for Irish and other national subjects in these years,
uncertainties often rooted in shared and troubled histories of colonialism
and migration.
It is important to clarify at this point that the transnational shifts I track
in this book are for the most part related to anglophone countries, and
primarily the interplay between Ireland, the US and the UK. In many ways
this is due to the triangulation of diasporic movement between these
nations, as well as the dominance of both the UK and the US in terms of
cultural production pertaining to Ireland. Sociologist Mary J. Hickman
(2002) emphasizes this connection in her consideration of the definition
and impact of the Irish diaspora, characterising it as:
sizeable, of extended reach, of long duration, [providing] much of the

unskilled manual labour power for the world’s two dominant economies of
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Britain and the USA respec-
tively. (23)
While, of course, there have been significant migratory paths to countries

such as Australia and Canada, and increasingly the Middle East both his-
torically and in the aftermath of the post-2008 recession, migration to the
US from Ireland registers highly in the national psyche, due in no small
part to iconic screen representations such as The Quiet Man (1952)—
which, as Sinead Moynihan (2019) argues, had an immediate and abiding
impact on visual and touristic mythologies of Ireland (37)—as well as the
prominence of Irish-American public figures in the high-profile realms of
entertainment and politics.
The most significant shift in US culture during the years covered in this
book finds its symbolic focus in the emergence of Donald Trump as presi-
dent and the fractious public discourse that characterised the years of his
presidency (as well as the pandemic era with which it overlapped). While
in Ireland Trumpism was mainly held in disdain, the most high-profile
Irish sporting figure of this era, MMA fighter McGregor (considered in
Chap. 4) developed a public persona that fed off the racial and gendered
antagonisms that the former president stoked in public discourse in the
US. The pinnacle of McGregor’s career—in terms of financial gain, if not
professional comportment and success—was the 2017 “money fight,” his
boxing debut against former champion Floyd Mayweather Jnr. The racial
friction that characterised the promotional tour undertaken by both fight-
ers in anticipation of the bout indexed a restive public sphere that would
ultimately erupt into the Black Lives Matter protests precipitated by the
murder of George Floyd at the hands of police in May 2020 in Minneapolis.
Providing a marked contrast to McGregor’s race-baiting, Irish comedian,
podcaster and writer Maeve Higgins’ response to Trumpism (examined in
Chap. 5) was a sustained consideration of the role of immigrants (Irish and
12 A. P. MCINTYRE
non-Irish) both past and present in the construction of US society in her

podcast Maeve in America: Immigration IRL (2016–2017) and book
Maeve in America: Essays by a Girl from Somewhere Else (2018). Higgins,
along with other Irish figures examined in this book such as comedian and
actress Aisling Bea (also Chap. 5) in her sitcom This Way Up (2019–),
proffers a more reflective consideration of Irish identity that juxtaposes
Irish whiteness and troubled pasts with those of non-white peoples who
co-exist in the “diaspora spaces” (Brah 1996) in which many Irish have
made their homes.
Transnationalism, Regionality and Diaspora:

Utilizing Key Terms
Guiding my analysis of contemporary Irish content is a focus on the inter-
connected concepts of transnationalism, regionality and diaspora. Singling
out the first of these terms, transnationalism is often used to differentiate
from the more general concept of globalization. As geographer Michael
Kearney (1995) clarifies, “Whereas global processes are largely decentred
from specific national territories and take place in a global space, transna-
tional processes are anchored in and transcend one or more nation states”
(548). In many of the chapters considered in this book, this anchoring
occurs not only at a national, but often at a regional level. Thus, when
depicted in individualised terms, say through actor O’Dowd’s connection
to his hometown of Boyle in County Roscommon, the complexities of
movement at different scalar levels in economic and labour spheres is ren-
dered more legible and a demonstrable and abiding connection to the
point of one’s origins emerges as a consoling narrative to make sense of a
world characterised by at times unpredictable flux and movement across a
variety of economic and social spheres.
Anthropologist Aihwa Ong (1999) locates her preference for the term
transnationalism, which for her denotes “the condition of cultural inter-
connectedness and mobility across space” (4), over globalization in the
capaciousness of the prefix “trans.” For Ong:
trans denotes both moving across space or across lines, as well as changing
the nature of something. Besides suggesting new relations between nation
states and capital, transnationality also alludes to the transversal, the transac-
tional, the translational, and the transgressive aspects of contemporary
behaviour and imagination that are incited, enabled, and regulated by the
changing logics of states and capitalism. (4)
A consideration of the multiple changes which contemporary Ireland

North and South has undergone since it was increasingly opened to global
flows of people, capital and information as the Catholic church’s hege-
mony waned and pre-existing political structures were reconfigured aligns
with the multiple valences to which Ong ascribes this prefix, and the more
specific concept of transnationalism.
Writing about cinema, but in terms that are applicable to the wider ter-
rain of Irish screen culture that I assay in this book, Rosalind Galt (2016)
similarly draws attention to the prefix. For Galt, the “trans” in transna-
tional, “is not merely a bridge between more traditional national
approaches, but rather it finds something quite different in that transition.
The trans-national promises to transform the object of cinema. By shifting
our attention to the mode of movement between things, the transnational
asks us to look at cinema in terms of processes and transits rather than
objects and states.” Indeed, the “processes and transits” Galt writes of are
an essential consideration in the chapters to follow, dealing as they do with
the movement of specific people (as I track for instance the movement of
public figures who perhaps would not have flourished as they did had they
stayed within Ireland) or cultural flows (exemplified in the international
success of highly regionalized texts such as Derry Girls and The Young
Offenders). Further, the role of technological advances and increasingly
globalized financial pathways in facilitating such variegated mobility in
turn impact in crucial ways such forms of representation and the emergent
modes of belonging they index.
A salient example of the interconnectedness and tensions that manifest
when the transnational and the regional collide in contemporary Irish
screen culture can be discerned in UK police series Line of Duty
(2012–2021). While set in an unnamed city in the north of England, the
series is filmed in Belfast. To contrast, the opposite production pattern is
in evidence in the film ‘71 (2014) which, though set in Belfast was filmed
in Sheffield. These location misalignments are often related to funding
structures. Media scholars Ruth McElroy and Caitriona Noonan (2019)
note how policies implemented by the BBC and Channel 4 in the UK
centred on regional development and decentralisation of production result
in such spatial disjunctures (75–76), processes which have corollaries in
film stemming from inter-regional as well as international competition to
attract lucrative productions. These practices result in what film scholar
Ruth Barton (2019) has termed an “uncanny recognition effect”, in which
what is familiar doubles for “a partially recognisable Other” (15). Large
14 A. P. MCINTYRE
drama productions such as Game of Thrones (2011–2019) and Vikings

(2013–2020) filmed partially in Northern Ireland and the Republic of
Ireland respectively also align with this characterisation. Such uncanny
experiences are in part an aesthetic by-product of complex funding and
production infrastructures that are increasingly operating at a transna-
tional scale. These processes, at different moments homogenising and dis-
orienting, one may conjecture, might account for an appetite for regional
authenticity in an increasingly globalised mediascape.
Returning to Line of Duty, we see the possibility of viewers experienc-
ing both spatial disorientation and an appealing regional authenticity
simultaneously. Watching the series viewers even passingly familiar with
Belfast can recognise various local landmarks and the primarily mainland
British accents of most of the main characters can be jarring in this con-
text. One of the lead actors, Adrian Dunbar who plays Supt. Ted Hastings,
however, is from Northern Ireland, born and raised in Enniskillen, County
Fermanagh. The latitude given to Dunbar by series creator and writer Jed
Mercurio has led to idiomatic expressions that the actor had heard spoken
by his father in Fermanagh being regularly included in the series’ scripts.
Popular among these are: “Jesus, Mary and Joseph and the wee donkey,”
to express surprise, and “you must think I came down the Lagan in a
bubble,” as an indication that you are not as naïve as your interlocuter
presumably believes. These regional expressions have generated a remark-
able amount of good will (often expressed through memes of the more
distinctive sayings) from fans of the show, who often refer to them as
“Ted-isms.” In an unanticipated display of homage, Horror writer and
pop cultural icon Stephen King acknowledged the distinctive phrasing by
tweeting “NOW WE’RE SUCKING DIESEL! If you don’t get it, you
missed a great series” (Toner 2021) in July 2021. The tweet was liked and
shared widely among the series’ cast and its enthusiastic audience, generat-
ing several press stories on Line of Duty and its famous fan. King’s inter-
vention highlights both the expanded reach of national television drama
through emerging distribution technologies and providers and the trans-
national media ecology facilitated by social media platforms, as well as the
capacity of regionality to pierce through an overcrowded media landscape
and connect with viewers at a cultural and spatial remove.
While topography and landscape are usually the primary signifiers of
region in screen texts, the popularity of Hastings’ phrasing and accent
might be usefully considered through the scholarly framework of critical
regionality. Drawing on the work of philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix
Guattari, who themselves were considering the writings of Franz Kafka,

