The British are not happy. This is admittedly a standard state of affairs for that island in the fog, but I find the reason rather amusing. Irish director Ken Loach, whose film The Wind That Shakes the Barley won the Palme D’Or at Cannes, has just become the British media’s newest target. Why? Ahh, you see, The Wind That Shakes the Barley tells the story of the 1920s Irish independence uprising from an Irish perspective and apparently makes the British occupiers look…not so good.

In Tuesday’s edition of the Sun, columnist Harry MacAdam calls The Wind That Shakes The Barley the “most pro-IRA film ever”.

Its plot, he continues, is “designed to drag the reputation of our nation through the mud”.

In the Daily Mail, Ruth Dudley Edwards writes that Loach’s purpose is to “encourage direct comparisons between the Ireland of 1920-22 and present-day Iraq”.

“This, of course, requires the portrayal of the British as sadists and the Irish as romantic, idealistic resistance fighters.”

The film, told entirely from the perspective of its Irish characters, shows British soldiers to be indiscriminately violent.

Excuse me a minute while I put on my very best Bob Dylan sneer:

How does it feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeel?

Gosh, imagine that! Historically questionable depictions of a nation as an undifferentiated mass of bloody, brutal occupiers told entirely from the perspective of the poor suffering oppressed underdog who would of course never resort to violent tactics of their own kinda…well…they kinda burn you up, don’t they, you fucking wankers?

Is there a lesson in this? Could we possibly take something away from this and apply it to our international relations?

Of course we can. We should boycott Ireland’s universities!

Drool, Britannia.

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15 Comments

  • *raises eyebrow*
    Biased, much? Yeesh. I was under the impression racism was a BAD thing…religiously and morally.
    Still, you have a point. Brits invented the concentration camps, it was the british who organised the crusades. I can appreciate there’s a lot of hatred for Britain.
    Just don’t hate the people. I had nothing to do with any of that, no-one I know had anything to do with that. If you must hate something about Britain, hate the Government. God knows everyone in Britain does. ¬_¬

  • Yeah, Michael, why do you have to be such a tosser? Don’t hate the entire people. Save your hate for Livingston, the Royal family and Coldplay.

  • No, if I’m going to hate something about Britain, I’ll hate the legions of intellectuals, journalists, professors, TV personalities, and on down the line that continually deny my right to live as a Jew in the Jewish State. You know, the “boycott Israeli universities” crowd. You try being told on a daily basis you have no right to exist, that you are an agent of apartheid, that you are the scum of the earth, and maybe you might be “biased” too.

    And by the way, that’s not racism.

  • Don’t waste that energy on hating the British. Sleep with the Irish.

  • My Irish friend from back in New Orleans occasionally propositions me for the making of swarthy, interfaith children (her words). Does this mean I should take her up on it, Tom?

    Of course, I also recall that you people’s little pet liberation group gave lots of support to our people’s friendly neighbors…

  • Go for it, Michael. She’s Irish, so you’ll likely have to put up with a raft of shit. But as a highly verbal people, we’re pretty good at sex talk.

  • Oh, and let the record reflect that although he bombed London, Hitler was a bad guy.

  • Might the fact that the author of the article describes Ken Loach as an ‘Irish’ director indicate that he/she doesnt know what the fuck he/she is talking about? Hint: his actual nationality pertains to the island to Ireland’s immediate east. The two ‘British’ writers the author quotes who criticise Loach’s film – Ruth Dudley Edwards and Harry MacAdam, on the other hand, are in fact Irish. Here’s another chance for Americans to learn that life is more complicated than Hollywood films make it out to be. Take it, children, while there is still time!

    Hag sameach from Jerusalem.

  • Ruth Dudley Edwards and Harry McAdam are Irish inasmuch as they are Northern Irish unionists – Edwards with a long track record of support for the Orange Order.

    Draw your own conclusions.