The sheer amount of tutor feedback is great, however it does require a detailed response from me starting here:
In the report my tutor states that he feels my essay, while good lacks my own point of view clearly stated. Having reread it I think he is right and can only say in my defense that I simply lacked the experience of writing from an academic perspective and also the confidence not to put my opinion forward forthrightly. I was aware as I read and researched the essay that I had to strike a balance between quoting sources and stating my own opinion. Having said all that I will clearly state now that I personally find these images sickeningly saccharine and overly sentimental. It puzzles me why they are resurrected and held up as some sort of masterpieces by the art critics and museums. Neither are they original depictions of Ireland, as I said in the essay they are based on the image of Ireland created by John Ford in the Quiet Man, an Ireland of the doffed cap and where Irish people use language like begorragh and to be sure to be sure. To me they are the romanticised version of Ireland that is imposed by people from outside Ireland like John Hinde.
I believe the point of view that John Hinde’s images of Ireland is propagating is essentially a colonial one. He rarely shows people up close in his images and when he does they are children and I feel that he portrays the Irish landscape like a theme park – the over saturated colours and the permanently mediterranean sky, the castles that remind me of the disney logo – all of these elements in his images later went on to feature in his images of a real theme park – Butlins. Ireland is not, now was it ever a theme park.
It seems that I also neglected to say clearly enough that I consider the work of Anthony Haughey and Sean Hillen as “truer” in its representation of Ireland. I am not sure I would say truer, photography and truth are not words I am comfortable using in the same sentence. Both artists work I believe show a greater understanding of the complexities of Irish culture and to me as someone who is Irish I feel they have greater depth and are more authentic.
I also stated “
It would be wrong to assume though that the Irish are mere victims in the
process. In fact there is an interdependence between the tourist and the objects of the
tourist gaze… Sean Hillen and Anthony Haughey are two examples which I feel show that
it is impossible to consider representations of Ireland from only a purely aesthetic aspect.”
I stated that they Irish themselves were and still are complicit in these representations of
Ireland. At the time of the publication of John Hinde’s post cards Ireland was opening up
its economy and working to attract foreign tourists to Ireland. Aer Lingus, the national
Airline were acting as a defacto tourism and they employed a team of Dutch designers
who changed the way Ireland was depicted in their advertisement. They used
synecdoches to sum up and simply Irish culture. Their work is strongly modernist in style. I cannot help but feel, looking back with hindsight that the images that the new state chose
to depict itself were strongly colonialist in nature.
My tutor suggests that I choose a different more catchy title for the essay. I feel that
perhaps the addition of the word exploitation to the title would help to state my view
clearer. The Exploitation and Misrepresentation of Ireland in John Hinde’s Irish postcards
I also used the word truer in my essay, and my tutor find issue with that. I should have
stated “The image that the postcards present is an excessively romanticized one and
connotes the “true Ireland” and all that is “truly Irish” with rural life.” Hinde’s postcards are
aimed at potential tourists and it is a given in the tourist business that every tourist goes in
search of the ‘true’ or ‘real’ country of culture.
Again I state “This traditional Ireland, in my opinion is used to signify a lost world of innocence, a prelapsarian society that has a cross cultural appeal – such as the biblical fall of man – “ My tutor says that cross cultural appeal of the biblical fall of man is a contentious claim that could undermine my argument. Perhaps it would be better to say cross cultural recognition. What I am really trying to say by this is the romantic notion that before industrialisation we lived in a purer or a happier world. I personally find that hard to believe.
A small correction my tutor suggests is to change this sentence “these misrepresentations of Ireland are visual spectacle engaged in the commodification and appropriation of the Irish landscape solely for the tourist gaze.” to “these misrepresentations of Ireland are visual spectacles that commodify and appropriate the Irish landscape for the tourist gaze. Hinde’s work could be viewed as aiding and abetting the prostitution of the landscape – a version of which is packaged and marketed for financial gain” I think this is a good addition to the wording and strengthens my own point of view.
My tutor queries whether emigration is or was a fact of Irish life. I state that it is. I should elaborate. During the “Celtic Tiger” years emigration was, for the first time ever stopped and immigration became an issue also for the first time ever. Since the end of the mythological boom emigration is again a fact of life in Ireland.
My tutor questions this statement: “John Hinde’s postcards fit exactly the dominant stereotype of Ireland” He says the use of the word dominant implies other stereotypes and says that I should either remove the word dominant or allude to the stereotypes I am referring. I am referring to stereotypes of Ireland being a rural arcadia where everyone lives on a farm, collects turf and drinks Guinness. It would be true perhaps to say that some people do live on farms in Ireland although since the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st there has been a gradual shift of population from rural to urban living. Collecting turf has become a contentious issue in modern day Ireland, a subject I examined in assignment 2. Turf also happens to be a very inefficient fuel. And so on.
“through imagery such as painting, film and postcards the rural is venerated at the expense of the urban and the past is sanctified at the expense of the present.” My tutor asks whether I maintain that this version ever existed or that it is a fabrication. I maintain it is a fabrication, invented by urban intellectuals such as Jack B Yeats and Sean Keating, two Irish artists who painted romantic images of Ireland during the 19th century when Ireland was experiencing the Gaelic revival. My source for this is Transformations In Irish Culture By Luke Gibbons.
I quoted Sean Hillen “I would say that I feel Irelantis celebrates the slightly delirious imagination of Hinde’s images whilst perhaps critiquing them, but I was always dismayed when people at first read it as purely satirical, that was far from my aim. I also think that the Ireland pictured was actually not unfamiliar in its contents to anyone born before the ’60’s, when you actually did still see the poverty and peasant nature of Ireland which persisted then.”
My tutor says that this quote seems to imply that Hinde’s Ireland does exist and that I should state whether or not I agree with it. I do not think that this statement implies that Hinde’s Ireland existed. In fact Hinde’s Ireland ignores the harsh reality of Ireland in the 1950’s when so many people were driven off the land and out of Ireland for a new life elsewhere.
A landscape learning log 