Neil Campbell (2016) summarizing this approach suggests that regional-
ism is an expression of “the minor,” something that can destabilize the
smooth-running operations of dominant “major” forms. For Campbell,
“to rethink region and regionalism with this in mind understands the local
and specific to be interventionalist in wider, more distanced or global proj-
ects and ‘languages’ and yet, at the same time, refuses to allow the local to
become static, nostalgic, or reductive” (3). In the case of Hastings’ idiom-
atic phrasings, we see the regional manifest as a distinctive element that
became a breakout feature in an exciting though otherwise somewhat rou-
tine police procedural. My consideration of comedies Derry Girls and The
Young Offenders (initially a film before its further development into a sit-
com) in Chap. 3 is informed by a critical regionality approach and seeks to
assay the impact of these comedies and the disruptive potential of such
expressions of regionality (through accent, language, topography and
landscape) to a mediascape that tends to, unchecked, generate representa-
tional norms that align with hegemonic social and spatial formations, that
is, privileging metropolitan subjects residing in higher socio-economic
classes.
The role of diasporic populations amid the transnational and the
regional is a central concern of this book. Much Irish studies scholarship
has been devoted to considerations of the Irish diaspora (see, for instance,
Bielenberg 2000; Hickman 2002; Moynihan 2013). As Sinéad Moynihan
(2013, 12–13) notes, many scholars have raised questions about the usage
of the word “diaspora,” not least for its somewhat opportunistic deploy-
ment by an Irish state seeking to exploit for economic reasons the huge
number of people who feel connected to Ireland through their family heri-
tage. This was most evident perhaps in “The Gathering,” a 2013
government-backed project aimed at promoting Ireland to its diaspora as
a tourist destination. The project attracted 440,000 tourists to Ireland
adding €200 million to the Irish economy, for an advertising outlay of
only €3 million (Cronin 2021, 131). As Mike Cronin details, “‘The
Gathering’ relied intensively on close community engagement and on nar-
ratives that connected the diaspora back to their deeply local roots …
channeling the message extensively through social media” (131). The cen-
trality of emergent communications technologies to this project is thus
also part of the narrative, comprising an increasingly pervasive infrastruc-
tural connection between the regional and the transnational.
16 A. P. MCINTYRE
A less nakedly mercenary example of diaspora engagement can be

found in the “#hometovote” campaigns that emerged in tandem with the
progressive referenda to legalise gay marriage in 2015 and repeal the ninth
amendment, allowing for abortion within Ireland in 2018 (which I con-
sider in more detail in Chap. 5 through an analysis of a “Together for Yes”
campaign video for the 2018 referendum fronted by Horgan and Bea).
Again, largely facilitated through social media postings, the Irish diasporic
populations mobilised at these times were for the most part young eco-
nomic migrants who had left Ireland after the crash of 2008. As Hegde
(2016, 105) suggests, “While the contemporary diasporic experience still
has the elements of longing, memory, and entanglements, technology and
the force of global economy radically rework the transnational experience
in terms of a sustained connectivity and synchronicity.” Such connectivity
and synchronicity were highly in evidence during both referenda. Though,
as Eleanor O’Leary and Diane Negra (2016) suggest of the 2015 cam-
paign, while it “provided a sense of unity which was dependent on the idea
of a modern, inclusive Irish identity,” the cathartic images of the returning
migrants served to eclipse contemporaneous statistics showing that Irish
young people were leaving rather than returning in their droves, and
therefore were ideologically entangled in “a fantasy that the fabric of Irish
society had not been torn apart in the intervening years of austerity” (138).
Nevertheless, the “longing, memory, and entanglements” to which
Hegde alludes still persist across diasporic populations, and across genera-
tions. This is examined in Chap. 6 in my consideration of Philomena (2013),
a comedic dramatization of the real-life experiences of Philomena Lee
roughly based on journalist Martin Sixsmith’s account of the search for Lee’s
child, who was taken from her when she resided in one of the state’s notori-
ous mother and baby homes. Adding a layer of complexity to the film are the
diasporic backgrounds of key creative personnel, including Steve Coogan
(whose parents are Irish and who co-wrote the screenplay and starred in the
film) and Dame Judi Dench, who played Lee and whose mother was Irish.
The notion of diaspora, of course, is a term that applies to different
national and ethnic groupings. As Liam Kennedy cautions, “We need our
diaspora (and other diasporas within our shores) not only as an economic
ally, but as a mirror to our national conceptions and deceptions, and as a
measure of what we mean by citizenship” (Kennedy 2015). The Celtic
Tiger years saw the demographic constitution of Ireland change consider-
ably, when for the first time in Irish history immigration outpaced emigra-
tion and a corresponding increase in racial/ethnic diversity. Sociologist
Rebecca Chiyoko King-O’Riain (2021) has skilfully traced the complex

entanglement of anti-Irish racism and Irish racism that was generated
through the migration of people into and out of Ireland since the 1800s.
As she summarizes: “As a post-colonial nation within Europe with a
strongly racialised past (non-white to white) and a history of emigration
across the globe, it is now actively working to cope with rapid migration
and growing racial/ethnic diversity at home and abroad” (834). O’Riain
highlights the ambivalent positioning of modern-day Ireland, in which
non-white and mixed-race subjects are increasingly afforded a more prom-
inent position in the media and public office, yet reports of racist attacks
remain persistently high. This changing constitution of Irish demograph-
ics is something I consider in Chap. 6 in my analysis of Baz Ashmawy and
his mother Nancy, the duo who starred in reality tv hit 50 Ways to Kill
Your Mammy (2014–2016). As a mixed-race public figure, Ashmawy’s
professional association with his white, Catholic mother (an abiding ele-
ment of his celebrity profile which persists in an extensive 2021 advertising
campaign for Bank of Ireland) served—in tandem with multiple other
instances of non-white celebrity Irishness including the premiership of
Leo Varadkar and Phil Lynott’s rock stardom, which has been notably
resuscitated in the 2021 documentary Songs for While I’m Away—to sym-
bolically broker a transition away from the dominant racial and religious
conceptions of Irishness to a more inclusive understanding.
Methodology, Choice of Texts

and Chapter Overview
A guiding principle in assembling the archive of texts under analysis in this

book was a refusal to be hidebound by overly rigid parameters of genre or
medium. Although for the most part I examine texts that fall under the
capacious category of screen culture (cinema, screen-based advertising,
social media, television genres; broadcast sporting events and their associ-
ated promotional materials) I do incorporate some other non-screen forms
where appropriate (comedian Higgins’ memoirs and podcasts, for instance,
in Chap. 5, newspaper and other print media accounts of sportsmen
McGregor and McClean in Chap. 4). While in some ways this can lead to
a selection of texts which don’t fit within tidy categorisations of genre or
medium, I felt this expansive approach can capture the reconfiguration of
national and transnational identities I track across the book more fluently
than through the utilization of a more rigid schematic. The term “popular
18 A. P. MCINTYRE
culture” that I deploy in the title to this book is also not without its diffi-
culties, as Stuart Hall (1981) cautions. For my purposes, I take the term
to designate the realm of cultural activity that while reaching a broad audi-
ence, still tends to be conceptualised as “low culture,” far from the rarefied
realm of Art, Literature or even cinematic auteurism. While the discipline
of Irish studies has begun, in fits and starts, to see such texts as advertising,
sitcoms, non-traditional sports broadcasts, reality television, celebrity cul-
ture and memes as within its purview, the present study contends such an
approach is essential to any account of contemporary Irishness and the
shifts it has undergone in the twenty-first century.
While the archive I assemble is somewhat variegated, certain genres or
modes find greater representation. Comedy, whether in television sitcom
form or associated hybrid genres of comedy-drama or dramedy, is a key
feature of this book. This, in part, is related to comedy’s capacity, similar
indeed to that of sports, to generate feelings of togetherness. As Alenka
Zupančič (2020) has suggested, “Laughter is not only or simply an expres-
sion of individual relief and pleasure, it is decidedly a collective-forming
affect, more so perhaps than any other” (2020, 281). Similarly, for Andy
Medhurst (2007), “Above all else, comedy is an invitation to belong”
(2007, 19). That comedy can foster a sense of collectivity and belonging,
also registers in an opposing formation. As some feel included or part of a
collective, others will also feel excluded. Mrs Brown’s Boys, a sitcom exam-
ined in Chap. 6, is perhaps particularly exemplary of this facet of comedy,
given the strong polarisation the sitcom provokes, which skews along gen-
erational and regional lines.
My focus on the popular aligns with the multiple scalar levels with
which this study is concerned. As geographer Jason Dittmer (2005) argues
“Popular culture is one of the ways in which people come to understand
their position both within a larger collective identity, and within an even
larger geopolitical narrative, or script” (626). This aspect of popular cul-
ture is essential for this book’s purposes, given its concern with Irishness
on a regional, national, and transnational level. Part of my argument in
this book centres on the expanded reach of contemporary communica-
tions channels. So, for instance, the sitcom Derry Girls, originally broad-
cast on Channel 4 in the UK, which I examine in Chap. 3 has an expanded
reach since it has been made available internationally on streaming video
on demand (SVOD) provider Netflix. This implications of this are that the
vernacular language and specific accents that index the sitcom’s regionality
are foregrounded, a feature of the sitcom that can both elicit positive and
negative responses, with some finding the idiomatic phrasing refreshingly

unfamiliar, while some members of the extended Irish diaspora find their
inability to understand the show without subtitles an unsettling reminder
of the distance between them and the site of their diasporic affiliation.
The chapters that follow engage with Irish popular culture as a site
wherein transnationalism, regionality and diaspora are points of deliberation
and contention. As indicated above, and acknowledging the convergent
qualities of contemporary media (Jenkins 2006), the media texts analysed
are heterogenous, spanning cinema, television, social media, as well as the
public discourses of several celebrity figures. Using these celebrities, in
Chap. 2 (actor O’Dowd), Chap. 4 (sportsmen McClean and McGregor)
and Chap. 5 (comedians and actresses Horgan, Bea and Higgins) as points
of focalisation allows consideration of several texts that might be loosely
related, but which nevertheless animate crucial dimensions of the topic at
hand. The other two chapters follow a different structuring rationale.
Chapter 3 takes as its focalization not a celebrity, be that a sportsman or a
screen artist, but the two “second cities” on the island of Ireland—Cork and
Derry—drawing upon the histories of those two cities in my reading of The
Young Offenders and Derry Girls, as well as associated texts enmeshed in the
discursive construction of these places. For Chap. 6, I utilize the figure of
the “Irish mammy,” examining several texts that highlight a filial bond,
including Mrs Brown’s Boys, O’Carroll’s spectacularly popular and polarising
sitcom, comedy-drama feature Philomena and reality adventure series 50
Ways to Kill Your Mammy. These combined approaches facilitate the pres-
ent book’s analysis of Irish popular culture, which, though not exhaustive,
nevertheless allows consideration across a variety of critical axes, including
geographical location; diasporic generational remove; representations of
age, race, class, and gender; as well as different modes of “old” and “new”
media, spanning a wide range of genres.
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CHAPTER 2
Star Leverage, Local Matters,

and Transnational Media: Chris O’Dowd,
Moone Boy and Puffin Rock
This chapter, and several of the others to follow, suggests that an analysis
of contemporary iterations of stardom and celebrity provides a useful
prism through which to view shifts in wider Irish society in the post-Celtic
Tiger era. The heightened individualism of stardom/celebrity allows for
an analysis that can span multiple textual formations, from journalistic
portrayals of the individual in question and social media postings on the
part of the celebrity, to media content (films and television programmes,
for instance) featuring the figure, and the critical and popular reception of
these. This form of cultural studies approach, when used in tandem with
interdisciplinary scholarship drawn from academic fields including
Sociology, History and Politics enables the generation of insights derived
from multiple axes of analysis. To that end, the present chapter considers
the career of Irish actor Chris O’Dowd as a site of embodied social knowl-
edge regarding Ireland and its diasporic populations in the twenty-first
century.
O’Dowd—born in Sligo, raised in neighbouring Roscommon and now
living in Los Angeles, having worked in London for a substantial portion
of his professional career—is an example of the diasporic and transnational
tendencies that are often central to a successful career in the performing
arts. Although Ireland in many ways has an arts scene that belies the coun-
try’s comparatively small size, cosmopolitan centres of cultural production
such as London and Los Angeles have long exerted a powerful draw upon
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 23

Switzerland AG 2022
A. P. McIntyre, Contemporary Irish Popular Culture,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94255-7_2
24 A. P. MCINTYRE
those trying to make their way in the creative industries (Barton and
Murphy 2020). The flow of aspirants seeking a place in these industries
mirrors a wider transnational movement among the Irish population with
well-established roots. It has been argued that a recourse to emigration is
almost instinctive in the Irish, especially in times of economic duress, with
the exodus of prior generations having established a symbolic and material
infrastructure for Irish people to leave their homeland for professional,
economic, or other reasons (O’Toole 2016). The present chapter, through
an examination of O’Dowd’s professional career limns some of the con-
tours of contemporary Irish diasporic life patterns and the ideological
shaping of this constitutive element of Irishness, particularly as they mani-
fest in popular culture.
An established body of scholarship contends that the mediated con-
struction of stars and celebrities, figures who hold a prominent position
within an ever-expanding mediascape, undergird notions of selfhood and
subjectivity. The significant decline in the influence of traditional reli-
gion—Catholicism predominantly in the case of the Republic of Ireland—
has seen stardom and celebrity partially fill the void left through the
provision of models of behaviour, however problematic in their own ways
these new social configurations may be. For sociologist Chris Rojek
(2001), in this context, celebrity functions as one of several “replacement
strategies that produce new orders of meaning and solidarity,” with celeb-
rity culture, in the main, constituting “a significant institution in the nor-
mative achievement of social integration” (99). In a similar vein, P. David
Marshall (1997) claims that “celebrities represent subject positions that
audiences can adopt or adapt in their formation of social identities” (65),
a process he sees as providing “an embodiment of collective configurations
within individual representations” (51). Taking the nation as such a col-
lective configuration, we can conceive that in a country such as Ireland,
with its long histories of migration and substantial diasporic communities,
the embodiment of a transnational identity that unites a sense of belong-
ing within the home nation with the possibilities afforded by relocation is
one of the key functions of contemporary Irish celebrity.1
As outlined in the introductory chapter, Ireland has for some time pur-
sued economic policies predicated on securing outside investment and
developing an open economy that positions the nation as the gateway to
Europe for US corporations. This, and the dispersal of a populace that is
also shaped by such economic strategies—predicated as they are on the
transnational flow of people, material goods and capital—is reflected in
2 STAR LEVERAGE, LOCAL MATTERS, AND TRANSNATIONAL MEDIA: CHRIS… 25
complex ways through popular culture texts as well as a number of promi-

nent multi-mediated stars and celebrities. In effect, such texts and the
people involved in their production, not least celebrity figures such as
O’Dowd, constitute a vital component of Ireland’s “soft power,” portray-
ing an appealing side of the nation that countervails some of the less
appealing aspects of modern Ireland on the international stage, such as its
obstinate commitment to low corporate tax rates (O’Toole 2021).
In part, this chapter asks how the qualities of the local and the regional
reconcile with the pull of the international in contemporary Irish identity.
The chapter traces O’Dowd’s career as he initially gains success in the UK
and later in the US, all the while maintaining some connections with
Ireland through work on films such as Calvary (2014) and the sitcom he
co-wrote and acted in, Moone Boy (2012–2015), as well as social media
postings and charitable endeavours. Later sections detail the key features
of a performative Irishness in evidence across several the actor’s projects,
including his breakout role in Bridesmaids (2011), and the combination of
regionalism and global reach evident in Moone Boy as well as the long-form
gangster comedy-drama Get Shorty (2017–). Consideration is given both
to the actor’s corporeality, as well as the role of accent in O’Dowd’s screen
roles, an aural indicator key to the actor’s diasporic identity.
A later section of the chapter examines an animated cartoon for young
children, Puffin Rock (2015–) to gauge how the production strategies of
contemporary animation within Ireland straddle both local distinctiveness
and international legibility. Securing the services of O’Dowd as narrator
for Puffin Rock was an early coup for the animation house, Dog Ears,
enabling the emergent production to leverage the cultural capital of the
Irish actor in gaining access to overseas English-speaking markets. The
cartoon has since had enormous success in non-Anglophone markets, par-
ticularly in China, and an upcoming movie feature (co-produced in China,
alongside initial production partners Cartoon Saloon from Kilkenny) due
for release in 2022 will see the franchise enlargement seek to capitalize on
this early success.
With its current transcontinental production status, the animation con-
stitutes a notable example of the interplay between local, national and
international cultural and market forces. A focus on Puffin Rock allows a
consideration of both the funding infrastructures available to an all-island
Irish production company (Dog Ears is situated in Derry in Northern
Ireland) as well as the salience of an Irish identity when marketing audio-
visual material across the globe, an ancillary case study that deepens this
26 A. P. MCINTYRE
chapter’s consideration of local and global Irishness. Overall, the chapter

argues that O’Dowd (in a manner similar to Sharon Horgan, Aisling Bea
and Maeve Higgins, the female artists examined in Chap. 5)—and associ-
ated projects such as Puffin Rock—crystalize key features of an idealised
Irish subject in the twenty-first century, his international success and
global mobility predicated on the modification and redeployment of long-
standing tropes of Irishness and leavened with a demonstrable connection
to home and hearth.
Shifting Masculinities in Twenty-First Century

Stardom: O’Dowd’s Emergence and the Decline
of Celtic Tiger Masculinities
Film scholar Ruth Barton (2006) has noted the centrality of male star
discourse to contemporary notions of Irishness. While one might assume
the emergence of Oscar-nominated stars such as Saoirse Ronan and Ruth
Negga suggests a redress of the gender balance in terms of international
stardom is currently under way (see Barrett 2015), male stars still outnum-
ber their female compatriots by a considerable measure. O’Dowd is, along
with Domhnall Gleeson, Andrew Scott, and Jamie Dornan, part of a gen-
erational cohort of prominent male Irish stars born in the late seventies
and early eighties who move fluidly between television and cinema in the
twenty-first century. O’Dowd has not achieved the consistent headline
billing attained by more high-profile stars like Michael Fassbender and
Colin Farrell, yet arguably this distance from the apex of the star system
renders him a more approachable and demotic form of star, in sync with
an era in which the longstanding hierarchies that obtain within the film
industry are under increasing duress.
After working as a jobbing actor in the UK for several years, O’Dowd
first came to prominence, in the UK and Ireland, playing the hapless soft-
ware support worker Roy in fellow Irishman Graham Linehan’s sitcom
The IT Crowd (2006–2013). The role would prove pivotal in the actor’s
career not only for giving him his first critical success, but also for facilitat-
ing his big break in the US. Bridesmaids’ director Paul Feig was an IT
Crowd fan and asked O’Dowd to try the audition for the film in his own
accent after an initial try in an American one failed to impress (Solomons
2011). The incident demonstrates the growing importance of transna-
tional creative networks predicated on specific genre knowledge and
appreciation—a phenomenon I deal with in more detail in considering the
transatlantic comedy connections evident in the career of writer and per-

former Sharon Horgan—as well as the importance of accent to the inflec-
tion and production of texts, a point I also examine in detail in a later
section of this chapter.
The success of Bridesmaids—it was the highest grossing comedy of that
year in the US—and the popularity of O’Dowd’s performance in the film
as police officer Rhodes acted as a springboard for projects to follow, nota-
bly Sky TV’s offer for the actor to develop Moone Boy, as well as several
other roles associated with Bridesmaids’ producer Judd Apatow (Girls
[2012–2017]; This is 40 [2012]; Juliet, Naked [2018]). It is hard to
underestimate the impact this one feature had on the development of the
actor’s career. Since Bridesmaids, O’Dowd has proven himself a prolific
actor taking on leading roles in a several independent films (St Vincent
[2014]; Icon [2015]; Love after Love [2017]; Juliet Naked), fronting tele-
vision series (Family Tree [2013]; State of the Union [2019–]; Get Shorty)
and generally extending his range with a series of nuanced dramatic per-
formances that increasingly attenuate the overt comedic tendencies evi-
dent in his earlier sitcom role in The IT Crowd and work in other British
comedy films such as Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel
(2009). Indeed, a common thread of many of O’Dowd’s dramatic roles—
key to his performances in Bridesmaids; Juliet, Naked; and State of the
Union, for instance—has been his positioning as the male participant in
narratives centred on resolving contemporary intimacy dilemmas and
duress. O’Dowd’s successful 2014 run on Broadway playing Lennie in a
staging of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men alongside James Franco
gained the Roscommon native a Tony nomination, further reinforcing his
growing cachet as a dramatic actor.
While O’Dowd has been growing in renown as an actor straddling
comedic and dramatic modes, he hasn’t transitioned significantly beyond
indie-dramas to the big box office roles claimed by some of his peers. His
presence in the Marvel Cinematic Universe was a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it
role in Thor: The Dark World (2013) that the actor has characteristically
referenced in comedically self-deprecating terms (Singer 2019). That said,
longstanding configurations of stardom have seen significant (and ongo-
ing) recalibrations alongside the rise of cable-driven long form quality
television category (Jermyn 2006). Whereas once a move to television was
seen as a step down for high profile cinematic actors, increasingly many are
now making the shift, drawn in part by the large canvas provided and the
opportunity for complex character development (Mittell 2015). O’Dowd’s
28 A. P. MCINTYRE
role as co-lead alongside Ray Romano—another actor successfully transi-

tioning from comedic to more dramatic roles—in a celebrated drama in
this mode, Get Shorty, attests to a not inconsiderable level of professional
success in his field. Indeed, an analysis of twenty-first century recalibra-
tions of stardom seem to suggest that such long form dramas sit not too
far below the ubiquitous superhero franchises in terms of critical acclaim
and popular appeal.
Everyman Appeal, Demotic Corporeality,

and Irish Performativity
Part of O’Dowd’s attraction is the contrast his everyman charm fore-

grounds against earlier iterations of Irish stardom in the 1990s and early
2000s, a juxtaposition evident in the actor’s delf-deprecating humour, but
one that also manifests corporeally. Physically far from the matinee idol
looks that are often a pre-requisite for cinematic fame, O’Dowd is on
record as being grateful for the 2000s/2010s fashion for less classically
handsome male leads that has, in part, been forged by comedy auteur and
producer Judd Apatow and associates. O’Dowd’s physique—he is 6′3
inches tall and often strikingly larger than his co-stars—is a key feature of
his screen presence. In Moone Boy, for instance, O’Dowd plays Sean, the
imaginary friend of Martin Moone (David Rawls), with Sean’s hulking
figure comically contrasted with the pre-adolescent Martin. His corporeal-
ity also signifies in ethnic terms, notably in Get Shorty, where the Irishman’s
pale skin and large frame distance him from the predominantly Latino
gang members (often shorter, with wiry physiques) of the cartel for which
his character, Miles, works.
The actor’s body shape aligns with a corporeal colloquialism that came
into circulation in the 2010s: the ‘dadbod.’ The term signals a form of
symbolically paternal male physicality that “shows signs of health and fit-
ness but also has ‘love handles’ and is a little paunchy” (McIntyre et al.
2021, 1). The actor himself discursively claimed the corporeal type in a
2020 tweet, when he jokingly accused fellow actor Zac Efron of cultural
appropriation after a New York Post article, accompanied by pictures of a
shirtless and physically fit Efron, claimed fans were “shocked” by his
dadbod (4). The dadbod, as I argue, along with Diane Negra and Odin
O’Sullivan, presents “a (mild) refutation of the entanglement of physical
fitness and moral worth … [and articulates] resistance to the norms of
neoliberal embodiment” (7). For O’Dowd, this underlines his distance
from elitist notions of stardom and Hollywood glamour, which are increas-
ingly associated with punishing regimes of bodily regulation.
This aspect of the O’Dowd’s appeal is often foregrounded in media
profiles of the actor. An April 2014 issue of GQ magazine, for instance,
features O’Dowd on the cover alongside a beautiful glamour model with
the tagline “Frankly, we can’t believe Chris O’Dowd’s luck either!”
(Fig. 2.1) The cover, and tagline, suggests that part of the star’s appeal is
his evocation of an ordinariness that secures empathy with audiences, with
the “we” of the headline interpellating an audience who might, by similar
quirk of fate, end up in O’Dowd’s “lucky” position. This narrative of an
everyman finding himself incongruously situated among the elite of the
entertainment industry is further emphasized through the self-deprecating
humour O’Dowd employs in media interviews.
Such self-deprecation is evident in a 2012 interview with Conan
O’Brien on his TBS talk show Conan (2010–2021), in which the actor is
promoting the comedy This is 40. O’Dowd discusses at length his tall phy-
sique and how unusual his body looks naked, joking that it has led to vari-
ous nude scenes being omitted from films he has acted in, and drawing a
contrast between his own physique and the petite frame of Megan Fox,
the glamorous co-star with whom he shared a poolside scene in the movie.
The interview also aligns O’Dowd with the similarly built physique of the
host, and O’Brien’s own rhetorical mainstay of an ethnicized bodily self-
deprecation (usually regarding his red hair or fair skin). A later interview
on the same show in May 2020 has O’Brien clearly savouring and imitat-
ing O’Dowd’s pronunciation of his dog Potato’s name. Both the ethni-
cally inflected corporeal comparisons and accent appreciation and mimicry
on display in these interviews foreground the connections between Irish
and Irish-American performative modes and serve as a public attestation
of good will between Irish diasporic subjects of different generational
removes from the home nation.2
O’Dowd’s demotic positioning undergirds his emergence as a post-
Celtic Tiger figure, distanced from the perceived hedonistic excesses of
Irish actors such as Colin Farrell and Jonathan Rhys Meyers, physically
attractive performers who were among the most prominent exemplars of
Irish male masculinity on screen at the outset of the twenty-first century.
The well-documented issues with alcohol and drug misuse that have
tainted the careers of Farrell and Rhys Meyers, leading to public disavow-
als of past behaviours and habits on the part of both actors, are not a fea-
ture of O’Dowd’s star discourse. In part this is due to a multi-mediated
30 A. P. MCINTYRE
Fig. 2.1 O’Dowd’s “ordinary guy” persona is commonly foregrounded in media

depictions of the comedy actor
and coherent screen presence on the part of O’Dowd. While O’Dowd has
had some prominent examples of public drunkenness, particularly on an
episode of British chat show The Last Leg (2012–) in October 2018,
public opinion about the appearance was generally favourable. The actor
had been noticeably inebriated, but in a very good-humoured manner,
telling a rambling joke to the evident amusement of the hosts and fellow
guests on the show. O’Dowd in this role personifies Irish conviviality and
humour and the darker associations between alcohol and Irishness are
attenuated. The seeming shift in popularity from stars imbued with a
hedonistic quality to O’Dowd’s more everyman characteristics suggest the
complex ways in which stardom works as a barometer of social processes.
It also attests to the labile quality of Irish performativity, a somewhat capa-
cious mode of expression that nevertheless tends to operate within a fixed
set of coordinates. The shift from hedonism to the demotic qualities with
which O’Dowd is associated roughly aligns with a post-Celtic Tiger
national sense conveyed in national discourse, evident across a range of
media, that the Irish had “lost the run of ourselves” in the preceding
boom period (Free and Scully 2018).
The incident on The Last Leg also demonstrates O’Dowd’s facility for
correcting public missteps and the latitude afforded the performer on
account of his gregarious good humour. The actor is a regular user of
social media platform Twitter, and he posted the day after the production
expressing both contrition and bemusement at the incident. Responding
to a Twitter user who, unlike many of the responders to his tweet, criti-
cised the actor’s performance as “embarrassing” and “distasteful,”
O’Dowd posted, “I am a little embarrassed to be honest. But to keep
things in perspective, it’s a tipsy comedian on a late-night chat show on
Channel 4. I wasn’t doing meth on bbc breakfast. But thanks for your
concern, genuinely” (Starkey 2018). Similarly, O’Dowd used humour
during a podcast interview with broadcaster Louis Theroux to walk back
his role in the recording of John Lennon’s “Imagine” organized by Israeli
actress Gal Gadot when many parts of the world went into lockdown due
to the COVID-19 pandemic. The viral video, featuring a number of celeb-
rities singing along to the classic song, was publicly reviled as “tone deaf”
in conception, given its seeming equation between the lives of Hollywood
stars holed up in their mansions with the plight of others in more strait-
ened circumstances. After laughing through the host’s straight-faced
description of the song as “proving divisive on the internet,” and his sub-
sequent jibes, O’Dowd characterises the video as part of “that first wave of
creative diarrhoea that seemed to encase the world [at an early point in the
pandemic],” and further concedes that “any backlash was fairly justified”
(“Grounded with Louis Theroux 10. Chris O’Dowd” 2020). This mixture
32 A. P. MCINTYRE
of humour and humility is in keeping with O’Dowd’s genial public per-

sona, qualities that inform some of his more celebrated roles, such as those
in Moone Boy and Bridesmaids, and which can also be brought into service
on the part of the actor to stave off potential errors of judgement affecting
his public persona. Indeed, the actor is a much sought-after chat show
guest, and a gifted raconteur with an easy manner, qualities that harken
back to Irish figures of earlier eras such as actor Niall Tóibín and comedian
Dave Allen.
Bridesmaids: Breakthrough Performance

and the Ambivalence of Irishness
As this book suggests, Irish performativity operates within a matrix of

national and international trends, inflected across a range of industrial,
cultural and social axes. O’Dowd’s breakthrough transnational role
occurred in a post-crash moment in which the innocence that Irishness
can connote, detailed by Diane Negra in her book The Irish in Us: Irishness,
Performativity and Popular Culture (2006), gained significant purchase.
Bridesmaids, a breakout romantic comedy co-written by Kristin Wiig and
Annie Mumolo, was in some ways remarkably attuned to its recessionary
moment, acknowledging the spread of female downward mobility—as
well as under- and unemployment in this era—through its portrayal of
central character Annie (Wiig), a single woman who loses her bakery busi-
ness in the downturn (Leonard 2014, 50). This situation is compounded
for Annie by the need to deal with her best friend’s impending nuptials
and the expensive rites and rituals this event entails. In the film, O’Dowd
plays Rhodes, a police officer and ‘nice guy,’ who the film contrasts with
Annie’s other suitor, Ted (Jon Hamm), an obnoxious, Porsche-driving
city professional. The film’s consciousness of its recessionary context
inflects the contrast between the two men, with the blue-collar and sensi-
tive Rhodes juxtaposed with the rich and self-serving Ted. Both the actors
and the characters they play are intertextually entwined in the film’s signi-
fication here. The presence of television drama Mad Men’s (2007–2015)
Don Draper in the intertextual signification of Hamm’s character notably
feeds into this contrast, his most famous role connoting corporate duplic-
ity and avarice. While Rhodes is portrayed as gentle, sensitive, and caring,
Ted is depicted as essentially self-serving and incapable of seeing Annie as
anything other than a compliant and low-maintenance occasional sexual
partner.
Similarly, by playing a police officer with an Irish accent (an aspect of

the actor’s performative style that I treat in detail in a later section),
O’Dowd activates a further set of cultural assumptions. As Negra has
argued, Irishness has been central to “American fantasies of political,
familial, financial, and geographic innocence” (2006, 365), a cultural
trend that gained prominence in the 1990s that briefly escalated in the
aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in 2001. Bridesmaids, of course, contributes
to a longstanding trope in US screen media of the Irish or Irish-American
policeman, which, as Barton (2012) notes is well-established in US cul-
ture, often laden with negative associations of violence and alcoholism
(225). Rhodes clean-living policeman foregrounds the alternative associa-
tions of innocence and recuperation Irishness can also signify in US popu-
lar culture. The character constitutes a reinvigoration of the figure of the
Irish-American policemen, a representational move attenuates some of the
negative stereotypes associated with the figure and a shift that harkens
back to much earlier US screen representations of the Irish cop as genial
paterfamilias, a trend that emerged in silent films circa 1909 (Rhodes
2012, 322–325) and which intermittently appears in the intervening years.
Rhodes’ innocent demeanour—communicated in the film through
character traits such as an abhorrence of littering and his continued anxi-
ety over Annie not repairing her taillights—signal him as the right partner
for Annie, a safe and comforting presence offering respite from the buffet-
ing to which the character is exposed both financially and in her intimate
life—the two elements being inextricably linked in the film’s narrative.
The economically straitened conditions that the recession presented for so
many are not only foregrounded in the contrast between Rhodes and Ted,
but also through the excessive extravagance of some of Annie’s friends, at
a time when she is struggling financially. The most notable example of this
is the trivial and purposeless giving out of puppies at a wedding shower,
the movie demonstrating a cynical attitude toward excessive consumerism
that is a rare departure for a romantic comedy (Negra and Tasker 2014,
29n47). In the film Rhodes acts as a sounding board during the couple’s
scenes together, a common sense interlocuter who calls out the outland-
ishness of some of her friends’ behaviours. This groundedness is commu-
nicated through features such as O’Dowd’s corporeality and, as I detail
below, his accent.
34 A. P. MCINTYRE
Accented Performance: O’Dowd’s Irishness as Aural

Signifier and Diasporic Index
As many scholars have noted, accent has historically been central in the
performative repertoire of the Irish actor abroad and constitutes a crucial
element in both local and international recognition (Barton 2006, 7).
Taking a cue from Nicholas O’Riordan’s (2020) injunction that it is
important to establish “some of the multitude of ways Irish and interna-
tional filmmakers are utilising accent as a representative device” (177), this
section seeks to use O’Dowd as a means of widening the scope of such a
project, drawing a critical frame around television as well as cinema, and
also foregrounding the agency of actors in charting some of the ways in
which accent functions across contemporary Irish screen culture. Again,
by emphasising the role played by diasporic performers, we can gain an
insight into how movement outside of the home nation can inflect the
signification of Irishness across popular culture.
For the Roscommon actor, as mentioned, auditioning in his own accent
was key to getting the role in Bridesmaids that brought the actor to a
higher level of stardom. It is worth noting the performative context of the
film and the relevance of this to the role of accent in the production.
Bridesmaids was directed by Paul Feig and produced by Judd Apatow. The
pair had previously worked together on several projects, notably the televi-
sion series Freaks and Geeks (1999–2000), in which many of the perform-
ers associated with the producer in later projects, such as Seth Rogen,
James Franco and Jason Segel featured. As noted, O’Dowd would go on
to feature in further Apatow productions, and indeed alongside many of
these actors. Apatow has become synonymous with a highly improvisatory
approach to comedy, with performers encouraged to ad lib at length once
the scripted version of the scene has been recorded. Further, Kristen Wiig
and Annie Mumolo, Bridesmaids’ writers, had emerged through The
Groundlings, an improv and sketch venue in Los Angeles. O’Dowd him-
self describes the heavily improvised nature of the shoot in one interview:
we got the script done, then improvised a bit and then went back to the
script and shot that again when we were all kind of loosened up and threw
in bits of improvisation with bits of script. […] We did this improvisation
when we were actually filming. (Hagerty 2011)
The relevance of such a performative mode to accent is straightforward,

as the ability to improvise is dependent on a high level of cognitive agility;
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her, I would make her drop the prey by worrying and upsetting her with a straw.
Then I would take possession of the victim, and the Cerceris, thus despoiled,
would hunt about, go into her hole for a moment, come out, and resume the
chase. In less than ten minutes the sharp-sighted insect would find a new victim,
murder it and carry it off, not seldom to my profit. Eight times running have I
stolen from the same individual; eight times did the indefatigable Cerceris
resume her fruitless journey. Her perseverance tired out mine, and I let her keep
the ninth capture.
By this means, and by breaking open cells already filled with provisions, I got
nearly a hundred weevils, and in spite of what I had a right to [56]expect from
what Léon Dufour has told us of the habits of the Cerceris bupresticida, I could
not repress my astonishment at the sight of the singular collection which I had
made. His Cerceris, though it limits itself to one genus, yet takes any species
within that limit, but the more exclusive C. tuberculata preys exclusively on
Cleonus ophthalmicus. On looking through my booty I met with but one single
exception, and that belonged to a closely allied species, C. alternans—one
which I never met with again in my frequent visits to the Cerceris. Later
researches furnished me with a second exception, Bothynoderes albidus, and
these are all. Can a specially succulent and savoury prey explain this
predilection for a single species? Do the larvæ find in this unvaried diet juices
which suit them peculiarly, and which they would not find elsewhere? I do not
think so, and if Léon Dufour’s Cerceris hunted all the kinds of Buprestids, no
doubt it was because they all have the same nutritive properties. But this must
generally be the case with all the Curculionidæ; their alimentary properties must
be identical, and in that case this amazing choice can only be one of size, and
therefore of economy of labour and time. Our Cerceris, the giant of its race,
chooses C. ophthalmicus as the largest in our district, and perhaps the
commonest. But if this favourite prey fail, it must fall back upon other species,
even if smaller, as is proved by the two exceptions above mentioned.
Moreover, it is by no means the only one to hunt the long-nosed class of

weevils. Many other Cerceris, according to their size, strength, and the
[57]chances of the chase, capture Curculionidæ most various in genus, species,
shape, and size. It has long been known that Cerceris arenaria feeds her young
with similar food. I myself have found in its burrows Sitona lineata, S. tibialis,
Cneorhinus hispidus, Brachyderes gracilis, Geonemus flabellipes, Otiorhynchus
maleficus. Cerceris aurita is known to prey on Otiorhynchus raucus and
Phytonomus punctatus. In the larder of Cerceris ferreri I saw Phytonomus
murinus, P. punctatus, Sitona lineata, Cneorhinus hispidus, Rhynchites betuleti.
This weevil, which rolls up vine leaves into the shape of cigars, is sometimes of
a superb metallic blue, but more usually of a splendid golden copper. I have
found as many as seven of these brilliant insects laid up in one cell, and the
gorgeous colours of the little heap might almost bear comparison with the jewels
buried by the huntress of the Buprestids. Other species, especially the weaker,
hunt smaller game, the lesser size being compensated by numbers. Thus,
Cerceris quadricincta heaps in each cell some thirty Apion gravidum, but does
not disdain on occasion bigger weevils, such as Sitona lineata, Phytonomus
murinus. Cerceris labiata also lays up small species. Finally, the smallest
Cerceris in my part of France, C. julii, hunts the least weevils, Apion gravidum
and Bruchus granarius, game proportioned to its own size. To end this list of
provender, let us add that some Cerceris follow other gastronomic laws, and
bring up their families on Hymenoptera. Such is C. ornata. These tastes being
alien to our subject, let us pass on.
We see that out of eight species of Cerceris [58]which lay up Coleoptera as food,
seven hunt weevils and one Buprestids. What singular reason confines the
chase of these Hymenoptera within such narrow limits? What are the motives of
such an exclusive selection? What internal likeness is there between the
Buprestids and the weevils, outwardly quite dissimilar, that both should become
food for carnivorous and nearly related larvæ? No doubt between such and such
a victim there are differences as to taste and nutritive qualities which the larvæ
thoroughly appreciate, but there must be a far graver reason than these
gastronomic considerations to explain these strange predilections.
[To face p. 58.
CERCERIS FERRERI AND ITS PREY, THE WEEVIL;
Rhynchites betulæ on birch leaves, showing two leaves rolled

up by the weevil
After all that has been so admirably said by Léon Dufour on the long and
marvellous preservation of the insects destined as food for the carnivorous
larvæ, it is needless to say that the weevils which I dug up, as well as those
taken from between the feet of their murderer, were perfectly fresh, though
permanently motionless. Freshness of colour, suppleness of the membranes
and smallest articulations, normal condition of the viscera, all combine to make
one doubt whether the inert body under one’s eyes can really be a corpse, all
the more that even under the magnifying glass it is impossible to perceive the
smallest wound; and in spite of one’s self one expects every moment to see the
insect move and walk. Yet more, in weather so hot that insects which had died
naturally would in a few hours have become dried up and crumbly, or again in
damp weather which would with equal rapidity have made them decay and grow
mouldy. I have kept specimens in glass tubes or cones of paper over a month
with no precautions, and wonderful [59]to say, after all this length of time, the
intestines were as fresh as ever, and I found dissection as easy as if the
creatures were alive. No, in presence of such facts one cannot talk of an
antiseptic, and believe in real death; life is still there—life latent and passive—
vegetative life. It alone, struggling successfully for a time against the destructive
invasion of chemical forces, can thus preserve the organism from
decomposition. Life is still there, but without motion, and we have under our
eyes such a marvel as chloroform or ether might produce—a marvel caused by
the mysterious laws of the nervous system.
The functions of this vegetative life are slackened and troubled no doubt, but still
they are feebly exercised. I have the proof of this in that action of the viscera
which takes place normally and at intervals in the weevils during the first week of
that deep slumber, which will never be broken, and yet which is not death. It only
ceases when the intestine is empty, as is shown by autopsy. But the faint rays of
life which the creature manifests do not stop there; and though sensation
appears annihilated for ever, I have succeeded in reawakening some vestige of
them. Having placed weevils, recently exhumed and absolutely motionless, in a
bottle with sawdust moistened with benzine, I was not a little surprised to see a
quarter of an hour later moving antennæ and feet. For a moment I thought I
could recall them to life. Vain hope! these movements, last trace of a
sensitiveness about to cease, soon stopped, and could not be excited a second
time. I have repeated this experiment from [60]some hours to several days after
the murder, and always with the same success; only movement is tardy in
appearing in proportion as the date of the victim’s death is distant. The
movements are always from the forepart backward. First, the antennæ move,
then the front tarsi tremble and share in the oscillations; next, the second pair do
the same; and finally, the third. Once movement is excited, all these members
oscillate without any order until all become again motionless, as they do sooner
or later. Unless death has been quite recent, movement does not go beyond the
tarsi, and the legs remain motionless.
Ten days after the murder I could not obtain the least sign of irritability by the
proceeding described, and I had recourse to the Voltaic battery. This is more
effective, and provokes muscular contractions where the vapour of benzine fails.
One or two elements of Bunsen suffice, which are armed with the rheophores of
slender needles. Plunging the point of the one under the furthest ring of the
abdomen, and the point of the other under the neck, you obtain each time that
the current is established, not only the quivering of the tarsi, but a strong flexion
of the feet, which fold themselves under the body, and relax when the current is
interrupted. These movements, very energetic during the first days, gradually
lose intensity, and after a certain time appear no more. On the tenth day I have
still been able to obtain visible motions, but on the fifteenth the pile was unable
to provoke them, notwithstanding the suppleness of the limbs and freshness of
the viscera. I have submitted also [61]to the action of the pile Coleoptera really
dead, Blaps, Saperda, Lamia, asphyxiated by benzine or sulphureous gas, and
two hours later it was impossible to provoke the movements obtained so easily
from weevils lying already for several days in the singular state, intermediate
between life and death, into which their redoubtable enemy plunges them.
All these facts contradict the supposition of an animal completely dead, and the
hypothesis of a real corpse rendered incorruptible by some antiseptic liquid. One
can only explain them by admitting that the animal is struck in the principle of its
movements, and that sensitiveness, suddenly benumbed, dies slowly out, while
the more tenacious, vegetative functions die yet more slowly and preserve the
intestines during the time necessary for the larva.
The most important detail to show was how the murder is committed. Evidently,
the chief part must be played by the poisoned dart of the Cerceris. But where
and how does it penetrate the body of the weevil, covered with a hard cuirass,
with pieces so closely joined? Even under the magnifying glass nothing told
where the sting entered. Direct examination, therefore, was required to discover
the murderous ways of the Cerceris—a problem before whose difficulties Léon
Dufour had already recoiled, and the solution of which seemed to me for a time
impossible. I tried, however, and had the satisfaction of succeeding, though not
without some groping about.
When they fly from their holes to the chase, the Cerceris go here and there,
sometimes on one [62]side, sometimes on the other, and return from all
directions, loaded with prey, so that they must seek it on all sides; but as they
barely take ten minutes between going and returning, the space worked over
could not be very great, especially considering the time necessary to discover
the prey, to attack and render it an inert mass. I, therefore, set myself to examine
all the adjacent ground with close attention, hoping to discover some Cerceris
on the hunt. One afternoon devoted to this weary work convinced me of the
uselessness of my researches, and of the little chance I had of surprising any of
the few Cerceris, scattered here and there, and soon lost to view by their rapid
flight; above all, in difficult ground, planted with olives, I gave up the attempt. But
by carrying live weevils to the neighbourhood of the nests might I not tempt the
Cerceris by a prey found without trouble, and so observe the drama? The notion
seemed good, and the very next day I set out to find live Cleonus ophthalmicus.
Vineyards, wheat-fields, and crops of lucerne, and heaps of stones did I visit and
examine one and all, and after two days of close search I possessed—dare I
own it?—three weevils! bare, dusty, maimed of antennæ or tarsi, shabby old
creatures which, perhaps, the Cerceris would not touch! Since the day of that
fevered search, when, for a weevil’s sake, I bathed myself in perspiration during
my wild expedition, many a year has passed, and yet, in spite of almost daily
entomological researches, I am still ignorant of the life and habits of this
Cleonus, which I met here and there, straying on the edge of paths. Wonderful
powers of instinct! [63]in the same spots, and in a fraction of time, one
Hymenopteron would have found hundreds of these insects which man cannot
find, and found them fresh and shining, no doubt just emerged from the cocoon!
No matter; let us experiment with my wretched victim. A Cerceris has just gone
into her gallery with her prey; before she comes out for a new expedition I place
a weevil a few inches from her hole. The weevil moves about; when it strays too
far I bring it back to its place. At last the Cerceris shows her wide face at the
mouth of her hole; my heart beats fast. She walks for a few minutes near her
dwelling, sees the weevil, brushes against it, turns, passes several times over its
back, and flies off without even honouring my captive with a bite—my captive
which cost me so much labour! I was confounded—knocked over. New attempts
at other holes, new disappointments. Decidedly these dainty hunters will have
none of the game which I offer them. Perhaps they find it too old, too tasteless;
perhaps, in handling it, I communicated some smell to it which displeases them.
Foreign contact disgusts these connoisseurs.
Should I be more fortunate if I obliged the Cerceris to defend herself? I enclosed

one with a Cleonus in a bottle, irritating them by shaking it. The Hymenopteron,
sensitive by nature, was more impressed than the other prisoner, with its dull,
heavy organisation; she thought of escape, not attack. Their parts were
exchanged; the weevil became the aggressor, sometimes seizing with the end of
its trunk a foot of its mortal foe, who made [64]no attempt at defence, so terrified
was she. I could devise nothing more; my desire to be present at the dénoûment
had only added to former difficulties. Well, let us try again.
A luminous idea flashed upon me, bringing hope, so naturally did it touch the
very heart of the question. Of course, it was the right thing and must succeed.
My disdained game must be offered to the Cerceris in the heat of the chase—
then, absorbed and preoccupied, she will not discover its imperfections. I have
already said that on returning from the chase the Cerceris alights at the foot of
the incline at some distance from the hole, whither she laboriously drags the
prey. What I then had to do was to deprive her of her victim, drawing it away by
one foot with pincers, and instantly throwing her the living weevil in exchange.
This manœuvre succeeded perfectly. As soon as the Cerceris felt the prey slip
under her body and escape her, she stamped with impatience, turned round,
and perceiving the weevil which had replaced hers, flung herself upon it and
clasped it in order to carry it away. But she promptly perceived that this prey was
alive, and then the drama began and ended with inconceivable rapidity. The
Cerceris faced her victim, seized its proboscis with her powerful jaws and
grasped it vigorously, and while the weevil reared itself up, pressed her forefeet
hard on its back as if to force open some ventral articulation. Then the tail of the
murderess slid under the Cleonus, curved and darted its poisoned lancet swiftly
two or three times at the joining of the prothorax, between the first and second
pair of feet. In a twinkling all was over. Without [65]one convulsive movement,
with no motion of the limbs such as accompany the death of an animal, the
victim fell motionless for ever, as if annihilated. It was at once wonderful and
terrible in its rapidity. Then the assassin turned the Weevil on its back, placing
herself body to body with it, her legs on either side of it, and flew off. Three times
I renewed the experiment with my three Weevils, and the same scene was
always enacted.
Of course, each time I gave the Cerceris back her first prey and withdrew my
Cleonus to examine it at greater leisure. This examination only confirmed my
opinion of the terrible skill of the assassin. It is impossible to find the slightest
trace of a wound, or the smallest flow of vital liquids from the point which was
struck. But the most striking thing is the rapid, complete annihilation of all
movement. Vainly did I seek even immediately after the murder for any trace of
sensibility in the three Weevils done to death under my eyes—neither pinching
nor pricking provoked it; to do so required the artificial means already
mentioned. Thus these robust Cleonus, which, pierced alive with a pin and fixed
by a collector on his fatal sheet of cork, would have struggled for days, weeks,
nay, whole months, instantly lose all power of motion from the effect of a little
prick which inoculates them with a minute drop of poison. Chemistry knows none
so active in so small a dose; scarcely could prussic acid produce such an effect,
if, indeed, it could do so at all. It is not then to toxology, but to physiology and
anatomy that we must turn to find the cause of such instantaneous catalepsy; it
is not so much [66]the great virulence of the poison injected, as the importance of
the organ injured by it which we must consider in order to explain these marvels.
What, then, is found at the point where the sting penetrates? [67]
[Contents]
V
ONE SKILFUL TO SLAY
The Hymenopteron has partly revealed her secret by showing us

where the sting strikes. But does that explain the question? Not yet,
by any means. Let us retrace our steps, forget for a moment what
the insect has taught us, and consider the problem set before the
Cerceris. The problem is this: to lay up in an underground cell a
certain number of heads of game which may suffice to nourish the
larva hatched from the egg laid upon the heap of provender.
At first sight this storing of food appears simple enough, but reflexion
soon discovers graver difficulties. Our own game is brought down by
a shot and killed with horrible wounds. The Hymenopteron has
refinements unknown to us; she chooses to have her prey intact,
with all its elegance of form and colour. No broken limbs, no gaping
wounds, no hideous disembowelment. Her prey has all the freshness
of the living insect; she does not destroy an atom of the fine-coloured
powder which the mere contact of our fingers deflowers. If the insect
were really dead, really a corpse, how difficult it would be for us to
obtain such a result! Any one can slay [68]an insect by stamping
brutally on it, but to kill it neatly leaving no sign is no easy operation,
within every one’s power. How many of us would be at our wits’ end
if we had to kill on the spot, without crushing it, a little creature so
tenacious of life that even beheaded it still goes on struggling! One
must have been a practical entomologist before thinking of
asphyxiation, and here, again, success would be doubtful with the
primitive methods of vapour of benzine or burnt sulphur. In this
deleterious atmosphere the insect struggles too long, and tarnishes
its brightness. One must have recourse to more heroic methods—for
instance, to the terrible exhalations of prussic acid slowly
disengaging themselves from strips of paper impregnated with
cyanide of potassium, or better still, as being without danger to the
collector, to the thunderbolt of vapour of bisulphide of carbon. It
requires a real art, an art calling to its aid the redoubtable arsenal of
chemistry, to kill an insect neatly; to do that is what the elegant
method of the Cerceris brings about so quickly, if we admit the stupid
supposition that her prey really becomes a dead body.
A dead body! But that is by no means the diet of the larvæ, little
ogres greedy for fresh meat, to whom game ever so slightly tainted
would inspire insurmountable disgust. They must have fresh meat
with no high taste—that first sign of decay. Yet the prey cannot be
laid up alive in the cell like animals destined to furnish fresh meat to
the crew and passengers of a vessel. What would become of a
delicate egg laid among living food? What would become of the
feeble larva, a worm bruised by the slightest [69]thing among
vigorous Coleoptera moving their long spurred legs for whole
weeks? It is absolutely necessary—and here we seem caught in a
blind alley—to obtain deathly immobility with the freshness of life for
the interior organs. Before such an alimentary problem the best
instructed man of the world would stand helpless—even the
practised entomologist would own himself at a loss. The larder of the
Cerceris would defy their reasoning powers.
Let us then imagine an academy of entomologists and physiologists,

a congress where the question should be discussed by Flourens,
Majendies, Claude Bernards. To obtain at once complete immobility
and long preservation of food, the first and most natural and simple
idea would be that of preserved meats. One would invoke some
antiseptic liquid, as the illustrious savant of the Landes did with
regard to his Buprestids, and attribute such virtue to the poisonous
fluid of the Cerceris, but this strange quality has yet to be proved.
Gratuitous hypothesis replacing the unknown quantity of the
preserving liquid may perhaps be the final verdict of the learned
assembly, as it was that of the naturalist of the Landes.
Should one insist and explain that the larvæ require not preserved
food which could never have the properties of flesh still palpitating,
but prey yet alive, so to say, in spite of complete absence of motion,
the learned Congress, after ripe consideration, will fall back upon
paralysis: “Yes, of course; the creature has to be paralysed without
being killed.” There is but one means of arriving at this [70]result,
namely, to injure, cut, and destroy the nervous system of the insect
in one or more skilfully chosen points.
If the question be thus left in hands unfamiliar with the secrets of a

delicate anatomy it will not have advanced far. What is the
arrangement of this nervous system which must be paralysed
without killing the insect? First, where is it? In the head no doubt and
along the back, like the brain and spinal marrow in the superior
animals. “A grave mistake!” our congress would reply; the insect is
so to say an animal reversed, which walks on its back—that is, it has
the spinal marrow below instead of above, all along breast and
stomach; therefore on the lower surface alone can the operation to
paralyse the insect be performed.
This difficulty removed, a far graver one presents itself. Armed with
his scalpel, the anatomist can direct its point where he will in spite of
obstacles which he may have to set aside. The Hymenopteron has
no choice. Its victim is a solidly cuirassed beetle, its lancet a dart,
extremely delicate, which the horny mail would certainly turn aside.
Only certain points are vulnerable to the frail tool, namely, the joints,
protected simply by a membrane with no power of resistance. But
the joints of the limbs, although vulnerable, do not in the least fulfil
the necessary conditions, for through these the utmost that could be
obtained is local paralysis, not one affecting the whole organism of
motion. Without any prolonged struggle, without repeated
operations, which, if too numerous, might endanger the victim’s life,
the Hymenopteron has, if possible, to abolish all [71]motive power at
one blow. Therefore she must direct her dart at the nervous centres,
the source of the power of motion whence radiate the nerves running
up to the various organs of movement. Now these sources of
locomotion, these nervous centres, consist of a certain number of
ganglia, more numerous in the larva, less so in the perfect insect,
and arranged on the median line of the under surface in a string of
beads more or less distant and connected by a double ribbon of
nervous tissue. In all insects which have reached the perfect state
the ganglia called thoracic, i.e. those furnishing nerves to wings and
feet and governing their movements, are three in number. Here are
the points to be struck: if their action can be in any way destroyed,
the possibility of movement is destroyed also.
Two ways of reaching these motive centres offer themselves to the

feeble dart of the Hymenopteron; one, the joint between neck and
corslet; the other the spot where the latter joins the continuation of
the thorax, between the first and second pair of feet. The way
through the neck does not answer; it is too far from the ganglia,
which lie near the base of the feet which they animate. The blow
must be dealt at the other spot, and through that only. Thus would an
academy decide where Claude Bernards illuminated the question by
their profound science. And it is precisely there, between the first
and second pairs of feet on the median line of the under surface, that
the Cerceris plunges her lancet. By what learned intelligence must
she be inspired!
To choose as the spot in which to plant her sting the one vulnerable
point, the point which only a [72]physiologist versed in the anatomy of
insects could determine beforehand is by no means enough; the
Hymenopteron has a far greater difficulty to overcome, and she
overcomes it with a mastery which fills one with amazement. We
said that the nervous centres controlling the organs of motion in an
insect are three. These are more or less distant from each other, but
sometimes, though rarely, near together. They possess a certain
independence of action, so that an injury to one does not cause, at
all events immediately, more than paralysis of members connected
with it, while the other ganglia and their corresponding members are
not affected by it. To reach these three sources of motion one after
the other, the second farther off than the first, and the last farther
still, and by a single way, between the first and second pairs of feet,
seems impossible for the sting, which is too short, and besides, so
difficult to aim well in such conditions. True, certain Coleoptera have
the three ganglia of the thorax almost touching, and others have the
two last completely united, soldered, smelted together. It is also
recognised that in proportion as the different nervous centres
combine and centralise, the characteristic functions of animality
become more perfect, and also, alas, more vulnerable. Those
Coleoptera with centres of motion so near that they touch or even
gather into one mass, and so are made part of each other, would be
instantly paralysed by one sting; or if several were needed, at all
events the ganglia to be paralysed are all collected under the point of
the dart.
Now which are the Coleoptera so specially easy [73]to paralyse? That
is the question. The lofty science of a Claude Bernard, floating in the
fundamental generalities of organisation and life, is no longer
enough for us; it is unable to inform and guide us in this
entomological selection. I appeal to every physiologist under whose
eye these lines may fall. Without having recourse to his book-
shelves, could he name the Coleoptera where such a nervous
centralisation is found, and even with the help of his library, could he
instantly lay his hand on the information wanted? The truth is, we are
entering on the minute details of the specialist; the highway is quitted
for a path known to few.
I find the necessary documents in the fine work of M. E. Blanchard

(Annales des Sciences Naturelles, 3me série, tome v.) on the
nervous system of Coleoptera. There I find that this centralisation of
nerve power belongs especially to the Scarabæus, but most of these
are too large; the Cerceris could neither attack nor carry them away;
besides, many live in filth, where the cleanly Hymenopteron could
not go to seek them. Motive centres very close together are also
found among the Histers, which live on impurity, amid the smell of
decay, and again that will not do; also in the Scolytus, which is too
small, and finally in Buprestids and Weevils.
What unexpected light amid the pristine obscurities of the problem!

Amid the immense number of the Coleoptera which the Cerceris
seem able to prey upon, two groups alone, Weevils and Buprestids,
fulfil the indispensable conditions. They live far from decay and
dung, which perhaps cause invincible repugnance in this dainty
Cerceris; they are [74]of most varied size, proportioned to that of their
different captors, which may thus choose according to their
convenience. They are far more vulnerable than all the others at the
one point where the sting of the Hymenopteron can penetrate
successfully, for at that point, all easily accessible to the dart, crowd
the motor centres of feet and wings. At this point the three thoracic
ganglia of Weevils lie very close, the hind two are contiguous. At that
same spot in the Buprestids the second and third are welded in one
large mass a little distance from the first. And as it is precisely
Buprestids and Weevils which are hunted, to the absolute exclusion
of all other game, by the eight species of Cerceris, whose food
stores of Coleoptera have been ascertained, a certain internal
likeness, namely, in centralisation of the nervous system must be the
explanation why there are heaped in the dens of various Cerceris
victims, outwardly so unlike.
In this choice, upon which even transcendent knowledge could not

improve, such an assembly of difficulties is splendidly resolved, that
one asks if one be not the dupe of some involuntary illusion, and if
preconceived theories have not obscured the reality of facts, in short,
whether the pen has not described imaginary marvels. A scientific
result is only solidly established when confirmed by experiments
repeated in every possible way. Now let us submit to experimental
proof the physiological operation taught us by Cerceris tuberculata. If
it be possible to obtain artificially what the Hymenopteron obtained
by her sting, i.e. abolition of movement, and long preservation of the
victim in a [75]state of perfect freshness; if it be possible to bring
about this wonder with the Coleoptera hunted by the Cerceris, or
with those possessing a like nervous centralisation, while one fails
with those whose ganglia are far apart, one must admit, however
exacting one may be in the matter of proof, that the Hymenopteron
possesses in the unconscious inspirations of instinct the resources
of sublime science. Let us see then what experiment shows. The
manner of operation is very simple. With a needle, or, better still, with
the point of a fine steel pen, we must introduce a tiny drop of some
corrosive liquid into the thoracic motive centres, pricking the insect
slightly at the jointing of the prothorax behind the first pair of feet.
The liquid which I use is ammonia, but it is evident that any other
liquid whose action is equally strong would produce the same
results. The metal pen being charged with ammonia as it might be
with a droplet of ink, I give the prick. The effects thus obtained differ
enormously, according to whether the experiment be made upon
species with thoracic ganglia near together or upon those where
these same ganglia are far apart. With regard to the first category,
my experiments were made on Scarabæus, S. sacer and S.
longicollis; on a bronze Buprestis; and on weevils, especially that
Cleonus hunted by the heroine of these observations. In the second
category I have experimented on Caraboidea, Carabus, Procrustes,
Chlœnius, Sphodrus, Nebria; Longicornia, Saperda, and Lamia; on
Melasomes; Blaps, Scaurus, and Asida.
Among the Scarabæus class, the Buprestids, and the [76]Weevils,

the effect is instantaneous. Every movement stops suddenly, without
any convulsion, as soon as the fatal drop has touched the nerve
centres. The sting of the Cerceris does not produce prompter
extinction. Nothing can be more striking than this sudden immobility
in a vigorous Scarabæus sacer, but the likeness between the effects
produced by the dart of the Cerceris and the steel pen charged with
ammonia does not stop here. Scarabæids, Buprestids, and Weevils
artificially stung, in spite of their complete immobility, preserve for
three weeks, one month, or even two, the perfect flexibility of every
joint and the normal freshness of the interior organs. With them
defecation takes place on the first days as in the normal condition,
and movement can be excited by the Voltaic current. In a word, they
behave exactly as do Coleoptera sacrificed by the Cerceris. There is
complete identity between the state into which she plunges her
victims and that produced at will by injecting ammonia into the nerve
centres of the thorax. Now, as it is impossible to attribute the perfect
preservation of the insect during so long a time to the drop injected,
one must altogether reject the notion of an antiseptic fluid, and grant
that in spite of utter immobility the creature is not really dead. A
spark of life exists, keeping the organs for some time in normal
freshness, but dying out by degrees and leaving them at last subject
to corruption. Moreover, the ammonia in some cases produces
extinction of movement in the feet only, and then the deleterious
action of the fluid having doubtless not extended far enough, the
antennæ preserve some mobility, [77]and one sees that the creature,
even a month after inoculation, draws them back quickly at the least
touch—an evident proof that life has not completely abandoned the
inert body. This movement is not rare with Weevils wounded by the
Cerceris.
Injection of ammonia always stops motion at once in Buprestids,

Weevils, and Scarabæus, but it is not always possible to put the
creature into the state just described. If the wound be too deep, or
the little drop instilled be too strong, at the end of two or three days
the victim really dies, and after two or three days there is but a
decaying body. If, on the contrary, the prick be too slight, it recovers
the power of motion, at least partially, after being inanimate for more
or less time. The Cerceris herself may operate clumsily, just like
man, for I have seen this kind of resurrection in a victim struck by the
dart of a Hymenopteron. Sphex flavipennis, whose history will
presently occupy us, heaps in her dens young crickets struck by her
venomed lancet. From one of her holes I have taken three poor
crickets whose extreme flabbiness would, in any other
circumstances, have denoted death. But here, again, death was only
apparent. Placed in a bottle, these crickets kept quite fresh but
motionless for nearly three weeks, after which two grew mouldy,
while the third came partly to life—that is to say, it regained motion of
the antennæ, mouth-parts, and, which is more remarkable, of the
first two pairs of feet. If even the skill of the Hymenopteron
sometimes fails to benumb a victim for good and all, can one expect
constant success with the rough experiments of man? [78]
In Coleoptera of the second category—those where the ganglia of

the thorax are distant one from another—the effect of ammonia is
quite different. Those which show themselves least vulnerable are
the Caraboidea. A puncture which would instantly have annihilated
motion in the large Scarabæus sacer, in the middle size Caraboidea
only causes violent, disordered convulsions. By degrees the creature
quiets down, and after some hours’ rest resumes its habitual
movements as if nothing had happened to it. If the experiment be
repeated on it twice, thrice, even four times, the results are the
same, until the wound becomes too serious, and it dies outright, as
is proved by the drying up and putrefaction which soon follow.
The Melasomes and the Longicorns are more sensitive to the action
of ammonia. The injection of a small corrosive drop quickly renders
them motionless, and after some twitching they seem dead. But the
paralysis which would have persisted in Weevils, Scarabids, and
Buprestids is but momentary. Before long motion reappears as
energetic as before. It is only when the dose of ammonia is of a
certain strength that movement does not reappear. But then the
creature is really dead, and putrefaction rapidly comes on. It is then
impossible to cause complete and persistent paralysis in Coleoptera
with ganglia far apart by the means so efficacious in those with
ganglia near together. At the utmost one can only obtain momentary
paralysis, which passes quickly away. The demonstration is decisive.
Cerceris which prey on Coleoptera conform in their [79]choice to what
the most learned physiology and finest anatomy alone can teach. It
would be vain to endeavour to see nothing here but chance
agreement; it is not chance which explains such harmony. [80]

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Contemporary Irish Popular Culture:

Transnationalism, Regionality, and

The Monstrous-Feminine in Contemporary Japanese Popular

Print Culture, Agency, and Regionality in the Hand

Rethinking the Irish Diaspora 1st ed. Edition Johanne

The EU, Irish Defence Forces and Contemporary Security

Masculinities and Manhood in Contemporary Irish Drama:

A Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Poetry,

Limits and Languages in Contemporary Irish Women's

Imagining Irish Suburbia in Literature and Culture 1st

“This is a beautifully written, wide-ranging, carefully historicised and theorised

ISBN 978-3-030-94254-0 ISBN 978-3-030-94255-7 (eBook)

Cover illustration: Mickey Rooney / Alamy Stock Photo

Celtic Tiger Aspirationalism,” in New Perspectives on Irish TV Series:

1 Introduction—“Fractured Movement”: Transnationalism,

2 Star Leverage, Local Matters, and Transnational Media:

3 Derry Girls and Cork Boys: Second Cities, Regional

4 Transnationalism, Masculinity, and Diasporic

5 Irish Female Comedic Voices, Diasporic Melancholy, and

6 Mammies and Sons: Mobilising Maternal and Filial

7 Coda: The COVID-19 Pandemic and Irish Screen Media239

Fig. 2.1 O’Dowd’s “ordinary guy” persona is commonly foregrounded

An ad for Three Business—a branch of the Irish telecommunications

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

communications access. Images of a “digital hub” set up on the island,

The veracity of such a depiction as characteristic of Irish citizens

trope with longstanding roots that go back to such cataclysmic events as

Neoliberal Ireland: Mapping the Contemporary

wave of empire as violence, partition and the fragmentation of place as a

employment opportunities in heavy industries; a historic diaspora stretch-

heightened level of recognition through their high-profile stature, these

to bring neoliberalism to Northern Ireland in earnest (127–128). The

Conjunctural Flash Points

sizeable, of extended reach, of long duration, [providing] much of the

While, of course, there have been significant migratory paths to countries

non-Irish) both past and present in the construction of US society in her

Transnationalism, Regionality and Diaspora:

A consideration of the multiple changes which contemporary Ireland

drama productions such as Game of Thrones (2011–2019) and Vikings

Guattari, who themselves were considering the writings of Franz Kafka,

A less nakedly mercenary example of diaspora engagement can be

Rebecca Chiyoko King-O’Riain (2021) has skilfully traced the complex

Methodology, Choice of Texts

A guiding principle in assembling the archive of texts under analysis in this

negative responses, with some finding the idiomatic phrasing refreshingly

Brah, Avtar. 1996. Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities. London:

Star Leverage, Local Matters,

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 23

complex ways through popular culture texts as well as a number of promi-

chapter’s consideration of local and global Irishness. Overall, the chapter

Shifting Masculinities in Twenty-First Century

transatlantic comedy connections evident in the career of writer and per-

role as co-lead alongside Ray Romano—another actor successfully transi-

Everyman Appeal, Demotic Corporeality,

Part of O’Dowd’s attraction is the contrast his everyman charm fore-

Fig. 2.1 O’Dowd’s “ordinary guy” persona is commonly foregrounded in media

of humour and humility is in keeping with O’Dowd’s genial public per-

Bridesmaids: Breakthrough Performance

As this book suggests, Irish performativity operates within a matrix of

Similarly, by playing a police officer with an Irish accent (an aspect of

Accented Performance: O’Dowd’s Irishness as Aural

The relevance of such a performative mode to accent is straightforward,

Moreover, it is by no means the only one to hunt the long-nosed class of

Rhynchites betulæ on birch leaves, showing two leaves rolled

1 Introduction—“Fractured Movement”: Transnationalism,

2 Star Leverage, Local Matters, and Transnational Media:

3 Derry Girls and Cork Boys: Second Cities, Regional

4 Transnationalism, Masculinity, and Diasporic

5 Irish Female Comedic Voices, Diasporic Melancholy, and

6 Mammies and Sons: Mobilising Maternal and Filial

7 Coda: The COVID-19 Pandemic and Irish Screen Media239